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Spotify fails to announce US launch
Spotify is no closer to announcing its long-awaited US launch, with CEO Daniel Ek failing to unveil it during his keynote presentation at the SXSW conference, defying audience expectations. Spotify said last year it would go live stateside in early 2010, but Ek says it is still talking to publishers and urged the audience to "stay tuned". He also underlined the growth of the site's premium offerings, claiming 320,000 of Spotify’s 7m users now pay to subscribe, up from 250,000 earlier this year.
"The most important thing when it comes to the US launch is that we want to build the best product possible," says Ek. "Here you have to strike deals with 5,000 publishers or more, and then the collecting societies, and then the labels. It's a huge task. The big thing for us right now is the next generation of Spotify."
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Ek added that the US version would retain an ad-supported element. He says Spotify has been working on the next version of the music streaming app for the past six to eight months, but there are still problems to fix. However, he told the LA Times the company still hopes to launch in the US early this year.
During the keynote, Ek claimed Spotify has the potential to reach 170m people in Europe and 300m people in North America. He points to the service's early successes in Sweden, where he claims 15% to 18% of the population use Spotify. However, he admits the music industry is still concerned about the drop-off of physical CD sales.
Ek also likened music to a basic resource such as water, and said "we are heading toward a model where consumers gain instant access to music on any device they choose". He added that if music was made legally available on any device people wanted, the music industry would be "radically bigger" than it is today. However, he stressed that "the reality of the music industry today is that there isn't one business model ... It's about how to use downloads, subscriptions and merchandise to make money."
Spotify’s US rival, MOG, used SXSW to unveil a mobile version of its subscription music streaming service – an indicator of increasing competition in the cloud music space. The USD10-a-month mobile service will work on iPhones and Android phones and is due to launch in the US in Q2.
