People in the U.S. got their hands on Spotify Thursday — and it didn’t take long for them to post their thoughts about the European music service on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.

Today isn’t the first time celebrities have weighed in on Spotify, which was available in Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK before the U.S. launch.

In 2009, for example, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed his Facebook status to “Spotify is so good.” And in 2010, actress Demi Moore tweeted, “Spotify is the sh*t!”

Below is a sampling of reactions from celebrities, media and other users. How do you feel about Spotify so far?

[View the story "Spotify Users' Reactions" on Storify]

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The people at Klout headquarters recently got a sneak peek at Spotify — the highly praised European music service that launched in the U.S. today — and now they’re giving away 100,000 invites via their Klout Perks platform.

Klout users can check whether they have a high enough Klout score to nab an invite here.

If you qualify for the Klout Perk, you will be dubbed a “U.S Spotify Ambassador” and receive a code to launch your Spotify account. Additionally, if you get five friends to sign up for Klout, you will receive a one-month trial of Spotify’s premium version.

Klout is just one brand boosting Spotify’s profile in the U.S. As one of Spotify’s first advertisers, Chevrolet handed out 150,000 invites on its Facebook Page. Coca-Cola, Sprite, Motorola, Reebok, Sonos and The Daily also are launch partners and will release Spotify campaigns within the next few months.

Not quite sure what Spotify is? Watch this video to learn more about the music service:

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After months of speculation and rumors, much-lauded European music service Spotify is available in the U.S. with all four major labels on board.

Starting Thursday morning, folks in the U.S. are be able to sign up for both paid tiers of Spotify’s service: $4.99 per month for its unlimited, ad-free service, and $9.99 per month for the premium, mobile service.

Its free service, which limits listening somewhat, will roll out to users via invites in the next few weeks.

“We want to see how it goes,” says Ken Parks, chief content officer at Spotify. “It’s not unusual for services to do so. We want to test it, let users play with it.”

The service will be available on all the platforms that currently feature it in Europe — iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows Phone and Palm — as well as consumer electronics devices like Sonos.

Upon launch, Spotify will be the only free, on-demand service available in the U.S. on mobile and desktop (Slacker Radio does have a free tier, but not for on-demand listening), which will definitely make it enticing to users.

“Spotify is simply a better experience,” Parks says when asked how Spotify feels going into a market already crowded with music subscription services. “It’s lightning fast. It’s dead simple to use. We’ve made it very easy to share music. And we’ve made it extremely easy to share your collection with friends. Free is also pretty great value.”

Parks says that Spotify aims to capitalize on buzz around the product at launch in order to drive awareness. Recently, All Things Digital unearthed marketing documents that indicate that Spotify is extremely optimistic about projected membership numbers, aiming to garner 50 million U.S. users in one year.

Spotify has 1 million paying subscribers across the UK, Finland, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Spain, so the 50 million number seems a little inflated. Still, the service’s integration with Facebook will help drive awareness to its existence, as shared music begins to show up across users’ social streams.

Parks was mum when it came to rumors that Spotify and Facebook are teaming up to launch a streaming music service. “It’s not secret that we have worked together in the past and have a great relationship,” he says. “We continue to work together and have a great relationship.”

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After months of speculation and rumors, much-lauded European music service Spotify is available in the U.S. with all four major labels on board.

Starting Thursday morning, folks in the U.S. are be able to sign up for both paid tiers of Spotify’s service: $4.99 per month for its unlimited, ad-free service, and $9.99 per month for the premium, mobile service.

Its free service, which limits listening somewhat, will roll out to users via invites in the next few weeks.

“We want to see how it goes,” says Ken Parks, chief content officer at Spotify. “It’s not unusual for services to do so. We want to test it, let users play with it.”

The service will be available on all the platforms that currently feature it in Europe — iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows Phone and Palm — as well as consumer electronics devices like Sonos.

Upon launch, Spotify will be the only free, on-demand service available in the U.S. on mobile and desktop (Slacker Radio does have a free tier, but not for on-demand listening), which will definitely make it enticing to users.

“Spotify is simply a better experience,” Parks says when asked how Spotify feels going into a market already crowded with music subscription services. “It’s lightning fast. It’s dead simple to use. We’ve made it very easy to share music. And we’ve made it extremely easy to share your collection with friends. Free is also pretty great value.”

Parks says that Spotify aims to capitalize on buzz around the product at launch in order to drive awareness. Recently, All Things Digital unearthed marketing documents that indicate that Spotify is extremely optimistic about projected membership numbers, aiming to garner 50 million U.S. users in one year.

