Following last week’s reports, Swedish music-streaming leader Spotify has officially launched in Russia, along with a dozen other markets in Eastern Europe. SPOT stock is up.
Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE: SPOT) launched its service in 13 new markets across Europe including Russia, one of the world’s top 20 largest streaming markets. Spotify is definitely the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service and with the new expansion, Spotify now reaches a current total of 92 markets worldwide.
Spotify is now available in 13 new markets in Europe. They include Albania, Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Ukraine.
Spotify is special because it’s the only platform that can reproduce music on more than one type of device while other services started to stream videos and music more and more. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), Russia is the 17th-biggest streaming market in the world and on its way to becoming the 10th-biggest streaming market by the year 2030.
Shares of Spotify stock is 4.91% up, at $270.94, despite UBS analyst Eric Sheridan swung to bearish from bullish on the music streaming platform, saying future opportunities are “more than priced in.” Sheridan cut his rating two notches to sell, after being at buy since April 2018, while raising his stock price target to $204 from $189.
Competing with Apple, Yandex
Over 87 percent of people in Russia now listen to their music mostly through streaming. Just for comparison, in the whole world, only 61 percent of people are listening to music through streaming services. In the United States, this number is a little bit higher and stands at 68 percent, according to IFPI. From now on, Spotify started offering both its Free and Premium services in each of its 13 new markets. Spotify will be competing with binding platforms in Russia such as Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL), VK’s Boom, and Yandex N.V. (NASDAQ: YNDX). It is not known how many Apple Music subscribers are in the country, but Yandex Music has more than 3.3 million premium subscribers.
Gustav Gyllenhammar, Spotify VP, Markets and Subscriber Growth stated:
“Today’s launch opens the door for nearly 250 million fans to start discovering new music from around the world on Spotify, and for artists in the region to reach the increasingly connected global audience of fans. Launching in these 13 markets is an important moment in Spotify’s journey, especially as we welcome fans and artists in growing music markets like Russia, where streaming is being widely adopted and where we see a significant opportunity for Spotify.”
Next in Line after Europe Spotify Is South Korea
As a part of announced Spotify’s growth, the company presented 200 new playlists featuring artists from across the region that are available to fans around the world. Also. In order, to highlight Russia’s rich musical culture, for example, Spotify has added almost 100 playlists, including editorially curated playlists like Hip-Hop Cannon and New Music Friday Russia, and “This Is” playlists featuring popular Russian artists. Russian users will be able to see personalized Spotify playlists like Release Radar, Daily Mix, and Discover Weekly, which are informed by the listening habits of individual fans, on their mother tongue.
Spotify has been pretty clear when it comes to its plans in the future. That means that after the Russian market and other markets in Europe, Spotify is ready to invade South Korea as well. South Korea, has a population of over 50 million people and its outlet Sports Chosun reported earlier this year that Spotify was planning to launch at some point in 2020, although this may be delayed due to the coronavirus outbreak. South Korea is the sixth-largest music market in the world, according to the IFPI.
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