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===Web browser version===
===Web browser version===
Spotify held a press conference on 6 December 2012 where, among other things, a version of the software was shown running in a web browser.<ref>{{cite web|last=Constine|first=John|title=Spotify Launches Influencer Following Music Graph, Collection, And Instant Previews To Aid Discovery|url=http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/06/spotify-following/|work=TechCrunch|publisher=AolTech|accessdate=11 January 2013}}</ref> It was later released as a beta to a select number of users. This version of the software uses [[Adobe Flash]], presumably for its peer-to-peer networking ability. The application will be finalized some time in 2013.
Spotify held a press conference on 6 December 2012 where, among other things, a version of the software was shown running in a web browser.<ref>{{cite web|last=Constine|first=John|title=Spotify Launches Influencer Following Music Graph, Collection, And Instant Previews To Aid Discovery|url=http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/06/spotify-following/|work=TechCrunch|publisher=AolTech|accessdate=11 January 2013}}</ref> It was later released as a beta to a select number of users. This version of the software uses [[Adobe Flash]], presumably for its peer-to-peer networking ability. The application will be finalized some time in 2013.
[[File:Spotify Web Player.PNG|thumb|Spotify Web Player]]


===Third-party clients and libraries===
===Third-party clients and libraries===

Revision as of 13:01, 30 June 2013

Spotify Ltd
Spotify logo
Type of businessPrivate
Available inMultilingual
Founded2006
Headquarters
London, England and Stockholm
,
Sweden
Founder(s)Daniel Ek, Martin Lorentzon
IndustryMusic
URLwww.spotify.com
RegistrationRequired
Current statusActive
Spotify
Developer(s)Spotify Ltd
Initial release2008; 16 years ago (2008)
Stable release
Android8.9.24.633 / March 22, 2024; 7 months ago (2024-03-22)[2]
Wear OS8.9.24.633 / March 22, 2024; 7 months ago (2024-03-22)
iOS8.9.19 / March 4, 2024; 8 months ago (2024-03-04)[3]
iPadOS8.9.19 / March 4, 2024; 8 months ago (2024-03-04)
Windows1.2.45.454 / August 2024; 3 months ago (2024-08)[4]
macOS1.2.33.1042 / August 31, 2023; 14 months ago (2023-08-31)
Linux1.2.31.1205 / February 23, 2024; 8 months ago (2024-02-23)[5]
Preview release
Android8.6.96 / December 30, 2021; 2 years ago (2021-12-30)[6]
iOS8.6.96 / December 31, 2021; 2 years ago (2021-12-31)[6]
Written inC++ (With some third-party libraries)
Operating systemWindows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Phone, Linux, BlackBerry OS, Android, iOS and OS X
Available inOver 50 languages
TypeMusic platform
LicenseProprietary
Websitewww.spotify.com

Spotify is a commercial music streaming service providing DRM-protected[7] content from a range of major and independent record labels, including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group and Universal.[8][9] Launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB, the service had approximately 10 million users as of 15 September 2010,[10] about 2.5 million of whom were paying users.[11][12] Total users reached 20 million by December 2012, five million of whom pay a monthly subscription fee that varies based on locale.[13][14]

The system is currently available using Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, Telia Digital-tv, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, S60 (Symbian), webOS, Samsung Smart TV, Squeezebox, Boxee, Sonos, WD TV, Roku, MeeGo, and TiVo.[15][16][17][18][19][20][21] Spotify is not available in the Windows Store for Windows 8.

Music can be browsed by artist, album, record label, genre or playlist as well as by direct searches. On desktop clients, a link allows the listener to purchase selected material via partner retailers.[22]

