On edition of Kommersant, the world's largest music streaming service Spotify is negotiating with several Russian mobile operators at once on cooperation as part of the launch of the service in Russia. As a possible date for the launch of Spotify in the Russian market, autumn 2020 is called.
As one of the interlocutors of the publication points out, cooperation with local telecom operators when entering new markets is a traditional strategy for Spotify. This allows the company to quickly access a large audience of potential customers, while saving on marketing.
Three sources of the Russian edition confirmed that Spotify is currently discussing the issue of cooperation with MTS. Previously, the company also negotiated with other operators and, most likely, it is unlikely to be limited to only one partner in Russia. The press service of Spotify has not yet commented on the situation. Other representatives of the "big four" operators are also silent so far.
MTS reported that so far there are no agreements with Spotify. At the same time, they noted that "this is a strong brand with which it would be potentially interesting to form a partnership." Now the total number of subscribers of MTS music services, including partner services, exceeds 1 million people. The operator is developing its own MTS Music service together with Yandex, and is also promoting Apple Music as part of the partnership.
According to one of the sources, MTS will be able to sell a subscription to the Spotify service as part of its tariffs. At the same time, experts note that it is still difficult to understand how MTS will be able to promote Spotify if it has its own service and partnership with Apple.
Spotify has postponed the launch of its service in Russia many times. The last reason was which prevented difficult negotiations with Russian representatives.
Spotify's biggest competitors in Russia are Yandex.Music, Apple Music, and Boom and VK Music owned by Mail.ru Group. By the end of 2019, the total audience of music streaming in Russia amounted to 7 million people. Experts predict that the volume of this market in Russia by the end of 2020 may reach 10,9 billion rubles.
Source: 3dnews.ru