Spotify catching up to iTunes in UK as US launch delayed

Spotify has said it won't launch the US version of its service until 2010. Company CEO Daniel Ek cited the need to explain the service better to US audiences.

“Most people are not still not aware of the service or how it works – so we have to do spend time educating the market," he said, "The US music labels want to get there and are very excited about Spotify but there are thousands of publishers we need to get signed up and fully informed about the service,” he observed.

iPhone users in Europe have taken to Spotify because as well as allowing them access to streamed songs from millions of acts, it also lets Premium users download Spotify playlists for offline playback - all legal, and all for around $15 per month.

This enablement of access to music on a casual basis is probably why a recent GfK NOP survey of 2,000 UK internet users identified Spotify as storming up the music service charts, where it has become the fourth most well-used service, used by 11 percent of the group.

iTunes - of course - dominates, with 50 percent use, Amazon is at 24 percent and Real Player took 13 percent of UK usage. The other services: Last.fm (7%), MP3.com (5%) and Napster (4%). 60% of users stream music direct from the web.

That data also reveals Facebook to be the predominant social network, with over 74 percent of users picking it as their favourite. Twitter in the UK grabs 4 percent, as does MySpace.

Meanwhile, the latest rumours speculate an OS-based ads platform for Apple, citing a recent patent filing.

With other relatively recent reports Apple plans a music streaming service, we speculate - could the ads and music streaming deal be connected in some way to a future service offering iTunes users free access to music and other content in exchange for enduring ads? (And exercised at a system level as a sop to the ever more-powerful copyright lobby).