14 DAY TRIAL // Spotify has been somewhat spoiled by the media lately, especially in the US where, ironically, it hasn't even been launched yet. Still, the company has proved rather successful in the European countries it is available in and especially in Sweden, its country of origin. Now Spotify is launching some sort of TV service in the country to be available in the coming months, though details are rather vague at the moment.
The service is part of a new two-year partnership with Telia, a large telco/ISP in Sweden, which will lead to several products for mobile phones, computers obviously, but also for TV. How exactly this deal will work out is unclear as, for one thing, Spotify already offers a mobile phone service for the iPhone, S60 and Android devices. One hint may be Spotify's existing deal with another Swedish ISP, Bredbandsbolaget, through which it offers its premium service to users in a bundle with the broadband provider.
Spotify has seen tremendous success in Sweden at least from a usage point of view. In fact it now accounts for 35 percent of all digital music sales in the country, quite a feat for the one-year-old service. But its success here doesn't necessarily translate to other countries as the market does have some peculiarities. Users in Sweden are very used to getting their music for free using peer 2 peer services and Apple's iTunes is a lot less popular there than in most other countries where it's available.
But even with its success, the company still isn't generating much of a revenue, which is why the new partnership deal could prove very beneficial to the bottom line. Even though Spotify boasts some 5.5 million users, only 100,000 pony up for the paid offering. The service does generate additional revenue from advertising in the free version but ad-based music services never really proved successful in the past.