de Spotify to launch in Germany this week

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Spotify to launch in Germany this week

Spotify is to open its doors in Germany this week in the digital music service?s biggest launch since coming to the US last year.

It is the latest example of a digital music firm growing its global footprint as record labels become increasingly bullish on subscription services. Germany is the world?s third largest music market by sales, after the US and Japan, having overtaken the UK in 2010. As is often the pattern in Germany, Spotify will face competition from a local streaming subscription service which launched ahead of what is now the international leader with 3m paying customers.

Simfy ? backed by investors including Earlybird Venture Capital ? launched in May 2010 and has since expanded to Austria and Switzerland. Early in 2011, Simfy struck a deal with Kabel Deutschland, Germany?s largest cable operator, in much the same way as French rival Deezer works with France Telecom elsewhere in Europe. Simfy also has a partnership with StudiVZ, a German social network.

Faced with this local competition, Spotify has worked to launch with its biggest-ever selection of songs, boosting its catalogue to more than 16m songs, with the addition of several German artists.

Spotify is also arriving with 10 third-party applications on board straight out of the gate, including Eventim, a ticketing site, Fellody, a social network-######-dating site that connects people who share a taste in music, as well as meida firms such as Motor.de, Interview Magazine and laut.de. Last week, Spotify said that its users had spent more than 13m hours using applications since it opened up its desktop software to external developers in early December.

?We wanted to make sure we had the right product and platform ready for the German consumers,? Jeff Levick, chief sales officer at Spotify, told the FT. ?It?s the first market we are launching with apps already built into the platform specifically for Germany.?

Other than that, the pricing structure is the same as elsewhere in Europe, with an initial six-month period of ?unlimited? listening and subscriptions costing ?9.99 for full mobile access.

Spotify is not working with any distribution partners yet, but Mr Levick hints that some may be on the horizon: ?We are continuing to work with other parties. As we grow in the market, we will continue to partner with appropriate companies.?

While Mr Levick says that Spotify still sees piracy is its main competitor, he says that social-network integration (with Facebook, but not yet StudiVZ), speed of playing tracks, user experience and breadth of catalogue are its main differentiators.

Germany is Spotify?s thirteenth market but clearly recognised as a key one ? unlike other smaller territories, it is building a local team there, with a ?handful? of people currently in place, focused on sales and marketing.

?You?ll see a lot more attention going into Germany throughout the year and also as a company we will look to other countries to continue to expand,? Mr Levick said. ?We add people based on the needs in the market? The platform is the core technology and infrastructure, that doesn?t require putting more people on the ground in every market you go into.?

Spotify will go live in Germany on Tuesday.

Source: FT.com

Hallelujah. Finally.

[Tom]