Spotify, a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs, is now available in the US, but by invitation only for now.
From the Spotify website:
This is a great day for anyone who loves music in the US and, of course, a real milestone for us at Spotify. I’m proud of the fantastic team who have been working tirelessly to bring what we think is the best possible music service to our friends in the US.
During our invite-only beta phase, we’ll be offering three great services – from absolutely free to paid subscriptions. The services we’re launching today are:
- Spotify Free – the unsurpassed free music service. With an invite, enjoy on-demand, buffer-free access to over 15 million songs on your computer and great social features. Manage your own music files through Spotify, and sync with your cellphone or iPod. Features occasional advertising.
- Spotify Unlimited – all the special features of our free service, but with uninterrupted, ad-free access to Spotify on your computer. All for only $4.99 a month.
- Spotify Premium – the top-of-the-range Spotify experience. Premium gives you access to all the music, all the time. Listen online or offline, on your computer, your cellphone and a whole heap of other devices. Enjoy enhanced sound quality and access to exclusive content, competitions and special offers. Premium costs just $9.99 a month. (That’s the equivalent of a couple of fancy coffees.)
We’re launching in partnership with some of the biggest and most pioneering brands in the world, who all want to help us spread the good word of Spotify. Our exclusive launch partners are Coca-Cola and Sprite, Chevrolet, Motorola, Reebok and Sonos. These brands will be launching innovative campaigns in partnership with Spotify in the coming weeks and months.
We believe that music is the most social thing there is and that’s why we’ve built the best social features into Spotify for easy sharing and the ultimate in music discovery. Even if you aren’t a total music freak, chances are you have a friend who is and whose taste you admire. I’m looking forward to connecting with some of you guys in the US through Spotify and discovering some cool new tracks.
If you’re in the US and you haven’t already signed up for an invite, feel free to do so now – we’ll send one to you as soon as we can. Of course, if you just can’t wait, you can jump the queue by signing up directly for Spotify Premium or Unlimited starting at just $4.99 a month.
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From the Spotify website:
Spotify’s aim from the very beginning was to make music on-demand available to all. To give you the power to listen to, discover, share and manage your music the way you want to – simpler, faster, better – while making sure the artists whose music we all love continue to see the benefits as we grow. Making Spotify available to millions across Europe has seen the service become incredibly popular. People are listening to more music and from a wider range of artists than ever before, and are giving up on piracy, which is exactly what we hoped would happen. So it’s vital that we continue offering an on-demand free service to you and millions more like you, but to make that possible we have to put some limits in place going forward. Here’s how the changes will work:
• New Spotify users will be able to enjoy our unrivalled free service as it is today for the first 6 months.
• As of May 1st, any user who signed up to the free service on or before November 1st 2010 will be able to play each track for free up to a total of 5 times. Users who signed up after the beginning of November will see these changes applied 6 months after the time they set up their Spotify account.
• Additionally, total listening time for free users will be limited to 10 hours per month after the first 6 months. That’s equivalent to around 200 tracks or 20 albums.
The changes we’re having to make will mainly affect heavier Spotify Free and Open users, as most of you use Spotify to discover music – on average over 50 new tracks per month, even after a year. Plus, the average user won’t reach the limit on plays for 7 out of 10 tracks, after a year of using Spotify.
For those of you using Spotify to find new tracks to enjoy and share with friends, these changes shouldn’t get in the way of you doing that. Rest assured that we’ll continue to bring you the biggest and most diverse music catalogue available. For anyone who thinks they might reach these limits, we hope you’ll consider checking out our Unlimited and Premium services, neither of which will be affected, plus we have a 7-day free trial for Spotify Premium that we’d love you to try. Throughout May, we’ll also have a pretty nice 30-day free trial for Spotify Premium – more details on that in the next few days. Above all, this means we can continue making Spotify available to all in the long-term. We’ll be bringing out some awesome new features as well as significant improvements over the coming months, which will make the Spotify experience even better.
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