Spotify Reaches One Million Paid Subscribers

There’s lots of music start-up news this week.

Spotify is throwing a party over at their blog. Company co-founder Daniel Ek announced in a post that the streaming service, which is not yet available in the U.S., has reached the 1 million paid user milestone. “It’s a testament to our fantastic users who continue to support us and spread the Spotify word,” writes Ek.

Rdio has news as well. On their blog, the San Francisco-based music subscription site has announced the launch of a desktop version of Rdio for Mac. Rdio users ($4.99 a month for web-only, $9.99 for web plus mobile) can now use the service from their computer without a browser. Rdio says a desktop version for Windows is coming soon.

The competition for innovative companies like Spotify and Rdio though is formidable. Sony announced the U.S. launch of their service Music Unlimited last month, which will leverage Sony’s large user base of network products like TVs and Playstations, but will not immediately offer mobile service. Music Unlimited also has a unique library-matching feature, which scans a computer’s hard drive for music and then recreates the library in the cloud.

MediaMemo supposes that if (and when) a Google music service launches, the product will likely be a music store with a “locker” feature, which will have the ability to store actual files in user’s library in the cloud. A Google music service is expected to be priced around $3 – a deep discount on the competing services, which have mostly weighed in around $10 a month.