A six-month free trial period is activated upon Spotify account registration or first login with a Facebook account, where a user can listen to an unlimited amount of music supported by visual and radio-style advertising.[23] After the trial, Spotify has a listening limit of 10 hours per month, divided into a 2.5 hour streaming allocation each week (with any unused hours carrying over to the next week).[24] The only countries exempt from this rule are the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia, where ad-supported unlimited streaming continues on Spotify Free after 6 months.[25][26] An "Unlimited" subscription removes advertisements and time limits and a "Premium" subscription introduces extra features such as higher bitrate streaming, offline access to music and mobile app access.[27] Users can try Spotify Premium for 48 hours by logging into Spotify Mobile for the first time, or get a 30-day trial for their first month.[28] An active Facebook account is required to use Spotify if the user has signed up using Facebook, but as of 30 August 2012 the option to make a Spotify username has been reintroduced.[29] Subscriptions are restricted to people with credit/debit cards or PayPal accounts registered in certain countries.[30][31]

History

Daniel Ek addressing Spotify staff

Spotify was developed in 2006 by a team at Spotify AB, which is located in Stockholm, Sweden. The company was founded by Daniel Ek, former CTO of Stardoll, and Martin Lorentzon, co-founder of TradeDoubler. Spotify Ltd. now operates as the parent company in London.[32] Research and development is still carried out by Spotify AB in Stockholm.

Spotify's original logo (2008-2012)

The Spotify application was launched for public access on 7 October 2008. While free accounts remained available by invitation only in order to manage the growth rate of the service, the launch opened paid subscriptions to everyone. At the same time, Spotify AB also announced licensing deals with many major music labels.[33] The company reported a $4.4 million loss for the year of 2008.[34][clarification needed]

The first steps towards offering free accounts to the public without invitations were taken on 10 February 2009, when Spotify opened free registration in the UK.[35] Due to a surge in registrations following the release of the Spotify mobile service, Spotify closed its open registrations in the UK for part of 2009, and went back to an invitation-only policy.[36]

Spotify headquarters

On 4 March 2009, Spotify announced a previous security flaw in the Spotify service, by which private account information (including email addresses and hashed salted passwords) of members registered prior to 19 December 2008 were potentially exposed.[37][38][39][40]

On 28 January 2010, Symantec's antivirus software marked Spotify as a Trojan horse, disabling the software across millions of computers.[41][42]

In February 2010, Spotify received a small investment from Founders Fund, where board member Sean Parker was recruited to assist Spotify in "winning the labels over in the world's largest music market".[43]

On 18 May 2010, Spotify announced that two more types of accounts were available: Spotify Unlimited, an equivalent to Spotify Premium without mobile and other features, and Spotify Open, a reduced-feature version of Spotify Free, which allows users to listen to up to 20 hours of music per month.[44] Spotify Free remains an invite-only service.

On 1 September 2010, the World Economic Forum announced the company as a Technology Pioneer for 2011.[45]

Roberta Maley[46] also known as "Roberta from Spotify" was the Premium Services Director of Spotify. She is known for her appearance in some Spotify advertisements.[47][48]

On 25 March 2011, Spotify temporarily removed display advertising from external sources on its open and free accounts, due to an attack which used an exploit in Java to place malicious code on victims' computers.[49]

On 15 April 2011, Spotify announced via a blog post that they would drastically cut the amount of music that free members could access, effective 1 May 2011. The post stated that all Spotify Open and Spotify Free members would be transferred to a new product which limited audio streaming to ten hours per month. In addition, a user could only listen to a single track a maximum of five times. Spotify Unlimited and Spotify Premium members were not affected by this change. New users were exempt from these changes for six months.[50]

On 17 June 2011, it was reported that Spotify had secured another $100 million of funding and planned to use this to support its US launch.[51] The new round of funding saw the company valued at US$1 billion.

On 14 July 2011, Spotify launched its US service, a major milestone after delays and years of negotiation with the four major record companies.[52]

On 30 November 2011, Spotify launched Spotify Apps and App Finder to "bring new and exciting music experiences built around your music tastes." App launch partners included Rolling Stone, We Are Hunted, Top10, Songkick, The Guardian, Soundrop and Last.FM.

