Spotify launches across the pond

I believe it's ad-funded (not just easily-ignored visual, but also audio ones like on a commercial radio station) but you can sign up and pay for an ad-free version, and purchase individual tracks like you do in iTunes.

I meant royalty wise, assume they must have deals with the record companies to license the music?

Not sure. I think there are restrictions on how many hours of music you can listen to on a free account, as well as how many times you can listen to a particular song. I believe they pay licensing to the record companies in the same way a radio station might.

I think the artists get an extremely small amount of money, but the record labels don't do that badly off it so they support it.

I could put up with the ads, but now they've introduced the restricted monthly play and are forcing the sign up to premium, i've dropped it in favour of Grooveshark, which is a browser based free streaming service that works just as well and has a better catalogue of music.

I fear that Spotify is deemed to fail now. They were doing very well and I'm sure they were pulling in enough on ad revenue before their plans to expand but now they're forcing the premium service i think everyone is going to jump ship to the next free service.

It's the way of the internet generally - why pay for something that you can get for free elsewhere?

Anybody know how the paywall press (eg Times) are getting on, plse? If they're doing well, this scheme of persuading people to pay for the superior Spotify service may work.

Spotify is the only streaming music service I have considered purchasing.

It works extremely well and the catalogue of music available easily surpasses iTunes, Amazon et al.