Spotify Plan US Launch In Autumn
They’ve not announced a specific date, but Business Week are carrying this story, in which Senior Vice President Paul Brown claims they’re in talks with various ISP’s, web hosting companies and mobile providers to co-ordinate service provision in the States before the year is out:
“We’re buying server space in random parts of the states and there are licensing discussions too,” Brown said “But they are going fine because we’re in a long-term partnership with the labels and publishers.”
They are also in discussions to port their smartphone app, that’s currently on Android and the iPhone onto the BlackBerry and Palm Inc. smartphones – a small but significant expansion of their customer appeal. Expansion into the USA will see a big jump in Spotify’s user numbers, which will necessitate improvement in their per-user revenue figures unless they are to start losing huge amounts of money. It’s for this reason that they have been restricting signups in Europe, so perhaps there’s a new model or a magic bullet, or perhaps they’re just bullish about the steady increase in their ad revenues being able to fully fund a free user by the time they’re ready to launch in the new territory.
Either way, if you’re an indie musician, sign up with RouteNote and we’ll get your music on Spotify for you ahead of their expansion.