Spotify Music Service Comes To America On Monday; Exits Europe Completely On Friday
April 1, 2011
The U.S. debut of Spotify will happen as early as next week, according to a post at TechCrunch. However, the music service long favored in Europe is only jumping the pond after agreeing to one specific demand made by its investors: they must pull out of Europe altogether.
According to TechCrunch, the brand new ‘Spotify USA’ will launch on Monday, April 4. To make way for this new service, Spotify will end its service in Europe beginning on Friday at noon GMT.
An unnamed (and very upset) European staffer stated:
“We understand that many of you — particularly those who have paid for subscriptions — will be surprised and disappointed by this announcement. However at the same time we hope that you will understand how vital it is for Spotify to have a presence in the US, whatever the cost. America has always been the most important and lucrative market for web services, and so the decision to close down our European operations to fund a US launch was, frankly, a no-brainer.”One of Spotify’s European investors told TechCrunch (on the condition of anonymity) “the simple fact remains that America is the only place that matters when it comes to start-up success.” Finally, one of the company’s first US investors, Napster founder Sean Parker stated, “Europe isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? America.” We’ll keep you updated on this story, and hope to have some reaction from some (former) Spotify customers in Europe, tomorrow, April 1.