In a recent announcement, made during Spotify Stream On live streaming event on Monday, Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek revealed the plan to launch their operations in 85 new markets including Bangladesh in the “next few days” which will bring the service to more than a billion new music lovers. This includes potential big markets of Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, and Nigeria.
Last year, Spotify hyped Bangladeshi music enthusiasts when they opened verified pages dedicated to Bangladesh indicating the imminent official launch.
This massive augmentation of Spotify across Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and Latin America will be its biggest concentrated market expansion to date, says the company. With the aim to building a truly borderless audio ecosystem— connecting creators, listeners, and content—Spotify is embarking on a sweeping expansion, the company said on its website. This will add 36 new languages to its platform. This popular music streaming platform has grown to more than 345 million monthly active users and over 155 million paid subscribers globally across 93 countries, since its launch in 2008. The service offers more than 70 million individual tracks, including over 2 million podcast titles.
“Having more listeners on our platform creates more opportunities for artists and podcasters to make a living from their work. And more creators mean more audio content for our users to discover,” said Alex Norström, Spotify’s chief freemium business officer. “This creates an essential flywheel between creators and listeners that is the foundation of our business — and in the end, it is what will propel the audio industry forward.”
In all 85 new markets, Spotify will offer both Spotify Free and Spotify Premium plans, while Individual, Family, Duo, and Student plan subscription options will be available in selected markets. Its full global music catalog will be available in all the new markets and the entire podcast catalog will be available in the majority of them. In each new market, “we will work with local creators and partners to expand our music offerings and deliver a Spotify experience that meets the unique needs of each market,” Spotify said.
