The world’s largest music streaming service has gone live in South Africa, a day before the company is due to hold a press conference to announce its local launch.
The website went live on Monday afternoon, offering a free 30-day trial to its Premium service, which costs R59.99/month after the trial period ends. There is also a free tier. That Premium price matches the local offerings from Google, Apple, Simfy Africa, Deezer and others.
The Spotify app is also now available in the Google Play Store for Android phones.
The South African launch comes ahead of Spotify’s plan to list in New York. It will host a press conference in Johannesburg on Tuesday at which further details about the local launch will be disclosed.
Speculation emerged in September 2017 of a local launch after the company placed a job advertisement for a senior editor and music programmer for South Africa.
Spotify is the world’s largest global music streaming subscription service with a community of almost 160m users, including 71m paying premium subscribers.
The South African pricing is a significant discount to what Spotify users pay in the US. There, the Premium tier costs US$9.99/month, or $14.99 for a family plan of up to six users.
South Africans already have a wide choice of streaming options, from Google Play Music to Apple Music, and Simfy Africa to Deezer. Naspers also recently launched music streaming platform Joox, from China’s Tencent, in which it holds a 33.2% stake. However, Spotify is the world’s biggest streaming music company with more than 70m paying customers and offers a range of music discovery tools favoured by its fans. — (c) 2018 NewsCentral Media
