[img:$uid]http://i51.tinypic.com/20037eu.jpg[/img:$uid]

July 6, 2011

The streaming-music service Spotify is coming to the United States, the company said officially Wednesday for the first time.

Careful readers may nonplussed by this news, which a) has been developing for two years, b) was more or less confirmed a couple of weeks ago and c) still has no date attached to it.

But because Spotify is beloved where it is available, the prospect of a U.S. launch has been as anticipated as the arrival of Duke Nukem Forever. And despite two years of not arriving, its arrival now would come at a time when the digital music revolution, which started in earnest eight years ago with the creation of the iTunes store, is enjoying a new surge: Apple, Google and Amazon are all creating or have launched cloud-based services.

The entirety of Spotify’s announcement is in the graphic above, so no need to quote it again. On its web page there is a sign-up form to “get your invite.”

The latest word of Spotify’s arrival in the United States came through an apparently accurate e-mail obtained by NoiseCast on June 25.

The letter, reportedly from “an executive of a major label,” said the music service would be available between July 5 and 15.

The reported e-mail also said Spotify would charge $10 a month, which is the going rate for all unlimited mobile music subscriptions.

We have no reason to rain on anyone’s parade, but for context and a little history here is what co-founder Daniel Ek told Wired.com about his plans to enter the U.S. market — on July 22, 2009.

“We feel very comfortable, in that the labels want to see Spotify in the U.S.,” said Ek at the time. “Our hope is to get something up and running before the end of the year. We get around a thousand e-mails a week from people in the U.S. who want access to Spotify, so we know that there’s a demand for the product. It is important for us, though, to figure out the best execution, as we are very serious about being able to monetize the content that we license.”

http://www.wired.com/epic...know-when/

[Edited 7/14/11 8:53am]