Spotify Blames Late German Launch On Language, Avoids The Music Rights Question

Streaming subscription music company Spotify will launch in Germany tomorrow. The company has made no statement in English but is talking to German media outlets, and we’ve confirmed via other sources. Axel Bringéus will be its Director of International Growth based out of Berlin. Local partners include the German edition of Interview magazine and the festival guide Eventim.

Users will face the same 9.99 euro ($13.10; £8.40) monthly fee for the business’s premium service that is charged the EU. Spotify goes up against Simfy (which has funding from DuMont Venture and Earlybird) as well as Rdio and Deezer, which have previously launched in Germany, among other territories.

Right now Spotify has 10 million active users (over 3 million pay the subscription for ad-free music) and 16 million tracks available and it works in 13 countries worldwide.

Spotify seems a little late to the German party, but as Bringéus told Focus Magazine today the company “allowed a little more lead time” because of translating the site, establishing German partnerships and building a team.

As VentureVillage notes, he declined to comment on Germany’s notoriously difficult performance rights body, GEMA, which has even cracked down YouTube. Germany’s closest competitor to Spotify, Grooveshark, closed partly due to GEMA restrictions. GEMA once said it couldn’t see it ever being licensed in Germany without a change in its business model towards paid subscriptions.

Cologne-based Simfy says it has two million users in Germany, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland.