Long awaited arrival
Spotify has announced what many suspected, or hoped: the service will be launching in the US imminently. Though there's no firm date for the music stream service's arrival, but as the website is accepting sign-ups ready to notify those interested when it goes live, the UI debut can't be too far away. That this announcement comes so soon after rumours that Spotify had finally inked deals with all of the major labels it needed to, lends those suppositions some credence.
It's unknown how much Spotify will charge for US customers, and whether free subscription levels will be available across the Atlantic. Although the ad-supported free accounts Spotify offers amount to as much an incentive to upgrade to a premium account as they do a revenue source, it's possible that the US labels won't want ay discouragement to paying a pull price for the use of Spotify.
It will be interesting to see how Spotify fares in the US, where it will competition at least as strong as in the UK. The likes of Grooveshark, Microsoft's Zune and Rhapsody all have an established reputation and user base, and are unlikely to take kindly to a newcomer usurping their territory.
However, if previous rumours that Spotify would be forming a deal with Facebook to see the former's service integrated into the latter's, then Spotify would have little to worry about. Spotify has long proudly displayed Mark Zuckerberg's opinion that "Spotify is so good" on its website, so there's the very real possibility of a collaboration. Certainly, Facebook is been no stranger to sensible partnerships - video calling powered by Skype, marking just one example.
Aside from its position in the streaming music market, it will be interesting to see how Spotify (and its ilk) fare against the ever-growing wave of cloud music services. While Google, Apple and Amazon are doing their utmost to make it easy for their customers to buy music, and listen to it wherever they desire, there's no denying that, for many customers, the amount of music made available by Spotify, or one of its rivals, outweighs the downside that if you stop paying, you've nothing to listen to.
