Music service Spotify has started to send out pre-launch invites to allow Canadians to try the music service before it officially launches. The Spotify website and today’s iTunes app update description notes users can join an invite queue to be able to start using the service.
Reports of Spotify expanding to Canada dated as far back as 2012, but nothing has materialized until now. The launch looks to have made its way to Canada ahead of Apple’s own iTunes Radio service, which was rumoured to debut this spring.
In late April, Apple acquired Beats Music as part of a $3 billion deal, which offers the company its own streaming music service—but it’s only available in the U.S. at this moment.
You can sign up to join the Spotify invite queue here or by signing up via the Spotify iOS app. Anyone excited for this or do you already have an established streaming music service of choice (i.e. Rdio or Songza)?
Thanks @ynw93!
Update 3: The app appears in search, but when you try to download it says “no longer available.”
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Finally!
Am I just a moron or is the Spotify app not available in the Canadian iTunes store? It’s not showing up in my search.
I’ll give it a shot, but I’m in pretty invested in rdio – the best streaming + on demand service available to Canadians.
Here here, totally agree. And the interface is really clean and tasteful.
Search for “Spotify Music” in the App Store… I had the U.S. version so I deleted that and I’m trying to download the one from the CDN App Store. However, it’s giving me the error “The item you tried to buy is no longer available.”
Looks like if you had downloaded Spotify from another country’s App Store (& registered your a Spotify account in that country) it (Spotify) no longer blocks your streaming should you be on an Canadian IP address. Ie you don’t have to wait for the invite. Howeve, it looks like you can’t spchange the country of residence (eg to Canada) yet on your account.
I have Spotify previously downloaded from my US account and I tried logging on and it still says “Login failed… You can only use Spotify abroad for 14 days.”
Try the link again guys–looks like it works now.
Update: says “no longer available”. Spoke too soon.
Spotify’s web site once randomly started working for me here in Canada. I tried it out for a day. It … wasn’t very impressive. Rdio just seems superior in every possible way. Nice to have some competition here, but I doubt I’ll be switching over.
Came here to basically make the same comment. I absolutely love Rdio. I use it very often and I have discovered a LOT of awesome music through their Heavy Rotation and New Releases pages. I don’t remember liking Spotify as much when I did try it, but it was a long time ago, I don’t think I even liked the Rdio experience at that time. I’ll give Spotify one more shot, but it would take something significant to get me to switch from Rdio.
I JUST cancelled my Spotify account because I found Deezer. I got sick of transferring money into a US paypal account. I’ll be switching back to Spotify when available. I find Spotify has really good support and I love the app. Anyone who says they prefer Rdio… Why??
Damn, Deezer is awesome.
Honestly, the only reason I got into Rdio was because at the time I signed up (late 2012) it was the only on-demand streaming service I could find that was available in Canada. For me, building a virtual collection of artists/albums and listening to what I want, when I want, is important. Streaming random playlists doesn’t cut it. As far as I know, Rdio is still the only on demand service available in Canada. I do think it’s worth the $10/month (be sure to sign up on Rdio’s website, not through the iOS app, otherwise you’ll be charged $15/mo thanks to Apple taking its cut), the app is very nice looking, good interface, easy to add songs to your collection or create/modify playlists, add songs to a running queue, or see what’s trending in the community. You can also follow users but I don’t have many friends using the service. Rdio has nice integration with Shazam so if you identify a track using Shazam, you can instantly link to the song in Rdio. My only quibble with Rdio is how some albums show “unavailable”, likely because of licensing deals in Canada. But for the most part any song I search for is available to me. I seem to recall a recent article that listed total song counts for the various streaming services, Rdio was right up there with Spotify/Pandora/etc.
Thanks for the article Gary. For those who live outside US and want to access Spotify, you can use UnoTelly as I do to get around the geo block.