Spotify disclosed further details about its U.S. service today, as it had promised to do in Wednesday’s brief confirmation of today’s launch.
The streaming music service greeted the morning’s media with a cheery, “Hello America. Spotify Here.” Among the features it chose to highlight on its first day is that users can import the MP3 music files from their personal collection, reducing the need for an additional music player, and that the service offers on-demand access to 15 million songs. That compares favorably to Spotify’s major U.S. competitors, since Pandora has under a million songs while Rhapsody and MOG have about 11 million songs each.
Another point Spotify emphasized is that while streaming radio services have the ability to skip a few songs every hour, Spotify plays only songs the user has requested so there’s no need to skip. To counter complaints about having to spend time choosing songs rather than just listen to music, Spotify also said that its users have so far created 250 million playlists and that other listeners can opt to play them instead of making their own.
“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,” said Daniel Ek, founder and CEO of Spotify. “Even if you aren’t a total music freak, chances are you have a friend who is and whose taste you admire.”
Spotify explained that songs can be shared among other Spotify users or sent to friends via Facebook, Twitter, email and SMS, and that it was easy to subscribe to someone’s else’s playlists. Spotify fans have websites devoted to sharing and discovering playlists, too, including Share My Playlists and BBCify.
Spotify reports having more than 10 million registered users and more than 1.6 million paying subscribers across 7 countries in Europe, making the U.S. its eighth territory.
Spotify’s U.S. debut is supported by Coca-Cola and Sprite, Chevrolet, Motorola, Reebok, Sonos and The Daily, each of whom is expected to release a campaign in partnership with Spotify.
Related Links:
Share My Playlists: www.sharemyplaylists.com
BBCify: www.bbcify.com.
