European music lovers just lost some of their bragging rights as music streaming service Spotify—previously only available in select countries in Europe—launched in the United States on July 14.
The service works through a downloadable program that allows users to search for and play specific tracks from a selection of over 15 million songs as advertisements or subscription payments reimburse artists through licensing fees.
“Spotify was founded as a better, simpler alternative to piracy,” stated Ken Parks, Chief Content Officer and Managing Director of Spotify North America in a press release. “So making sure that the people who create the music prosper is hugely important to us.”
For a limited time following the launch in the United States, those who receive invites from Spotify or its affiliates and create new accounts get their first six months of service free with an unlimited amount of songs and hours of play.
Those who sign up after this initial stage of invites will get 20 hours of play time a month free for their first six months.
Regardless of which free plan a user joins after the first six months, users are downgraded to ten hours of music a month and can play a single song up to five times per month in addition to being subjected to advertisements as part of the service.
Users can get around the invite system or time restrictions if they opt for a subscription service, of which Spotify currently has two different tiers.
The first—priced at $5 a month—allows for unlimited play and is advertisement free. The second—priced at $10 a month—allows for use of the service on select smart phones and portable devices, including the iPhone, iPad, Windows Phone and Android based phones.
When users download the program, any music files that are already on that computer are placed into a local files category on Spotify, available for play through the service anytime.
The service itself uses a Play Queue system to allow users to find and create playlists of their favorite songs.
This is different from the respective systems that services such as Pandora and Last.fm have because they use internet-radio style systems that create customized stations based on a song, artist or genre.
Users are able to share songs or playlists through their Facebook profiles, as well as view the public playlists of their friends on Spotify who are linked to a Facebook account.
While Spotify has garnered over ten million users in Europe, the company faced heavy criticism for its slow expansion outside of the region as well as multiple incidents that affected the consumers of the service.
Spotify had to drop their display ads temporarily in March because of attacks being made on users computers by malicious software being hidden in the ads, according to a report by PC Pro.
Spotify’s basic service system makes it not only a major competitor of other services that allow users to stream music, but has also placed it on the frontline of an ongoing struggle in the digital music space.
While services like iTunes and the Amazon Cloud Player allow users to purchase songs digitally, services such as Spotify and Pandora allow users to pay a subscription fee to access most musical content they desire at any time with some restrictions, in addition to offering free services.
