A few days ago ScandAsia brought an article about Swedish music streaming service Spotify launching in Singapore. However there are a few more countries in Southeast Asia that will now have Spotify available — Hong Kong and Malaysia. This marks Spotify’s first big push into Asia.
The premium music service has only opened up to music fans in 20 countries so far. The only area in the broader Asia-Pacific region where Spotify is available is Australia and New Zealand.
Spotify, which started in Sweden in 2008, lets users choose from millions of songs over the Internet for free or by subscription.
Spotify general manager Jonathan Forster said Hong Kong music fans could also try its premium subscription for HK$48 a month, which has no advertising.
Forster said the service, which added about 20,000 new tracks a day, already has a sizeable catalogue of tracks from Hong Kong and Taiwan at launch.
The premium package allows users to listen to Spotify across all their devices for SGD$9.90 or you can give a try for free on your PC only. Spotify’s Sriram Krishnan said:
“Asia has always been on the roadmap for us. We always have an eye for Asia. We take as long as we want to create that perfect [service]… for this part of the world.”
In Asia, Spotify faces challenges from Taiwan’s KKBOX, which has a presence in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and Malaysia. KKBOX claims to have over 10 million songs from 500 international labels. But most of its music, it seems, are Chinese-language songs. Spotify, in contrast, is stronger for English-language songs.
