By Maira Garcia
Daniel Ek, CEO of the European live streaming music site Spotify, gave the final keynote for SXSW Interactive 2010. He was interviewed by Eliot Van Buskirk of Wired.com.
Currently, Spotify is only available in Europe but they are examining ways to have the site in the United States. The biggest issue for having the site in the U.S. is licensing (well, yeah).
Ek gave an overview of the site and discussed using mobile technology with Spotify. He said phones come equipped with Spotify in Sweden, his home country. Ek said the first few months free to access the site are free and they continue to expand partnerships with mobile carriers in Europe.
Revenue for the site is generated in various ways according to Ek. People pay with time by watching targeted advertising, which Spotify can charge more for.
Ek said the music industry and technology are on the same page for first time ever.
“Music is one of the most social objects we have,” he said. “If you can access it anywhere, manufacturers will find value in that.”
Ek showed what the Spotify app looks like on a smart phone.
Overall, I enjoyed this keynote quite a bit. They even did a question and answer (gasp!) at the end of Ek’s remarks. I’m not sure when or if we will Spotify in the U.S., but it would be great to see a little friendly competition with iTunes.
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Never heard of Spotify but interested in it fo sho! Seems like something I would use but I want to know more about it. I like Itunes but I think this would be differant because it looks like you can download from your phone, not sure if an Iphone can do that, which my phone doesn’t do!
If phones in America had Spotify I would need to charge my phone more often because I would be on it way more then usual.
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Yeah it looked interesting. I’m still not exactly sure how Ek could sound so confident that people aren’t stealing music through this, because it really sounds like that is a lot of what’s going on. But it will be interesitng to see how it plays out in the US!