Spotify's unlimited free streaming and sharing service was music to American ears when it launched in July 2011. Now comes a dissonant note: ten-hour monthly caps will be implemented on all free accounts when the six-month promotional period comes to an end for early adopters next week.
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"All new Spotify users, both in the U.S. and in all other countries in which Spotify is available, are able to enjoy an unlimited free service for their first six months. As we have previously stated, after a Spotify user has enjoyed free unlimited listening for six months, some changes to the free service will come into effect," the company said in a statement.
Spotify has garnered 10 million users worldwide and a base of more than 2.5 million paid subscribers since it was developed in Sweden in 2008 and launched in various parts of Europe.
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Free versions of the desktop app were available through invites only. An unlimited service was offered at $4.99 per month and the premium service was available for $9.99 per month. The Spotify Unlimited and Spotify Premium services were available free of ads and with unlimited music.
Spotify Premium ($9.99) offers offline playlists, unlimited ad-free music and enhanced sound.
The number of users exploded after users were able to sign in and download the Spotify music software via Facebook, avoiding the invite-only process. It was never meant to be a free service that would last forever. Unlimited free streaming was set to expire for U.S. users after they used the app for six months of streaming, as it had with the launch of the app in the UK in 2008.
Spotify's CEO Daniel Ek, while announcing the Facebook partnership at last year's f8 developer conference , said that more people will pay for music -- staying away from pirated stuff -- with access to the great variety of high-quality music that Spotify provides.
Says the company's Terms and Conditions of Use: "Spotify Service can be accessed as an ad-supported free-to-the-user service having no monthly cap on listening hours or a cap on number of plays of a unique track during the first 6 months following creation of your Spotify account, but thereafter a cap of 10 listening hours per month and a cap of 5 plays per unique track (the 'Free Service')."
Spotify's popularity stems from the fact that you can stream any song or album, drawn from a wide selection of music. Playing a song on the Spotify player will automatically alert your Facebook friends, allowing them to learn what you like and discover new music. Users may also drag songs into friends' profiles to share tunes.
Users can also take Spotify on the go -- the free mobile app is available on iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows Phone, Palm and Blackberry, which allows streaming over WiFi (premium service), offline playlists (premium service), access to your Spotify account and syncing your own music into Spotify from your phone.
Will you continue to use Spotify once your 10-hour cap on free streaming, following your initial six-month period? Let us know in the comments.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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