Spotify expands to 80 more countries

[SiliconRaven]

Summary

 

On 22^nd February, Spotify announced, in it's Stream On event, that it will be expanding it's network to 80 more countries. This includes many countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia. With the new launch, customers in those countries will have access to the the full catalog of music and podcasts (with some exceptions depending on the market) and the app will be available on all available platforms like android, ios, smart TVs in those countries.

The new markets are:

Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Curaçao, Djibouti, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lesotho, Liberia, Macau, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Micronesia, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

 

Quotes

Quote

Working closely with local creators and partners, we’ll deliver a Spotify experience that meets the unique needs of each market, with scaled language translations and specialized payment formats. These 80+ markets represent more than 1 billion people—potential Spotify listeners who have yet to tap into the power of our platform.

 

My thoughts

The launch of Spotify in these regions, is a big deal, both for Spotify and the customers. Being a resident of one of these countries means I can access Spotify content without having to use a vpn, like everyone else in these markets. It also brings some competition to other services like Deezer, which I personally used just because it is available here. I installed the app and checked the premium options. The price for individual, duo and family plans are 27% of the US price and 50% of similar Deezer plans in my country. I am definitely switching to Spotify.

 

Sources

https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-02-22/spotify-expands-international-footprint-bringing-audio-to-80-new-markets/

 

[pzspah]

Great, a company that hasn't done anything but raise prices over the last few years want to bring their featureless and restricted service to more people. 

 

March 1st I'm off to youtube music. 

[Commodus]

14 minutes ago, pzspah said:

Great, a company that hasn't done anything but raise prices over the last few years want to bring their featureless and restricted service to more people. 

 

March 1st I'm off to youtube music. 

That's an odd thing to say when many people grouse about YouTube Music being worse than other services.

 

Me, I'm half-surprised it took this long for Spotify to reach so many countries. Apple Music became fairly ubiquitous years ago.

[Middcore]

And yet I still can't just sort my library by artist. 

22 minutes ago, Commodus said:

That's an odd thing to say when many people grouse about YouTube Music being worse than other services.

 

YouTube Music is worse in just about every way from Google Play Music which preceded it, but I can see how a longtime Spotify user might think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence since if you ask many of them they'll say the service has only gotten worse instead of better and that Spotify is completely uninterested in listening to user feedback. Like, for example, the fact that they took away the ability to sort your library by artist in 2019 and never restored it despite widespread outcry. 

[JZStudios]

Spotify sucks for a large multitude of reasons, from artists perspectives and the users perspective. It really is barebones feature wise and only works to play pre-made playlists or specific albums. It has a "library" function that barely works, an awful UI, and almost acts more as a social media platform with security issues. Also the mobile app is complete garbage and when I used Spotify I had to do everything on PC because of the missing features on the app.

 

On the other hand, Spotify despite having the largest market share has been increasing their ad revenue and price, while paying the artists half what all the other platforms offer, while also directly limiting the amount of plays an artist can get if they don't release daily albums because it's suggestions work on a YouTube algorithm. Simultaneously, there's people that make fake artist pages with 40 second songs and have mobile phone farms play them on an endless loop to generate ad revenue for themselves, further reducing the amount of money going to legitimate artists. Sometimes these farms will hack your account and switch what you're listening to their channel in real time.