Don't look now but streaming may just be the new downloading. And one of the purveyors of free, totally legit music streaming, Spotify, could soon be made available in Canada.
The website allows music listeners access to an unlimited amount of streaming songs at the simple click of a search engine and is currently available in Europe. However, a Spotify spokesperson told the Canadian Press it may only be months away from launching in the Great White North.
"Basically the situation with Canada is that we hope to launch it in tandem with a U.S. launch," said Spotify spokesman Andres Sehr. "Music licensing is handled on a North American basis and we're currently working on that and plan to launch at the end of this year or early 2010."
Other popular music streaming sites, such as We7 and Pandora, typically haven't been available to Canadian users and only Grooveshark has taken off in Canada, with an estimated 200,000 users. The biggest difference between Grooveshark, which is similar to YouTube but with songs instead of videos, and Spotify is that Grooveshark deals with copyright complaints by taking down illegal content, while everything on Spotify has already been approved by the copyright owners.
Spotify provides a search engine to automatically pull up a seemingly endless supply of songs, giving users three different membership tiers. The free membership allows unlimited access to millions of songs but they are interspersed with advertisements. Next, an all-day pass can be purchased for a nominal fee. And finally, a monthly paid subscription gives users access to all the music without any ads and with slightly better sound quality.
The website allows music listeners access to an unlimited amount of streaming songs at the simple click of a search engine and is currently available in Europe. However, a Spotify spokesperson told the Canadian Press it may only be months away from launching in the Great White North.
"Basically the situation with Canada is that we hope to launch it in tandem with a U.S. launch," said Spotify spokesman Andres Sehr. "Music licensing is handled on a North American basis and we're currently working on that and plan to launch at the end of this year or early 2010."
Other popular music streaming sites, such as We7 and Pandora, typically haven't been available to Canadian users and only Grooveshark has taken off in Canada, with an estimated 200,000 users. The biggest difference between Grooveshark, which is similar to YouTube but with songs instead of videos, and Spotify is that Grooveshark deals with copyright complaints by taking down illegal content, while everything on Spotify has already been approved by the copyright owners.
Spotify provides a search engine to automatically pull up a seemingly endless supply of songs, giving users three different membership tiers. The free membership allows unlimited access to millions of songs but they are interspersed with advertisements. Next, an all-day pass can be purchased for a nominal fee. And finally, a monthly paid subscription gives users access to all the music without any ads and with slightly better sound quality.