David CazaresA digital music service for which Europeans have gone nutso launches in the U.S. today, after a couple of years of promises and waiting.
“If Apple’s iTunes ushered in digital music’s first phase as a large-scale business, then Spotify and other services like it could be its future,” writes Ben Sisario on the New York Times.
Rather than selling individual tracks to be downloaded, subscription services sell monthly access to vast catalogs of music, with whatever songs a listener wants to hear streamed directly to his computer or mobile phone.
Spotify will be offered in the same three-tier plan that it has in Europe: a free, ad-supported version; a basic ad-free version for $5 a month; and a premium service for $10 a month that adds access on a mobile phone, higher audio quality and other perks.
Spotify will be available first to U.S. customers who got themselves on a waiting list beforehand.
Spotify is the best music service of its kind, says the lifehacker site.
Will Spotify be able to duplicate its European success? Probably not — the marketplace is more crowded with like services than when it launched across the pond in 2008. But I will be trying it for sure.
