So some of you, having pockets filled with money (or just sheer luck), may have gone hopping on the old continent we call Europe in recent years and discovered a certain service called Spotify. Your friends in Sweden and the Home Islands and France are all buzzing about how awesome the service is. Unlike, say, that slothy grouch they call Pandora, Spotify allows you to listen to whatever track you want, free of charge. Furthermore, finding new music was made easy and quick, and there were a boatload of other features that kept Eurofans (and Zucks Marquise) swooning.
However, an American launch always seemed far away. There would be a mention here or there, and then someone would get fired for mentioning a launch date that passed with not a word. The hang up had always been that cantankerous lot known as the major labels, with licensing deals and all that cal.
But no more. Today, while Zucks was announcing the merger of Facebook chat with Skype (another brilliant European invention… where have we been? Oh right, jets) Spotify announced the imminent US launch of the service. No official date has been set, but the site offers invites, and the fact that they announced on their site means it’s likely to be soon-ish. CNET reports that the service will remain similar to the European version.
What remains to be seen is whether the labels we at TMT champion (Social Registry, Merge, etc.) will get a fair share of the Spotify cake, or will get screwed over by the majors like in the EU. But surely you don’t care about that… right?
• Spotify: http://www.spotify.com