On 29 March 2012, Spotify removed the restriction that limited non-US free users to five plays per song, yet the restriction remained in effect in the UK and France. The ten hours per month limit remained in place for all free accounts older than six months;[53] however, they also announced "continued unlimited free listening" for users in the US.[54]

In August 2012, Spotify moved its 350 employees in Stockholm into the new headquarters office at Birger Jarlsgatan 61.[55] The new facilities provide space for nearly 450 employees.[56]

A further round of funding was closed after eight months in November 2012, with about $100 million raised at a $3 billion valuation from a group of investors led by Goldman Sachs.[57]

On 19 March 2013, Spotify removed the restriction that limited UK free users to five plays per song.[58]

On 16 April 2013, Spotify was launched and became available in Apple App Store, Google Play Store and Windows Store in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia.,[59] Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico and Iceland.

On its release in April 2013, long-awaited Daft Punk comeback single Get Lucky racked up the highest number of plays of any song in a single day.[60]

Features

Catalog

As of December 2012, the catalog provides access to approximately 20 million songs[61] via searching for artists, albums, titles, labels and genres, and gives users access to tracks from many major and independent labels. Some artists have opted not to be added to Spotify.[8][62] Additionally, some artists are missing in certain regions because of licensing restrictions imposed by the record labels. For example, The Beatles are not available because of a digital distribution agreement that is exclusive to iTunes.[63] The Spotify desktop client allows music to be imported from iTunes,[64] with the option of syncing with a mobile device.[65] Users from the UK, France, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands can also buy most tracks, if available, from Spotify's download partner 7digital.[66]

Playlists

Users can set up playlists and share them,[67] or edit them together with other users (see collaborative software). For this purpose the playlist link can directly be dragged into an email or an instant messaging window. If the recipient follows the link, the playlist will be downloaded into the Spotify-client of the recipient. Downloaded playlists will then auto-update if the author adds or removes tracks. Like normal links, the playlist links can be used everywhere. The same principle also works for single tracks, which can be used via drag and drop on applications and websites at will.[68] There are a number of websites for sharing of Spotify playlists and songs where users can share, rate and discuss them.[69]

Last.fm integration

While Spotify does not automatically create preference-based playlists, it does integrate with Last.fm. This integration allows Spotify users to send songs from Spotify to their Last.fm account and "scrobble" them. Scrobbling via Last.fm integration allows Spotify users to learn which songs or artists they listen to the most. In turn, Spotify users can add a Spotify link to songs in their Last.fm library and send them to the Spotify client with the Lastify app.[70] Since November 2011 there is an official app called Last.fm for Spotify which enables recommendations based on listening history, embedded artist wiki information while listening with Spotify and more. See the support group on Last.fm for a list of features.

Radio

Spotify also includes a Radio feature available to Spotify Free, Unlimited and Premium accounts, which creates a random playlist of songs chosen based on specified genres and decades. An Artist Radio feature creates a random playlist of songs by artists related to (and including) the selected artist.[71] Artist Radio channels on Spotify provide background information on the selected artist, ranging from its history to a list of the artist's most famous singles. The Spotify radio function demonstrates distinct differences from its competitor, Pandora.

Premium (paid) Spotify users are allowed to skip as many tracks as desired, while Pandora places limits on the number of tracks that can be skipped. Free Spotify users on mobile (Android/iPhone) are limited to five skips, similar to Pandora. Not until August 2012 did Spotify allow users to "rate" tracks, improving the ability to organize the radio function based on user preference.[72]

Social media integration

Spotify allows registered users to integrate their account with existing Facebook and Twitter accounts. Once a user integrates their Spotify account with other social media profiles, they are able to access their friends' favorite music and playlists.[73] Additionally, Facebook compatibility allows Spotify users to share music with Facebook friends through the use of the service's inbox. Spotify users are able to send tracks or playlists to friends who, in return, are able to access this music through their Spotify account.[74] When using Spotify through your Facebook account, music stories will appear on Facebook feeds alerting your friends to the music and playlists you are currently listening to. These feeds feature a play button that will automatically start the song or album in Spotify.[75] On 26 September 2011, it was announced that all new accounts would require users to access via a Facebook login[76] but the sign-up restriction was later removed on 30 August 2012, giving users a choice to either log in with Facebook or create a Spotify username. Sean Parker, the former president of Facebook and a major investor in Spotify, commemorated the integration at a f8 party at which Snoop Dogg, the Killers and Jane's Addiction performed.[77]

Applications

Users can access applications integrated in the Spotify desktop client, written in HTML5. Third party software writers can offer features related to music listening such as live sharing of playlists, music reviews, lyrics, and concerts. At the time of launch (30 November 2011 in beta mode), the supported applications were Billboard, Fuse, The Guardian, Last.fm, Moodagent, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Songkick, Soundrop, Tunewiki and We Are Hunted.

