Spotify


 * Title of Article**: Coming to America: European Streaming Sensation Spotify
 * Author**: Steve Knopper

A Swedish music software known as Spotify is currently availiable in European countries such as the U.K, France, Sweden, and three other European nations as of last year. With great success, this Swedish service has millions of users downloding the software, and is adding roughly 50,000 registered users daily. Spotify is expected to reach America by early 2010 and create the biggest rivalry to iTunes among the digital-music market. Spotify provies near-instant access to 6 million songs, 4 million songs less than iTunes however. The greatest contradiction between the two super services is that by becoming a Premium Spotify member, once must pay $14 a month, apposed to paying 69 cents to $1.29 for a song, or $9.99 for an album with iTunes. Thus Spotify's greatest struggle might be converting people to paid subscriptions. Lastly, as of late August, Apple approved Spotify's iPhone application which opens the portal to portability. This application allows Premium users to listen to just about any song ever recored, despite their location.
 * Summary**:

I personally believe that Spotify will be a huge hit once it hits Ameica and has the potential of becoming the next "iTunes". I don't think people will disregard iTunes altogether, I just think that people will develop a great appreciation for the portable feature that Spotify has to offer. Moreover, in disregards to the portable feature, one who must choose between the iTunes or Spotify softwares must take into consideration of the amount of songs he or she downloads monthly. If someone downloads less than $14 per month than the choice is obviously iTunes. However, if one downloads $14 or more monthly, then Spotify is the clearly the best choice.
 * Reflection:**