Spotify - Some Wins And Some Setbacks
There has been happening around Spotify, a Swedish startup offering a lightweight software application enabling on demand streaming of music. And it's not been the normal buzz where everybody is competing to give praise to the service.
First there was the announcement that Spotify is hiring Gustav Söderström, who’s Leaving Yahoo! Inc. to be the director of portable solutions at Spotify . 'I came to Yahoo! Inc in 2006 through the acquisition of Mobile social software company Kenet Works AB of which I was CEO and co-founder (learn more about me). After two years as Director of Product Management and later Director of Business Development, I've decided to leave Yahoo! Inc in order to join music startup Spotify.' (thanks for the heads up to Henrik!)
Today Spotify announced on a more down beat tone that they are forced to add a country restriction to some songs and remove some songs completely from their playlists. Why? Not surprisingly this required by their label deals.
Despite the small set back, the Spotify team added that their ‘dream is to create a music experience where users can play whatever music they want, whenever they want, it may take awhile but we will keep working at it’. Now that Söderström is on board to lead Spotify's mobile strategy, they are likely to tackle next the ‘create a music experience ... whenever’ the users want it -part. We, for one, can’t wait to see what Spotify on a mobile will look like.
You can find the full announcement below (you should also go read the original annoucement as last time I checked they had no less the 199 comments!) and our previous post on Spotify challenging iTunes here.