In June 2012, Soundrop became the first Spotify app to attract major funding with a $3 million Series A of funding from Spotify investor Northzone.[78]

Technical information

The Spotify software is proprietary and uses digital rights management (DRM) to prevent unauthorized use of content. Users who agree to Spotify's Terms and Conditions agree to not reverse engineer the application.[79]

The contents of each client's cache is summarized in an index which is sent to the Spotify stream hub upon connecting to the service. This index is then used to inform other clients about additional peers they can connect to for fetching streamed data for individual tracks being played. This is accommodated by each client, upon startup, acting as a server listening for incoming connections from other Spotify users, as well as connecting to other users to exchange cached data as appropriate. There are currently no official details from the developers about how many connections and how much of a user's upstream bandwidth the Spotify client will use when streaming to other users; the Spotify client offers no way for the user to configure this.

Audio streams are in the Vorbis format at q5 (ca. 160 kbit/s),[80] or optional q9 (ca. 320 kbit/s)[81] for Premium subscribers. Spotify has a median playback latency of 265 ms.[82]

As of version 0.4.3, it is possible to also play back local MP3 and AAC files, though this does not work in Linux using Wine because Spotify is "...blocking codecs with the identifier "WINE-MPEG3″ until the Wine system works satisfactorily."[83] However, the native Linux version supports local files.

Cache size and location is configurable. 1 GB or more disk space is recommended.[citation needed] On Mac OS X, a G4 processor or higher is required. A user must set up an account in order to use the software. This account can be used on several computers, but music playback is limited to one computer at a time.

Spotify uses peer to peer transfers to supplement their available bandwidth. This has led to it being banned on large networks where users are not responsible for bandwidth costs.[84]

Revenue model

Spotify principally operates under a so-called 'Freemium' model, which is offering simple and basic services free for the user to try and more advanced or additional features at a premium offer; however this is augmented by income from music purchases within the player. It offers a US$10 per month unlimited subscription, close to the Open Music Model (OMM) estimated economic equilibrium for the recording industry. However, the incorporation of DRM diverges from the OMM, as well as from competitors such as iTunes and Amazon MP3, which have dropped DRM. In Denmark for example, it's DKK50 = US$ 8.70 per month (as of 24 March 2013) unlimited subscription.

In February 2009, the advertisements for non-paying users were reported as lasting 15 seconds[85] though in May 2009, Neowin reported that the approximate length has increased to 30 seconds.[86] The interval between advertisements is not constant.

A payment of a monthly fee removes advertisements, removes streaming limits and increases the bitrate to 320 kbit/s in some songs.[87] It also allows usage of mobile clients for iOS, Android, Symbian, webOS, Windows Mobile 6.x, Windows Phone and most BlackBerry devices (though currently in a limited beta release). On 2 December 2009, Spotify launched "Premium ecards" (premium codes), which upgrade an account to "Premium" status for 1, 3, 6 or 12 months.[88]

In March 2009, Spotify began to offer music downloads at £0.99 per track in partnership with the 7digital music store.[89] This feature was moved from a context menu to an explicit "Buy" link in mid-October 2009. For those users who buy large numbers of tracks, one can buy download packages which allow you to pay up front then download a number of tracks within a month. These packages are, of course, cheaper than buying individual tracks, and thus for those who buy this volume of music, this option is usually cheaper than any other download store.

In May 2010, Spotify introduced "Unlimited", which allows one month of unlimited, advert-free playback for half the price of Premium; however, it does not include any of Premium's other special features.[90]

In October 2010, Wired reported that Spotify is making more money for labels in Sweden than any other retailer, "online or off".[90]

During 2010, Spotify paid more than €45 million to its licensors.[91]

In March 2011, Spotify announced that it had one million paying subscribers across Europe,[12] and by September the number of paying subscribers had doubled to two million.[92] In August 2012 Time reported that Spotify had four million paying subscribers,[93] earning them at least €20 million per month in revenue.

