U.S. Spotify fails to show at SXSWi
The last big keynote of SXSWi was supposed to see Spotify CEO Daniel Ek announce the streaming music service finally coming to the U.S. But no. Instead, Spotify still seems to be struggling with the task of getting all the record labels, music publishers, and collecting societies on board. U.S. Spotify? Don’t hold your breath.
SXSWi 2010 has brought us a new version of Digg and a new integration platform for Twitter. But it failed to deliver a U.S. version of Spotify, which is currently limited to six European countries.
According to CNET, Ek didn’t announce a timeline for launch, instead saying:
The most important thing for us when it comes to the U.S. launch is the fact that we want to build the best product that we can. Here you have to strike deals with almost 5,000 different publishers, and then the collecting societies and then the labels, but the big thing for us now is just working on the next generation of Spotify and getting it out there.
Ek did state that Spotify currently boasts around 7 million users, 320,000 of which pay for the service so as to avoid advertising. Interestingly, when the crowd was asked how many of them had tried Spotify, the majority raised their hands, implying that many U.S.-based users are already finding ways to beat the location limits.
March 17th, 2010
Spotify is awesome, I luv it use it all the time.
I’m a premium subscriber, although not to get rid of the advertisements as you’ve stated, but to gain access to the mobile app and get music on demand where ever I am ^^