14 DAY TRIAL // Spotify has started drumming up interest ahead of its US launch. The company has finally revealed that it is hitting US shores, but has not set any date or given other details.
In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, it hasn't even signed Warner Music Group yet, the fourth and final music label needed to have a wide enough catalog ahead of the launch.
Negotiations with Warner are said to be closing as early as next week, but a deal is not a given even at this stage.
Spotify can't wait anymore and is very confident in its success in the States. Confident is a understatement, actually, Spotify is boasting to potential advertisers that it expects to get 50 million users in the US within a year.
That's a huge figure any way you look at it, Facebook only has about three times more users in the US.
Spotify has barely managed to get one million people to subscribe in all of the countries it's available in Europe and has about 10 million registered users overall.
Music services in the US, like Mog or Rdio, are comparatively smaller than what Spotify is boasting, 10 times smaller.
One key advantage Spotify brags about is the Facebook integration. As previously rumored, Facebook will start adding media services to the site and Spotify will be one of them.
The integration will enable users to listen to music on Facebook but also engage with Spotify in other ways like checking out what their friends are listening to or creating a list of favorite songs to share.
Spotify is not mincing words, but then again, PR material, especially aimed at advertisers from any company is going to be 'optimistic.'
Still, Spotify has several key advantages, for one it's free - it will be the only free on-demand music streaming service in the US with the only notable exception of Grooveshark.
The Facebook integration might also be a big boost to user numbers and of course Spotify has a had a lot of good coverage over the years and many US users are aware of the service and what it can do.