After months of speculation and rumors, much-lauded European music service Spotify is available in the U.S. with all four major labels on board.
Starting Thursday morning, folks in the U.S. are be able to sign up for both paid tiers of Spotify’s service: $4.99 per month for its unlimited, ad-free service, and $9.99 per month for the premium, mobile service.
Its free service, which limits listening somewhat, will roll out to users via invites in the next few weeks. You can go to the Spotify website to request an invitation.
The service will be available on all the platforms that currently feature it in Europe — iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows Phone and Palm — as well as consumer electronics devices like Sonos.
Upon launch, Spotify will be the only free, on-demand service available in the U.S. on mobile and desktop (Slacker Radio does have a free tier, but not for on-demand listening), which will definitely make it enticing to users.
“Spotify is simply a better experience,” Parks says when asked how Spotify feels going into a market already crowded with music subscription services. “It’s lightning fast. It’s dead simple to use. We’ve made it very easy to share music. And we’ve made it extremely easy to share your collection with friends. Free is also pretty great value.”
Parks says that Spotify aims to capitalize on buzz around the product at launch in order to drive awareness. Recently, All Things Digital unearthed marketing documents that indicate that Spotify is extremely optimistic about projected membership numbers, aiming to garner 50 million U.S. users in one year.
Spotify has 1 million paying subscribers across the UK, Finland, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Spain, so the 50 million number seems a little inflated. Still, the service’s integration with Facebook will help drive awareness to its existence, as shared music begins to show up across users’ social streams.
Parks was mum when it came to rumors that Spotify and Facebook are teaming up to launch a streaming music service. “It’s not secret that we have worked together in the past and have a great relationship,” he says. “We continue to work together and have a great relationship.”