According to About.com, independent musicians can easily distribute their music to Spotify; pay for paid downloads is $0.70 USD, pay for streamed songs is on a sliding scale basis determined by the total number of monthly plays an artist receives.[94]

In a report released in 2012, it stated that Spotify posted a net loss of $59 million in 2011, ascribed to increased staff costs and licensing fees and royalties to record companies.[95]

In a report published in November 2012, Spotify was anticipated to reach revenues of $500 million over the course of 2012, up from $244 million in 2011.[96]

Spotify announced on 6 December 2012 that it had more than five million paying customers globally, including 1 million in the US Spotify also announced that it had over 20 million active users worldwide.[97]

By March 2013, Spotify had grown to six million paying customers globally and 24 million total active users.[98]

Criticism

Spotify has been accused of failing to compensate artists fairly.[99] Helienne Lindvall of The Guardian reported that for "artists who 'signed up to a label' there's a tangible risk that revenue which comes from a possible sale of shares by the label would end up in the proverbial 'blackbox' (non-attributable revenue that remains with the label)." and that "indie labels... as opposed to the majors and Merlin members, receive no advance, receive no minimum per stream and only get a 50% share of ad revenue on a pro-rata basis."[100]

In 2009 Swedish musician Magnus Uggla wanted to pull his music from the service, stating that after six months he'd only earned "what a mediocre busker could earn in a day".[101] Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported in 2009, that record label Racing Junior had only earned NOK 19 ($3.00 USD) after their artists had been streamed over 55,100 times.[102] According to an infographic by David McCandless, an artist on Spotify would need over four million streams per month to earn US$1,160 (equivalent to working full-time at a minimum wage job).[103] Luke Lewis of NME points to problems with the Spotify business model, saying he was "convinced the 'free' aspect of Spotify is unsustainable" and that if "Spotify is to have a future, it needs to be a viable business".[104]

In September 2011, US independent label Projekt Records entered a public disagreement with Spotify, stating "In the world I want to live in, I envision artists fairly compensated for their creations, because we (the audience) believe in the value of what artists create. The artist's passion, dedication and expression is respected and rewarded. Spotify is NOT a service that does this. Projekt will not be part of this unprincipled concept."[105] In May 2012, British Theatre vocalist and Biffy Clyro touring guitarist Mike Vennart noted, "I’d sooner people stole my work than stream it from [Spotify]. They pay the artists virtually nothing. Literally pennies per month. Yet they make a killing. They’ve forced the sales way down in certain territories, which wouldn’t be so bad if the bands actually got paid."[106]

In March 2012, Patrick Carney of the Black Keys said that "Spotify isn't fair to artists"[107] and that for "a band that makes a living selling music, streaming services are not a 'feasible' option."[108] He called Spotify board member Sean Parker an "asshole" in reply to his claim that Spotify would make more money for the music industry than iTunes. "That guy has $2 billion that he made from figuring out ways to steal royalties from artists, and that’s the bottom line. You can’t really trust anybody like that."[107]

Spotify's artist-in-residence responded to the criticism by stating that 70% of Spotify's revenue is paid out in royalties, and that the per-stream royalty rate doubled between the service's inception and mid-2012.[109] Charles Caldas, CEO of the Merlin Network for independent artists, argues that the problem isn't Spotify's failure to pay out significant royalties, but that it's paid to the record labels, who then pass too little of it on to their artists.[109]

In 2013, Entertainment Weekly compared a number of music services and judged Spotify the second best, grading it "A-" and writing, "Its cumbersome desktop interface desperately needs a full redesign (recent tweaks are helping), but Spotify's best asset is its size: 20 million users ensure lots of eclectic playlists."[110]

Clients

Desktop versions

Official desktop clients are available for Microsoft Windows (2000 or newer) and Mac OS X (10.5 or newer). Spotify was withdrawn from use on any Mac OS earlier than OS 10.5 in 2012.[111]

