Music fans in the U.K. have a new way to access millions of songs on their phones: They can buy a phone that comes with a two-year subscription to Spotify Premium as part of its monthly fee structure, from the cellphone service provider "3." The move was expected after Hutchison Whampoa, which owns 3 and is headed by Chinese billionaire Lee Ka-Shing, invested in Spotify in August.
The HTC Hero phone from 3 (its first to run the Android mobile operating system) costs $160. The monthly service plan is around $60 a month and includes a two-year subscription to Spotify Premium for the phone and the user's computer.
If this sounds familiar, it's probably because Nokia's Comes With Music program has offered a similar service for nearly two years, also in Britain. However, adoption has been somewhat slow, with just over 100,000 users worldwide. Perhaps Spotify will have better luck with its strategy of offering a free, ad-supported version of the program on the desktop to attract loyal users and burnish its reputation.
Spotify is transparent about its partnering strategy with device manufacturers, cell networks and ISPs to bundle the premium version of the service into an existing bill, rather than asking customers to sign up for a new $15/month subscription. Such partnerships could be crucial to the service's rollout in the United States, where the notion of a free, ad-supported version of the service could remain nothing more than a notion.
See Also:
- Spotify Set to Take America by Storm
- Note To Music Industry: Portability Is Key to Spotify Profits
- Apple Approves Spotify iPhone App; US Rollout Still On Hold
- Biggest Record Label Earns More from Spotify than iTunes in Sweden
- Ka-shing! Spotify Investors Include Chinese Billionaire
- Spotify $50 Million Closer to U.S. Launch
- Spotify Approved: Does Apple Care More About Apps Than Music
- U.S. Exclusive: Hands-On with the Spotify iPhone App
