Wired: Spotify set to take America by storm

The imminent US launch is getting some massive press. This piece in Wired is the best so far:

“We feel very comfortable, in that the labels want to see Spotify in the U.S.,” said Ek. “Our hope is to get something up and running before the end of the year. We get around a thousand e-mails a week from people in the U.S. who want access to Spotify, so we know that there’s a demand for the product. It is important for us, though, to figure out the best execution, as we are very serious about being able to monetize the content that we license.”

Part of the plan, he added, involves opening an office in New York for a sales team to set up advertising deals to fund the free version of Spotify. As for the monthly fees for the 10-euro per month premium version (U.S. price unknown), which does away with ads, improves the (Ogg Vorbis) audio stream to 320 Kbps and should soon let users access their Spotify playlists through their mobile phones (as predicted).

Further on, some interesting points about advertising, and a potential patent problem from using Ogg Vorbis audio:

In order to boost ad revenue for itself and for record labels during a soft economy, Ek says, Spotify will target users based on location and other factors. He adds that the program’s clean, uncluttered interface makes ads “pop” all the more. He also pointed to an idea that doubled the effectiveness of Spotify ads from 0.5 percent to 1 percent click-through — displaying an image ad corresponding to an audio ad that plays in between songs.

Another potential wrinkle is Spotify’s use of the open-source Ogg Vorbis codec, rather than a proprietary format like MP3 (95 percent of Spotify comes from open-source code, according to Ek). This could open the company to patent claims. As one of the creators of the Ogg Vorbis codec told us in 2007, many companies fear using the open-source codec because it could infringe on the MP3 patent, which encompasses such obvious compression techniques as dropping all frequencies outside the human hearing range.