A preview of a forthcoming native Linux version for Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" and Ubuntu 10.04 was made available on 12 July 2010, formerly restricted to Premium and Unlimited subscribers because of a problem with displaying ads; it is now available to all Spotify users.[112] The preview release Linux version is unsupported. The Windows version can also be run on Linux and FreeBSD using Wine and the Spotify website has a section devoted to this topic.[113]

Mobile versions

A Spotify application for Android was demonstrated at Google I/O on 28 May 2009,[114] and then an iPhone application was officially announced on 27 July 2009.[115] Apple approved the iPhone app one month later on 27 August 2009.[116] Spotify for WebOS was made available in the US via the App Catalog in mid July 2011 to coincide with Spotify's US launch. The applications allow Premium subscribers to access the full music catalogue, stream music and even listen to music when disconnected using the Offline Mode (which is also available on the desktop version for premium users). The mobile versions of Spotify were released onto the iTunes App Store and Google's Android Market on Monday 7 September 2009,[117] while a Symbian version was made available on Spotify's website on 23 November 2009.[118] A version for Research in Motion's BlackBerry smartphones is in development,[119] on 19 October 2011, a preview release of the BlackBerry client was released.[120] On 4 October 2010, Spotify launched an official client for the Windows Mobile platform,[121] supporting many devices running Windows Mobile 6.0 or higher. mySpot was a freeware client that supported Windows Mobile. The mySpot 0.85b application provided access to the Spotify service on the Windows Mobile platform via an intermediate proxy. It required a QVGA, VGA or WVGA device running Windows Mobile Professional (Pocket PC) 6.0 or higher.[citation needed] It was discontinued and the service disabled several months before the official client was launched by Spotify.[122] The Windows Phone Spotify app was launched on the 07/11/2011 and is currently on version 1.1. The service is a competitor to the Zune functionality integrated within Windows Phone, both services offer wireless streaming and unlimited listening for a set monthly fee. The app requires a Spotify Premium account to use, although a free 48 hour trial is available.

As of 20 June 2012, Spotify radio streaming is free on the iPad and iPhone in the USA.[123]

Web browser version

Spotify held a press conference on 6 December 2012 where, among other things, a version of the software was shown running in a web browser.[124] It was later released as a beta to a select number of users. This version of the software uses Adobe Flash, presumably for its peer-to-peer networking ability. The application will be finalized some time in 2013.

Third-party clients and libraries

A number of third-party (and open source) projects have developed software to access Spotify services. The most prominent of these is Despotify, originally released as a ncurses text-mode client for Linux and Mac OS X. All third-party applications and development libraries require a Spotify premium subscription to work.

  • Despotify[125]
  • Jotify: a Java client.
  • Last.fm for Spotify: official app by Last.fm enabling recommendations based on listening history, embedded artist wiki information while listening and more (does not require premium subscription).
  • Tomahawk: a cross-platform music player for Windows, Mac and Linux with integrated Spotify "resolver" (plugin).

Despotify

Despotify
Original author(s)#hack.se
Written inC
Operating systemLinux, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Mac OS X, Windows
TypeClient, Library
License2-clause BSD license
Websitedespotify.se

Despotify is a free software open source client to Spotify's service. It aims to provide tools to allow third parties to leverage Spotify's platform to develop new services. Its authors remain anonymous, but write on their website that they are a group of Swedish computer science researchers and security professionals who "believe strongly in the right to tinker with technology".

The software can be run on most mainstream POSIX-compliant operating systems for which there is an ANSI C compiler. It also requires one of Core Audio, GStreamer, libao or PulseAudio to be installed. There is also a Despotify-based client, Spot, for jailbroken iPhones.[126]

Spotify has blocked usage of Despotify for "Free" and "Open" accounts, but those with a "Premium" account can use Despotify if they wish. The Despotify team have said that they would not attempt to circumvent the block. The code may however be forked by others to attempt to do this.[127]

The Despotify library has language bindings for Python and Ruby. It depends on the OpenSSL, zlib and libvorbis libraries.

Geographic availability

Availability of Spotify in the world as of April 2013.

