Spotify's US launch: three tiers, free is currently invite-only

Update: The US launch has officially happened, though you wouldn’t necessarily know it by looking at Spotify’s website. According to the company’s e-mailed press release, the tiers of service are indeed the same as those in the UK, with the unlimited tier at $4.99 and the premium tier at $9.99. The company is slowly handing out invitations for the free service, but there is a way to bypass the wait for an invitation: get out your wallet and subscribe to one of the paid tiers.

Original story: Don’t look now, but music service Spotify will be available to US residents starting Thursday, July 14. The company announced its… planned announcement on Wednesday, saying that it would provide further details about its US offerings at 8am EDT on Thursday. The company is currently accepting requests for invitations on its website.

Spotify’s streaming music and subscription service has long been popular among many of our friends in Europe since its launch in late 2008, and has been aiming for a US launch for nearly as long. (Our sister site Wired spoke highly about Spotify in 2009, describing it as “a magical version of iTunes in which you’ve already bought every song in the world.”)

The holdup on the US launch has apparently been due to licensing concerns with the record labels—much of the Spotify-related news cycle over the last several months has been made up of rumors about Spotify signing deals with this label or the other. Even in Europe, Spotify has reportedly clashed a bit with the labels, which resulted in the company cutting back on some of its free music offerings due to supposed pressure from the music industry.

Now the day has finally come—or will come tomorrow, that is—for those in the US to find out why folks in Europe seem to love Spotify so much. Because Spotify chose not to actually announce the details when sending out its PR e-mails, however, no further information is yet available as to what may or may not be included in the service. Here’s what’s currently available in the UK though: Spotify’s three tiers of free, unlimited, and premium music. The free tier lets you stream 10 hours of music per month with ads (and unlimited local music), while the unlimited tier offers unlimited ad-free streams, and the premium tier offers all of that plus offline mode and access from your mobile phone. We can only assume that the service structure will be the same for US customers, but we’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out for sure.