We may not have Netflix, but it looks like those of us in Indonesia will soon have access to the Internet’s other favorite streaming media service, Spotify.
Spotify lets users listen to an unlimited amount of commerical music from their incredibly vast library using a freemium model (premium subscriptions currently cost $9.99 per month in the US). Although there are numerous music streaming services, Spotify is the world leader with over 75 million active users. Although it is not available throughout much of Asia, our neighbors in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines already have access to it.
And soon, Indonesia will be joining them. The main piece of evidence for the service coming to Indonesia is a job listing on the Spotify website for a music editor in Indonesia. The job ad already seems to have been taken down on Spotify’s website (probably because they instantly got thousands of eager applicants), but you can still see the listing when you search for it on Google.
The Indonesia music editor listing was spotted by TechCrunch. A spokesperson for Spotify told TechCrunch that “the role is aimed at localizing the service’s ‘Browse’ feature for Asia, and the job description shows plenty of playlist curation, content creation and more.”
But as TechCrunch also writes, “… it clearly paves the way for a local launch, which we understand the company is close to doing.”
As additional evidence of an imminent Indonesia launch, TechCrunch notes that our country has one of the biggest and fastest growing mobile markets in all of Asia, and that mobile users are a rapidly increasing segment of Spotify’s customer base.
We’d also like to note that Spotify could be a huge boon for Indonesian musicians, who still see their music pirated by their countrymen to an embarassing and detrimental degree. With an easy and affordable legal alternative to streaming their music, royalties to local artists could increase significantly.
And maybe, just maybe, if Spotify proves to be a hit here, Netflix will be next. Please? Pretty please?
