14 DAY TRIAL // It took a couple of years, but Spotify is finally in the US. Well, almost in the US, the company has revealed that it is landing on US shores, but has not revealed when. US users can sign up for an invitation and will be notified when the site and service become available.
It has been an epic struggle and the long road until here has been filled with broken promises, or subtle hints more accurately.
While the service was always known to be headed towards the US, very early on, negotiations bogged down as labels were not willing to allow Spotify to launch with a free option in the US.
Spotify, on the other hand, was adamant about this and it took two years for the two sides to come to an agreement.
Spotify hasn't said much yet, but it does imply that there will be a free version of the service in the US as well, so it may seem like a win for the service, but much has changed in the past two years.
The free Spotify version is so limited that it's not a viable option for actually listening to music. If you only need Spotify to discover new songs and bands, you'll be OK, otherwise you'll have to pay or look somewhere else.
Negotiations went nowhere for many months and broke down completely about a year ago. But the two sides started talking again and Spotify got its first big break when it signed its first label, Sony, at the beginning of the year.
It later signed EMI and finally Universal. The last holdout was Warner, but it seems that Spotify has finalized negotiations with all four.
That said, Spotify hasn't given a date for the launch. While it seems that there will be a free version, the details are non-existent and pricing for the paid versions haven't been revealed.
The landscape is very different from two years ago, services like Mog or Rdio have filled the niche left open by Spotify, not that they've been hugely successful anyway. It remains to be seen whether the free component, whatever it may be, will entice American users like it did in Europe.