CAPE TOWN - Music streaming service Spotify is now available in South Africa.
On Spotify’s website, its Premium service is now available on a 30-day trial basis and after that, if users want to subscribe it will cost R59.99 per month.
Spotify has 159-million users worldwide, of which 71-million pay for the premium service. It has 35-million songs and 2-billion playlists.
The company said the music service is available on the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and Microsoft Store. It also works on Xbox and PlayStation consoles, TVs, and smart speakers.
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Spotify is set to compete with services that are already in the SA market such as Apple Music, Deezer, Play Music and Tidal.
The service is available in two options locally:
Spotify Free – R0 per month.
Spotify Premium – R59.99 per month
The differences between Free and the premium options are that Free only features a shuffle play. While, the Premium option features no adverts, offline listening, unlimited skips, high-quality audio and shuffle play.
So what makes Spotify so great?
Spotify Free lets you listen at Normal (96 Kbps) or High quality (160 Kbps), not many services allow you this option, and also Google Play Music offers audio streaming qualities up to 320kbps on both the streaming library and uploaded music, though the quality of uploaded music is dependent on the quality of tracks uploaded.
Spotify Premium adds Extreme quality streaming at 320 Kbps, which can make for better, more detailed audio output if you use high-end headphones or speakers.
The cool thing about Spotify is that you can use it on any device unlike, Apple music that can only be used on Apple devices.
Spotify is available on PlayStation Music™, this means that can you stream music on your PlayStation 4 while gaming. You can listen to any song, album or playlist on demand, or even control Spotify through the Quick Menu without interrupting the game.
Additionally, The South African pricing is a huge discount to what Spotify users pay in the US.
There, the Premium tier costs US$9.99/month (R118), or $14.99 (R177) for a family plan of up to six users.
“Spotify is very excited to announce our launch in South Africa today. We have had the continent in our sights for a while and are finally able to offer South African fans access to all the music they already love on Spotify, while helping them to enjoy, discover and share new music from both local and international artists simply and easily” said Michael Krause, Spotify MD, EMEA.
READ ALSO: POSSIBLE GAME-CHANGER: Spotify enters the SA market
Take a look at what South Africans thought about Spotify launching in SA on Twitter below:
It's fine we have Fakaza you guys can go back to where you come from.
— Incwas'mende (@thelifeofstanza)
Basically, local artists will only get money for having their songs licensed to
— Phil Mphela (@PhilMphela) March 13, 2018
That's what R59.99 gets you on
— Phil Mphela (@PhilMphela) March 13, 2018
So there isn't any local music streaming service competitor ?
Deezer - France
Apple - U.S.
Spotify - Sweden
So nobody locally wants the online music streaming piece of a pie ? #SpotifySouthAfrica
— Huli (@Huli_Mashamba) March 13, 2018
It's finally here
— ROGER GOODE (@DJRogerGoode) March 13, 2018