Spotify confirms Chinese launch
We have to confess, the news that Spotify is to launch in China took us completely by surprise. However, it’s official. A Spotify spokesman told us: “we can confirm that we are looking forward to working alongside the TOM Group with the ultimate aim of making Spotify available to music fans across Greater China.”
As Spotify becomes more and more of a household name, stories about the company which are only half-true can spread like wildfire. Yet this time, it seems Spotify has been almost Apple-like in its ability to keep this under wraps; and the company is still being incredibly tight-lipped about its plans. Music Ally has spoken to a well-placed source in China who is similarly surprised about the news.
Spotify has become a huge success in several European markets, where users love suddenly having access to totally free streaming music on demand. But Chinese internet users have been used to this for years; and now with Google’s music service sanctioned by the labels in China it seems that free streams are now fully entrenched in the country. As this article points out - “Tencent, Sina, Baidu and three main telecom operators including China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom all have their own music online streaming portals already.”
In addition Chinese music fans demand Chinese music. Surely prioritising a US launch would have made more sense? West was certainly the direction most people expected the company would travel, particularly after announcing yesterday the hiring of Faisal Galaria (previously international managing director of travel site Kayak.com and before that a European director at Skype) to set up a global business development team. “I am passionate about building disruptive companies”, saysFaisal on the company blog. “Spotify is changing the way we all enjoy music and the old paradigms of music ownership. It’s going to be fun.”
It’s hard to question Spotify’s business acumen so far. Founder Daniel Ek claimed at a Music Ally panel at the Great Escape Festival this year that he’d spent just GBP £5,000 on marketing so far. Perhaps, then, with a little more marketing it’s possible to conquer China.
The key, for Spotify, has always been unlocking advertising revenue – particularly in China where the premium subscription model won’t fly. And on that basis the partner TOM is a good choice: the company runs a massively popular online entertainment portal, and also provides an online advertising platform in China.
We’ll keep you posted as more details come to light.
August 12th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
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February 15th, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Spotify has definitely changed the way people listen to music. And it has many positive, as well as negative, aspects. It’ll be interesting to see how it impacts China.