Spotify CEO Daniel Ek was on stage at SXSW for the final keynote interview. Everyone was expecting the announcement of a US launch or at least some indication of when it might be coming. There was none to be had, unfortunately, however the CEO had some other tidbits, like an updated subscriber number and a very interesting remark about the kind of traffic Spotify consumed.

A US launch has been in the works for many months now and the initial hope was that it would come by the end of 2009. Slow negotiations with the music labels pushed that date back and, today, we still don't have a solid time frame for when the service will be available stateside. The reason for the delays is that the music labels don't really believe in a freemium model in the US. In the European countries where Spotify is available, it is offered for free with ads or with a monthly subscription that also allows users access to the mobile apps.

There have been indications that this may not be the model followed in the US, despite the company's desires, and Ek is now reiterating that by saying that, when it will eventually be available, it may be “slightly different” from what Spotify currently offers. The music labels have been pushing for a paid subscription model, which is quickly becoming the norm in the US, but Spotify's current subscriber numbers aren't that impressive. Spotify now says it has about 320,000 paying users, up from 250,000 in January, so it is certainly growing at a healthy pace.

However, there are several million users of Spotify in Europe, over two million in the UK alone, and the company really needs to convert more of them into paying customers. One thing's for sure, though, people sure love their Spotify apps and, on some days, the service uses up more bandwidth than the entire Sweden, one of the most tech-savvy countries out there. Spotify uses a p2p model for delivering data, so this doesn't ruin their margins, but it's still an impressive figure.