Spotify finally launched in Russia this July. How is the country with 140 million potential listeners responding to the world’s leading music streaming service?

Spotify launched in 13 new markets in July, including Russia where they have been hoping to stream for years. It also allowed us at RouteNote to bring your music to millions of new potential listeners when you upload your music to Spotify with us.

So lets check in to see how well Spotify is doing in Russia so far.

Spotify says: “On the first day we had tremendous download rates, and the news about Spotify’s launch was so huge that three days after launch, headlines about Spotify were still trending on Russia’s largest news service.”

They’ve been working hard with local artists to highlight some of Russia’s very own music including Little Big, FACE, GONE.Fludd, MARUV, Mot, Nina Kraviz, Mujuice, Sharlot, Levan Gorozia, Klava Koka, Olga Seryabkina, Malbec, Siuzanna, Rauf & Faik, Max Barskikh, Tima Belorusskikh and Noize MC.

Despite all of the local talent though, the BTS boys were found to be the most popular artist amongst Russian listeners in the first month. Those South Korean sweethearts steal the hearts of streamers no matter where they’re listening from, clearly.

Of course, everyone loves playlists on Spotify and so they made sure their curators had a special selection for launch in Russia. Amongst their introductory mixes for the country were Hip-Hop Cannon, Pop Non-Stop, Rock Today, Solaris, Indie Squad, More Fume, and Hits of Russian Rock.

Spotify have also teamed up with Russian mobile TelCo MTS, one of the country’s largest, to offer over 78 million users on the network exclusive deals to sign up for Spotify Premium.

All in all, it looks like a great start to Spotify’s new presence in one of the world’s largest countries. I’m sure we will only see its popularity grow there.