Spotify to go live in Australia tomorrow

Arguably the most popular music streaming service in the world, Spotify, will finally open it’s doors to the Australian market tomorrow. Who wants a 15-million song library?

That’s the reports coming out of The Australian and the Australian Financial Review today after months of speculation as to when the actual date would arrive. Spotify has already allowed consumers to pre-register for access to the service which offers over 15 million songs to stream or download, depending on the level of service you have signed up for.

Originating in Sweden, Spotify runs on both advertising and subscription models. You can get access to the service for free but will have to listen to sponsor messages before playing a song, or you can pay one of two different subscriber fees for either access to unlimited streaming or access to both streaming and downloads of songs to your devices. Currently in the US this is $4.99 and $9.99 respectively.

Spotify already has some competition in the form of Rdio and Telstra in the Australian streaming music marketplace, but it’s stature worldwide is likely to see it gain mass acceptance quite quickly. It will be the only one in Australia to offer the service for free, though.

“One of the key reasons we can get them (consumers) onto Spotify is that we do have a free service, so it’s almost like downloading from the internet for free but it’s legal and paid for by three or four minutes of advertising every hour,” said Spotify Australia CEO Kate Vale.

Having been delayed repeatedly, we can’t wait for the service to officially go live. Whether it will beat out the likes of Rdio or Mog will be an interesting battle to watch.

Web: Spotify

Damian Francis

Damian Francis has previously edited Australian T3 and F1 Racing magazine and wrote for GQ Australia and Men’s Health. Unlike Nick and Trev, he has no kids, no mortgage and no wife, but lives happily on Sydney’s North Shore with his girlfriend.