The big daddy of streaming music services finally looks set to launch in South Africa. The company has placed a job advertisement for a senior editor and music programmer for the local market.
The ad, which was first spotted by consumer technology magazine Stuff, suggests that after years of speculation about a possible launch, Spotify will finally be available to South African music fans (without them having to resort to using a virtual private network).
The job ad gives no clues as to when the service will be launched in South Africa, or how much it will cost. In the US, Spotify costs $9.99/month, or $14.99/month for a family plan of up to six users.
Other music services that have been launched locally, however, typically cost a fraction of what they do in the US. Most are priced at R60/month (about $4.65).
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 60m paying customers and offers a range of music discovery tools favoured by its fans.
Spotify had been planning to launch in South Africa as far back as 2014, and it’s unclear why the company didn’t follow through on those plans.
In its ad, Spotify said: “We are looking for a broadly experienced senior editor/music programmer to join Spotify’s shows and editorial team, responsible for South Africa, located in London or Dubai. You will identify and curate first-rate music playlist listening and programming experiences for a multitude of our moods, moments and genres, demonstrate a passion for performance-orientated analytics, and you will have your ear to the ground in the music community, focusing on South Africa.”
Spotify did not respond to a request for comment. — (c) 2017 NewsCentral Media