Spotify is available in Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.[128] In Estonia, Greece and Romania, the Premium service was offered until July 2009, but never the free version. Only customers with credit cards issued or with PayPal account in one of the above-mentioned launch countries can buy a Premium account.[129]

In 2011, Facebook and Spotify held discussions about integrating the music service into Facebook in a significant way once Spotify launched in the United States.[130] Spotify was launched in the USA on 14 July 2011,[131] in Germany on 13 March 2012,[132] and in Australia and New Zealand on 22 May 2012.[133] From 13 November 2012, it is also available in Republic of Ireland and Luxembourg. From 11 February 2013, Spotify is available in Italy, Poland and Portugal. Spotify was launched in Mexico, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Iceland on 15/16 April 2013.[134][135]

Accounts and subscriptions

The service launched with Spotify Free and Spotify Premium. Free used to be unlimited, but limitations were added on 1 May 2011. Spotify Unlimited was launched in 19 May 2010. As of 2011, there are three Spotify account types.

Name Price Free of Ads Listening time (First 6 months) Listening time (After 6 months) Premium features
Spotify Free[note 1][136] Free No Unlimited 10 hours/month (Unlimited in the US & Asia)[25] No
Spotify Unlimited US$4.99, £4.99, €4.99 per month. Other locales in local currency.

Not available in Singapore, Hong Kong or Malaysia

Yes Unlimited Unlimited No
Spotify Premium US$9.99, £9.99, €9.99 per month. Other locales in local currency. Yes Unlimited Unlimited Yes[note 2]
  1. ^ Available in United States for promotional launch period.
  2. ^ Offline mode, mobile device support, enhanced sound quality, exclusive content.

User community

A community of websites, blogs and 3rd-party applications and tools exists to support Spotify.[137] Community resources include Facebook and Last.fm groups, Twitter bots and user forums, tools to display lyrics and services to list and notify users about new releases.[138] In 2010, Spotify blog The Pansentient League held the first Spotify Community Site Awards, with categories such as Best Playlist Sharing Site, Best News & Music Finder Site and Best Playlist Generator.[139]

Spotify has also led to an array of editorial content integrating playlists into articles. Popular music website Drowned in Sound is among the most notable examples, running every Friday as "Spotifriday" which involves a playlist of the site's content during the week shared with readers.

See also

References

  1. ^ "spotify.com - Traffic Details from Alexa". Alexa Internet, Inc. Retrieved 13 October 2012.
  2. ^ "Spotify: Discover music, podcasts, and playlists - Apps on Google Play". play.google.com.
  3. ^ "Spotify New Music and Podcasts". App Store.
  4. ^ "Open Source". Spotify. Retrieved 30 August 2024.
  5. ^ "Spotify Flathub page". Flathub.
  6. ^ a b "Announcing Alpha & Beta Programs". community.spotify.com. 4 December 2018.
  7. ^ Orlowski, Andrew. "Spotify, DRM and the celestial jukebox". The Register.
  8. ^ a b Salmon, Chris (16 January 2009). "Welcome to nirvana". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 28 January 2009.
  9. ^ Ringborg, Maria (7 October 2008). "Musiktjänsten Spotify lanseras". Dagens Nyheter (in Swedish). Retrieved 24 April 2009.
  10. ^ Geere, Duncan (15 September 2010). "Spotify hits 10 million users and 10 million tracks". Wired UK. Condé Nast Digital. Retrieved 15 April 2011.
  11. ^ "Spotify reaches 2.5 million subscribers".
  12. ^ a b "Spotify hits milestone with 1 million subscribers". BBC News. 8 March 2011.
  13. ^ "Spotify announces 5M+ paid subscribers globally". The Next Web. 6 December 2012.
  14. ^ http://www.businessinsider.com/spotify-pricing-plans-2011-7
  15. ^ "Spotify Mobile: A world of music in your pocket". Spotify. Retrieved 25 October 2010.
  16. ^ "Spotify says hello to the iPod". Spotify Blog. 4 May 2011. Retrieved 4 May 2011.
  17. ^ Morris, Ian (2 September 2010). "Sonos hardware to get Spotify access and a lovely iPad app". CNET UK. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 19 March 2011.
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