One day after it announced an imminent US launch with no other details, an American Spotify user has sent us these screencaps showing pricing in US dollars. Only going by these screencaps, the Unlimited US Spotify plan will cost $4.99 a month without mobile streaming capability and the Premium Spotify plan with mobile access will cost $9.99 a month. According to the same source, a free version with limited plays is also available.
Interesting enough, these amounts are less than what European users currently pay, at £4.99 ($8.00) and £9.99 ($16.00) respectively.
It might just be that these are pre-launch placeholder site numbers, the fact that lesser competitor and US first mover Rdio charges the same amounts for what amounts to basically the same plans makes me believe that they might be legitimate (the logic being that the record companies gave both companies similar licensing deals). Peter Kafka also reported the $10 a month for Premium figure when he wrote about the company’s $100 million in funding at a $1 billion valuation earlier this month.
So if the prices are in place what’s the holdup then? Well one source pegs the company as waiting for Facebook to get its music service together – I’m hearing it’s a partnership with multiple companies including Spotify. In related news, code alluding to a product called Facebook Vibes was just discovered in the download files for FaceSkype video chat.
So while we all wait for the launch of one, or the other or both simultaneously, read Paul Carr’s brilliant post on how Rdio captured the music in America’s heart first.
Update from Spotify PR: ”No details are set for the pricing or details of our US service yet – we’re still testing a number of different options. We’ll be sure to let you know when we have something to announce.”
Spotify has created a lightweight software application that allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums with virtually no buffering delay. It was launched in the fall of 2008 and had approximately 10 million users by September 2010. Spotify offers streaming music from major and independent record labels including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal. Users download Spotify and then log onto their service enabling the on-demand streaming of music. Music can be browsed by artist, album, record...
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