It is official: Spotify is now available in Japan and songs come with lyrics for music fans to sing along to.
After years and years of an imminent launch, Spotify has finally debuted in Japan, which happens to be one of the world's biggest music markets. This is a good move for Spotify Ltd. given that Japan has a lucrative market for CDs - even vinyl records, which are very rare today. This might be because Japan has not been into streaming music compared to how much the rest of world does.
'Freemium' music
Spotify announced today, Sept. 29, that they are the first "freemium" provider of music in Japan to give music lovers an access to their favorite songs from domestic and international article.
Daniel Ek, CEO and founder of Spotify, said that they are excited to launch their music service in Japan because it comes with a "unique" music experience that is all Japanese.
Spotify will provide an ad-free subscription service with full features and a free ad-supported music service for just 980 yen monthly. This translates to roughly $9.70 a month. Since Japanese people are fond of karaoke, Spotify also included the mobile lyrics feature. This way, consumers can see the lyrics while tracks are playing and sing along.
For invite-basis only
Unfortunately, the new Spotify in Japan is available only on an invite basis. Basically, there is no way for a user to evaluate how comprehensive the Japanese Spotify library is. Unless they get their own invite of course. Users can go to Spotify's official website and request an invitation to access the Japanese site which has more than 40 million songs.
The lyrics feature is not something new for Spotify. They have supported lyrics for their service on desktops last year. However, it had to be disabled after ending their partnership with Musixmatch. Apple Music has a similar lyrics support with the iOS 10.
