Music revolution for America – Spotify to go live in US today

14 Jul 2011

Successful European online music service Spotify is to launch in the US today. However it won’t initially sport deep Facebook integration.

Spotify US will have an invitation-only free, ad-supported service that will cost US$4.99 for the ad-free version. The full premium version, which will include mobile access, will cost US$9.99.

Spotify recently hit the 1m paying subscribers’ milestone.

Spotify has more than 10m songs on its database. Users can choose a free-of-charge advertising-backed service or pay a subscription to hear their music without viewing or listening to ads.

Napster co-creator and Facebook’s first president Sean Parker is an investor and managing partner at Spotify.

Launched in September 2008, Spotify has more than 10m users. So in effect, 10pc of the company’s user base are now paying subscribers.

Spotify’s international growth plans – social networking integration is key

In May Spotify began offering a music download service, that it is expanding its mobile app to customers and can now sync with any iPod.

The service is highly popular within the countries it’s available in, such as Finland, France, Norway, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It is currently looking to expand to the US. There is currently no word on when it is coming to Ireland.

In recent weeks it began to emerge that Facebook and Spotify were working together on music integration features that would enable Facebook’s 750m users around the world to stream and share music.

And last week, it was discovered that Facebook’s Skype install file contains hints of a music service called Vibes. This coincides with reports that Spotify, which may integrate with Facebook, could launch in the US next week.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com