Spotify: Thursday's the day for U.S. launch
Now's the time for Spotify's U.S. launch, the company says. More details about the popular music-streaming service making its stateside debut are coming in the morning.
Editors' note, Thursday 5:06 a.m. PT: Spotify's Web site now says that the service has arrived in the U.S. Our story on the actual launch is here: "Spotify (finally) launches in the U.S."
Following up on last week's announcement that it would soon be opening up to U.S. users, popular music-streaming service Spotify said Wednesday that its stateside launch is happening Thursday morning.
"Spotify, the award-winning digital music service loved by millions of Europeans, will become available tomorrow morning in the United States by invitation and subscription," the company said in a statement. It has promised to deliver more details about the launch Thursday at 8 a.m. ET.
As CNET noted last week, eyes have been on Spotify to announce a U.S. version of its service for months, though particularly after the company began signing licensing deals with the four major record companies in the U.S. The first of those deals was struck with Sony back in January.
AllThingsD notes that the U.S. version of the service will be invite-only at first, opening up for general use later on. There will also be multiple versions of the service: a free, ad-supported version that's time limited, along with $5 and $10 monthly plans that take away the limits and let you access music tracks on mobile devices.
The U.S. launch paves the way for Spotify to integrate with a number of other services based here, notably Facebook. Earlier this month, sources told CNET that the two companies recently held discussions about integrating the music service into Facebook, which last week noted that it has topped 750 million active users.
Spotify opened up to the public in late 2008, and has attracted a following by offering free, ad-supported music streaming of its catalog. The service currently touts some 13 million music tracks.