Spotify Finally Makes Its Australian Debut


After months of promises, Spotify Australia has launched with an aggressive pricing strategy and something of a focus on Australian music. How does it compare to the existing music streaming services?

It had been tipped to launch some months ago, and then delayed, then tipped again — I’m still waiting to get the full explanation for that one — but Spotify’s launched this morning, so if you’d previously signed up for information on the music streaming service, you should have a shiny email sitting in your inbox right now.

Spotify’s pricing comes in three tiers; where most services have what essentially boils down to a two-tiered approach (typically desktop only and mobile), Spotify Australia’s hook is that it also offers a free, ad-supported service.


I’ve been using Spotify’s service for a couple of months now (hey, there have to be some perks to this journalism gig), and it’s a nice, clean client that works well across desktop, iOS and Android devices, with plenty of decent social features that so far haven’t been worth much, because the Australian social community hasn’t been there; hopefully that will change.


So how does Spotify’s pricing compare? Aside from the free offering, it follows a fairly similar pattern to its competitors

Service Basic Price/Month   Premium Price/Month
Spotify
$6.99
 
$11.99
Rdio
$8.90
 
$12.90
JB HiFi NOW
$6.67 (12 month)
 
$10
Sony Music Unlimited
$4.99
 
$12.99
Deezer
$7.49
 
$14.99
Rara
$7.99
 
$12.99
Zune Music Pass
$11.99

As with all of these services, whether or not there’s “value” in them depends on your musical tastes and how much of your favourite artists or genres are available. Spotify’s release states that it’s offering “more than 16 million tracks”, which should give it a reasonably broad skew.