Spotify Dropping Invite Requirement, Offering Six Months Free

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This past summer, popular music service Spotify finally became available to fans in the US. With all the licensing agreements worked-out with the labels, Spotify was officially open for business on this side of the Atlantic. In fact, things worked out quite nicely for US users, despite the wait, because they're able to get an account that supports smartphones for a lower monthly cost than European users. So far, though, if you just wanted to casually check out the free version of the service in the US, you'd need an invitation. That's all about to change, with plans to drop the invite requirement and offer some extended-length full trials.

CEO Daniel Ek mentioned the changes at Facebook's F8 conference, which is only fitting because Facebook is a big part of these new changes; in order to sign up without an invite, you'll have to do so via Facebook. While that only affects US users, all new Spotify accounts will get six months of free access with no per-month listening restrictions.

That should help you get a taste for the service, and decide if it's something worth shelling out a little cash for. After you know if Spotify's right for you, you can upgrade to a premium account, finally granting you smartphone access, for $10 a month.

Source: TechCrunch
Via: Android and Me

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Want a Spotify US Invite? Here is how you get it.

jank0: Oh yeah and 4G is slow as a snail. Maybe the Internetz are just clogged? Bitmargeddon?

Last week, Spotify launched in the United States with much fanfare. Many of our readers pinged me asking for get an invitation to Spotify’s music service. Well, I talked to some folks over at Spotify and now have figured out a way to get you an invite. Fill out the form aka just addyour email and get an invite. Simple as that! The invitation form is here. Spotify is sending out invites every 15 minutes so this should be a fairly smooth process.

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Daniel Ek on what Spotify will be when it grows up

Daniel Ek and I have a long, weird history. Both of us started our companies right next to each other at Pier 38 on the Embarcadero in San Francisco. He was renting a desk from a company next door to us and we talked often. And today when I called him to discuss the much-awaited launch of Spotify in the U.S., he reminded me of those early days.

But what has not changed is Ek’s belief that music industry was going through a fundamental change. “The music has changed from ownership to anywhere access and sharing of that music,” he says. Sharing, begets more sharing and it begets more listening of music and that powerful loop is the life force of Spotify.

One of the reasons why I personally loved Spotify is because to me it represented the kind of application that is created specifically for an always-connected, high-speed broadband enabled life. Without connectivity the app is as useful as a car without wheels – but without the app, connectivity is not as exciting as it can be. Sure for now Spotify has offline access, but Ek’s vision of music as a shared experience still depends on being connected

Here is a short interview with Ek, who was calling me from somewhere on the west coast.

Om Malik: What are your expectations from the U.S. market? I read somewhere that you want hundreds of millions of users.

Daniel Ek: I don’t think like that. I don’t have any certain expectations in numbers.  From my perspective music has changed from ownership to anywhere access and sharing of that music. The U.S. is the largest music market in the world so in a way we cannot be about sharing without being in this important market.

OM: What kind of conversions to paid service will you get for Spotify in the U.S.?

DE: We have said in the past that 15 percent of our users pay for the service and the U.S. has the same potential. Our view is that when people are social with their music and recommendations, they convert into paying users and that is key to our success. There is no indication why users are any different in the U.S.

OM: What about mobiles?

DE: Android in the U.S. is very healthy and definitely very attractive to us. It is growing more and more and it is important to us. The Apple ecosystem is 200 million strong but there are 4 billion mobile devices out there and we think about that.

OM: Are you worried that Apple would be a problem for Spotify on iOS?

DE: Just because Apple has a music service, people tend to overdramatize this tension with Apple. People forget that Apple is about the best-of-breed apps on its ecosystem and they are going to encourage that.

OM: So how are you viewing Spotify and its role in the digital music ecosystem?

DE: We think the digital music has to become simple like a CD – it plays in every CD player. That is what attracts us to consumer electronic devices. I guess from our perspective, we want music to become like water – music on your Sonos, music on your Samsung or music in your cars based on Spotify.

OM: Can you elaborate on your comment about music being more like water?

