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Spotify officially launches today in South Africa, aiming to offer a revolutionary and unrivalled music experience tuned to one's personal taste, according to the company.

With a worldwide community of over 159 million users, Spotify offers the choice of a free ad-supported service, or an ad-free Premium subscription service. Users can listen for free, or alternatively upgrade to Spotify Premium for R59.99 per month. 

Spotify allows you to browse, discover, curate playlists, build your own music collection and share music with others. With a catalogue of over 35 million songs all available to both free users and subscribers, Spotify comes to South Africa offering the very best in both local and international music. 

“Spotify is very excited to announce our launch in South Africa today. We have had the continent in our sights for a while and are finally able to offer South African fans access to all the music they already love on Spotify, while helping them to enjoy, discover and share new music from both local and international artists simply and easily.” said Michael Krause, Spotify MD, EMEA.

Locally curated

Spotify says that it will deliver music for every taste and mood. South African users have instant access to a wide range of local playlists curated and regularly updated by their team of music experts. The playlists at launch include Hip Hop Juice, Top Hits South Africa, House Nation, iGqom Le and SA Gold, which will appear alongside millions of Spotify and fan-built international playlists.

A major feature of the Spotify service, according to the company, is its personalisation, which allows users to find the music they already enjoy, and help them discover new music and artists, based on their taste and listening patterns. When a new user joins Spotify, they are taken through a ‘Taste Onboarding’ process, which helps the platform quickly learn more about their music tastes. . 

Personalised discovery features including Daily Mix (a series of playlists combining one's favourite tracks with new songs Spotify thinks you’ll enjoy), Release Radar (a playlist of new music based on the artists users follow and listen to most, updated every Friday) and Discover Weekly (a playlist based on a user's unique listening habits). The latter is a feature that is currently available on the platform, but becuase of its dependence on machine learning, as well as frequent usage, will take a few days to appear on the app, says Spotfiy. 

Spotify also offers:

• Mood and genre playlist hubs: head to Browse to choose from wide range of hubs including Workout, Chill, Party, Focus, Gaming, Sleep, Dinner, Kids and many more.
• Automatic low bitrate streaming in South Africa: Spotify’s default setting for data streaming in South Africa is 24 kbps, designed for streaming when not on Wi-Fi.
• Offline listening for Premium users: simply ‘download’ your music to your mobile device or desktop. 
• High audio quality for Premium users – up to 320 kbps.
• Superior social features:
  • Unique sharing integration via Facebook and Twitter 
  • Share and make collaborative playlists within Facebook Messenger
  • Share your own playlists and favourite songs from the app and become an influencer in your own right
• Charts: Global streaming charts. South Africa charts coming soon. 
• Play everywhere: download the Spotify app on mobile, laptop and tablet
• Listen everywhere: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth speakers, Amazon Echo, Sonos,  Bose, TV, Google Chromecast, Sony PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 consoles, Microsoft Xbox, Samsung, Google Home, Waze, Carplay and many others. 
• Background play: the music never stops on your mobile, even when you run the app in the background.

Following the South Africa launch, and the launches today in Vietnam, Romania and Israel, and is now available in 65 markets worldwide.

To enjoy music the way you want it, download the app today via the Android or iOS app store or by heading to www.spotify.com.