Ooh, Spotify, you get more handsome every time we see you. It wasn’t enough to announce plans to launch in the US, or the upcoming Android and iPhone apps, was it? Now you’ve gone and filled in a ton of gaps in your catalogue with a brand-new distribution deal.
The Stockholm-based music streaming service just announced a deal with IODA, the Independent Online Distribution Alliance. IODA brokers agreements for independent labels and artists and helps them out with marketing and distribution. The Spotify/IODA deal brings 2 million new indie tracks – meaning you’ll now be able to stream The Prodigy, Bob Marley, Bashy and Stephen Fry. IODA’s international partners, including Bonnier Amigo Music Group, are on board too.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek explains the motivation behind the new agreement: “One of the challenges all music services face is providing a wide range of music for users of all conceivable tastes. We’ve worked hard to add classical, punk and indie content from different sources and this deal with IODA is another leap forward in our mission to provide users with the biggest, most diverse musical catalogue on the planet.”
“Spotify has created a compelling product that redefines the notion of user-friendly and clearly speaks to the desires of the music fan,” said IODA’s CEO, Kevin Arnold.
This is great news for indie music lovers, and – at least on the face of it – yet another threat to iTunes although it’s common knowledge that Apple doesn’t make a great deal out of music so much as it does selling the hardware in the first place. It’ll be interesting to see how all this plays out: although Spotify plans to launch in the US before the end of the year, there’s the small matter of Microsoft’s upcoming music streaming service to factor in…