DE: Lady Gaga is now known and heard by more than 2 billion people even though she has sold only a few million albums. Two billion of those have heard of her music from other locations like YouTube videos for example. What that shows that people today are consuming music in much larger degree in different places on different devices. Spotify wants to make consuming music simpler and at the same time pay the rights owners.

OM: What does Spotify look like when it grows up?

Daniel Ek (Third from left) with Shakil Khan (right), Spotify's head of special projects with others at a Spotify event

DE: The reason we had an album with 10-14 songs was because of the physical limitations of the format. It was the same with vinyl records. On digital there is no physical limitation so the very idea of what is an album can be different. Now an artist can release one song every two weeks. Or she can create an audio-visual experience around the song. I want Spotify to become a platform around music so artists can innovate around Spotify. And at the same time music listeners can vote with their hands and attention and become involved in the creation of the music experience itself.

My interpretation of Ek’s comments is that the company wants to essentially become the “CD” and the next evolution of the iPod. In order to do that, Spotify will be working with artists and provide them a social and a global platform. What comes next for the company — convincing artists to team up with Spotify.

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Hands on with Spotify for mobile devices

Spotify, one of the most popular music streaming services in Europe and other regions, today launched in the U.S. as expected. Spotify offers a massive catalog of music for free, but adds features in two paid monthly subscription tiers: Unlimited for $4.99 and Premium for $9.99. Reinforcing the shift away from desktop computing, mobile users will have to ante up for the Premium plan to enjoy Spotify on the go, available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Symbian, and webOS devices.

Here’s a breakdown of the other features in the service tiers, including offline mode to store tracks and advertising-free playback:

The removal of ads is nice, as is truly unlimited streaming, assuming you don’t have bandwidth caps to contend with, but to me, the big feature is Spotify playback on mobiles. And another Premium feature dovetails nicely with the supported handsets: Playlists can be used offline, allowing for music from Spotify’s catalog to be stored locally and played back without using precious mobile broadband. A great strategy for this feature would be to have the software synchronize offline playlists while on a Wi-Fi network. In fact, on the Android version of Spotify, I see options to sync music over Wi-Fi, 3G or both.

Aside from the offline storage, Spotify can help manage mobile broadband use through a playback quality setting. Low-bandwidth mode won’t sound quite as good, but uses a 96 kbps data stream; high bandwidth boosts the audio quality as well as the bandwidth due to a 160 kbps music stream. Such mobile data use can add up quickly: See our recent post on what a gigabyte is for mobile users to get an idea of how much data these types of services use.

On handsets, I haven’t yet found a feature that’s available in the Windows or Mac Spotify client that’s missing for mobiles. It’s easy to create Playlists, search for albums, tracks or artists, play locally stored tracks (yes, Spotify will play back music you’ve purchased and store on your handset) or share tunes with friends. There’s an option to shoot track information to Last.fm, Facebook, Twitter or via email. If you have friends on Spotify, you can even share your current track with them directly and a news feed in the app shows what your Spotify friends are listening to, provided they’ve enabled sharing and take advantage of it. If you’d rather hide your addiction to ABBA, you’ll want to see how to manage Spotify’s sharing settings.

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I have found two limitations when using Spotify on a smartphone, however. First, not all tracks are playable, although I can’t tell how many are limited specifically to the desktop client. A good example is The Legend of Johnny Cash. When searching for this album, it doesn’t appear in the mobile search results, but does show and is playable in the desktop client. That’s likely due to Spotify’s licensing agreements with music labels and it also brings up the second limitation: You can’t play music simultaneously on different handsets and desktop clients.

That means Spotify won’t allow you to listen to music on your smartphone while your family is trying to do the same on a desktop at home. As soon as I hit the play button in Spotify’s iOS client, for example, the desktop client stopped playing. For now then, it’s one account per person unless Spotify can devise some type of family plan.

Some may compare Spotify to Microsoft’s Zune Pass service, which supports music streaming to phones, local downloads and playback of millions of tracks in a similar subscription approach. Zune Pass costs $14.99 per month, which includes users to download and keep 10 tracks per month. But the biggest drawback I see compared to Spotify is the mobile platform limitation. If you want to subscribe to Zune Pass, you can only use a Windows Phone or the older Microsoft Zune digital audio players.

