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Spotify will launch within 2010, Ek says
Online music service Spotify will launch in the United States within 2010, founder Daniel Ek said in an interview after his keynote speech at the South by Southwest Interactive conference Tuesday. More than 7 million people use Spotify to listen to music in several European countries. The service gives users access to almost 10 million songs.
Launched in 2008 in Sweden, Spotify offers free accounts, which are supported with advertising, by invitation only. Anyone can gain access to the service by purchasing an ad-free premium subscription. The premium subscribers can also access the service from mobile accounts. Spotify has more than 350,000 premium users in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain, the countries where it is currently available, Ek said during the keynote.
Ek said that the premium subscription in the U.S. would most likely cost $10 per month. Licensing deals with publishers and record companies still need to be worked out before the service can launch here. “You have to strike deals with almost 5,000 different record companies and publishers, which is a huge task,” Ek said.
Unlike online music streaming services already available in the United States, such as Pandora and Last.fm, which allow users to choose artists and genres only, Spotify allows users to choose specific songs or albums. During his keynote, Ek demonstrated the application, which resembles Apple’s iTunes.
Users can create playlists of their favorite songs and share them with friends via e-mail or social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
Ek said he thought that Americans would pay for the service, equating it to cable subscriptions. “It might take a while for consumers to get accustomed to it,” he said. Jonas Woost, a digital media consultant and former head of music for Last.fm, says that people will realize the value of access to music. “Paying and not owning is a strange idea, but now people are starting to realize that they don’t own the music but they get access to everything,” he said.
A similar online music service, MOG, launched during the Interactive conference. The service boasts more than 7 million songs and charges a subscription fee of $5 per month for computer access and $10 per month for mobile accounts.
Ek said Spotify has a different focus than potential competitors such as MOG and Pandora, which focus more on recommending music to users. “We’re all about simplicity and managing music, as opposed to music discovery,” Ek said.
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