Everyday News: Spotify Hints at "New Direction"

Monday, November 21, 2011

Spotify Hints at "New Direction"

Just four months after music streaming service Spotify debuted in the U.S., it's gearing up for a "new direction."

The company released an invitation on Monday for its first-ever U.S. press event on Nov. 30 in New York City, announcing that it has "exciting news" to share.

The news comes on the heels of Google's recent unveiling of its free Google Music service that allows users to upload, share and browse songs, and then listen to them on the go via cloud storage on Android devices.

In addition, more than 200 labels and publishers pulled out of various streaming services, from Spotify to Napster and Rdio, after a study claimed streaming music was hurting record sales. Big hitter labels such as Sony and RCA were not included in the pullout.

“At Spotify, we continually strive to innovate and deliver exciting new experiences for our users," Spotify said in an email statement to Mashable. "In New York on November 30th, we are holding our first press conference to unveil the latest major development from Spotify � and a new direction for the company."

The event dubbed "What's next for Spotify?" is being touted as a global press conference that will also stream online. It will be hosted by CEO Daniel Ek and will include a special guest or two.

The invitation is otherwise slim with details, but since this is Spotify's first U.S. press conference and it's not typical for Ek to address the press in this manner, we're expecting some big news.

Some speculate that Spotify may offer a store to purchase songs directly from the service, rather than having users turn to competitors such as iTunes and Google Music when they want to buy tunes. Although this is already possible for Spotify users in Europe, it might be coming to the U.S. soon. However, this wouldn't warrant a press conference all of its own.

The event will kick off at 9:00 a.m. next Wednesday.

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