With support for multiple platforms, hooks into Facebook and wireless streaming playback in addition to offline music storage, Spotify plays all the right notes for mobile music lovers. I’ve long been adding to my music library through Amazon’s MP3 store, which offers daily deals as low as $1.99 for an album. But I haven’t yet bought Colbie Caillat’s new $9.49 album that arrived earlier this week. For just a few cents more, I’ve already heard the full album twice on Spotify and plenty of other songs too, so the new service has me rethinking my mobile music plans.

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Bad taste in music? Here’s how to avoid sharing on Spotify

We all have our secret Lady Gaga songs tucked away in our playlist or the 80's Monster Ballads that are loved rather than ironic affectations, so now as the streaming music service Spotify comes to the U.S. here’s how to avoid sharing the skeletons in your musical closet.

First things first. The default setting for Spotify music sharing is public on everything so if you want to get control of that, go to the top right corner where you should see your profile. Click it, then you should get an option to edit your profile as shown here:

When you click through that edit button, you get the area where you have granular control of what people see. Every time I open this screen, it automatically checks the box that has me automatically sharing new playlists, so uncheck that if you don’t want to share your new creations. Otherwise, click the slider and it will switch your playlists from public to private. Only one of mine is shared at the moment, and as you can see below, the shared OM playlist is green.

For those wondering what the results look like on the other side, Mathew kindly checked out my profile and shared the results here:

In these examples, I have shared my Spotify via Facebook, which means people who are friends with me on Facebook and who connect their Spotify accounts can see me on Spotify, and I can share songs by posting them to Facebook. However, when sharing a non-public song or playlist with someone on Facebook, then friends can see the song and playlist even if it isn’t public normally.

For those who don’t connect Spotify with their Facebook accounts, this is less complicated, although people can still find you by typing “spotify:user:username” into the search bar if they know your user name. Then people can only see your shared playlists. Plus, you can tweet public playlists out and can offer people access to them (there’s also a widget you could post on your blog or Tumblr). So, if you stop to manage your profile — even if you haven’t connected the service to Facebook — and be careful of what you share via social networks, you should be able to keep your unholy love of ABBA in the closet if you wish.

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Confirmed: Spotify US will launch Thursday

Updated. Spotify has made no secret of its plans to definitely come to the United States. And if our sources are correct, the popular European on-demand music streaming service will be available stateside within a matter of days.

UPDATE: Spotify has confirmed it will launch in the U.S. on Thursday, July 14. In an email sent Wednesday afternoon, a spokesperson wrote that Spotify “will become available tomorrow morning in the United States by invitation and subscription.” The company plans to release more details Thursday morning at 8 a.m. EDT.

As GigaOM reported last month, a source familiar with the company’s strategy says Spotify’s U.S. launch is slated to occur in mid-July. Other reports have placed Spotify’s U.S. launch between July 5 and July 15. Any way you slice it, it’s very likely Spotify’s U.S. debut is now in T-minus territory.

We’ve been told Spotify will be made available in the U.S. under a three-tiered pricing model: A free ad-supported service, a $5/month subscription, and a $10/month subscription. Spotify already has a similar three-tiered pricing scheme in place in Europe. The company has set up a landing page where people can sign up to receive an invite for the U.S. service as soon as it’s made available.

Spotify has been gearing up for its U.S. debut for months. In June, the company closed on $100 million in new venture capital funding to help fuel its international growth. The latest batch of money came from a group that included several first-time Spotify investors, including Russian venture capital firm DST and California-based VCs Kleiner Perkins and Accel Partners.

Spotify has been available solely in Europe since its initial launch in October 2008. The service has already amassed more than 10 million users there, more than a tenth of whom pay for the service. Here in the U.S., the online music scene has a number of players such as Pandora, the Internet radio service that went public last month, and Last.fm, the long-running online radio service acquired by CBS in 2007. The level of competition in the U.S. may be why Spotify is planning to team up with Facebook: to establish a solid American user base right out the gate.

Without a doubt, the Spotify service has gained a lot of momentum in its relatively short lifespan — but how it will be received by consumers once it finally lands on U.S. shores is still anyone’s guess. Luckily, we won’t have to wait much longer to find out.

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