Spotify has 1 million paying subscribers across the UK, Finland, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Spain, so the 50 million number seems a little inflated. Still, the service’s integration with Facebook will help drive awareness to its existence, as shared music begins to show up across users’ social streams.

Parks was mum when it came to rumors that Spotify and Facebook are teaming up to launch a streaming music service. “It’s not secret that we have worked together in the past and have a great relationship,” he says. “We continue to work together and have a great relationship.”

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After months of speculation and rumors, much-lauded European music service Spotify is coming to the U.S. with all four major labels on board.

Starting tomorrow morning, folks in the U.S. will be able to sign up for both paid tiers of Spotify’s service: $4.99 per month for its unlimited, ad-free service, and $9.99 per month for the premium, mobile service.

Its free service, which limits listening somewhat, will roll out to users via invites over the next few weeks, as we heard earlier this week.

“We want to see how it goes,” says Ken Parks, chief content officer at Spotify. “It’s not unusual for services to do so. We want to test it, let users play with it.”

The service will be available on all the platforms that currently feature it in Europe — iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows Phone and Palm — as well as consumer electronics devices like Sonos.

Upon launch, Spotify will be the only free, on-demand service available in the U.S. on mobile and desktop (Slacker Radio does have a free tier, but not for on-demand listening), which will definitely make it enticing to users.

“Spotify is simply a better experience,” Parks says when asked how Spotify feels going into a market already crowded with music subscription services. “It’s lightning fast. It’s dead simple to use. We’ve made it very easy to share music. And we’ve made it extremely easy to share your collection with friends. Free is also pretty great value.”

Parks says that Spotify aims to capitalize on buzz around the product at launch in order to drive awareness. Recently, All Things Digital unearthed marketing documents that indicate that Spotify is extremely optimistic about projected membership numbers, aiming to garner 50 million U.S. users in one year.

Currently, Spotify has one million paying subscribers across the U.K., Finland, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Spain, so the 50 million number seems a little inflated. Still, the service’s integration with Facebook will help drive awareness to its existence, as shared music begins to show up across users’ social streams.

Parks was mum when it came to rumors that Spotify and Facebook are teaming up to launch a streaming music service. “It’s not secret that we have worked together in the past and have a great relationship,” he says. “We continue to work together and have a great relationship.”

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Word on the digital street is that much-lauded European music subscription service Spotify will land on U.S. shores this week.

Our sources in the music industry told us Spotify won’t open the floodgates all at once: The service will execute a slow launch, giving pre-existing members invites to distribute.

Last week, our collective American heart skipped a beat when the company posted a landing page declaring that “the award-winning music service that’s taken Europe by storm will soon be landing on US shores.”

Others have speculated that Spotify will land in the U.S. this week.

The U.S. launch of Spotify has appeared imminent for months, with the company closing a $100 million round of funding and reportedly securing licensing deals with UMG, EMI and Sony.

Our sources say Spotify has not yet confirmed a deal with Warner Music Group, but they say that the service is meeting with the label staff to talk about marketing, so the deal seems nearly sealed. Last week, documents detailing Spotify’s launch plans leaked, revealing that the service plans to rely on Facebook to garner buzz for the brand.

What do you think? Will we be getting our hands on Spotify this week? If so, will you make the switch even if you’re already patronizing a music subscription service?

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Spotify’s stateside launch seems imminent; the wildly popular European music service put up a landing page announcing its U.S. move earlier this week, and now new details are emerging about how it plans to make it in America.

All Things Digital has got its hands on a juicy collection of marketing materials that Spotify has been showing to potential advertisers. It seems the subscription service will be relying on Facebook and media buzz to attract users at launch, which is rumored to be later this month.

According to the slides All Things D obtained, Spotify claims that at launch “150 million Facebook users will start to see Spotify in their feeds. One click and they can have Spotify.”

There has been talk about Facebook and Spotify partnering on a streaming music service. But the language in these slides seems to suggest that the service aims to capitalize on good, old-fashioned Facebook integration to garner new users, as opposed to creating a Facebook-native service.

Rather than spending money on advertising, Spotify plans to score new users via the copious amounts of press that its launch is sure to spawn. (Mashable will be covering it, naturally, along with every other tech and music outlet on the block.)

All in all, Spotify hopes to garner 50 million U.S. users in one year. As All Things D points out, this is a lofty goal considering Spotify just hit one million subscribers in Europe.

Spotify is also offering advertisers the chance to build music apps on their sites and Facebook Pages with help from its API, according to the slides.

Projected U.S. Success

Spotify foresees 50 million U.S. users in the first year.

Custom Programs & Facebook Integration

Spotify sees viral potential in Facebook integration, and offers advertisers the chance to use its API to create apps and players.

Launch Strategy

Looks like they’re banking on buzz.

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Is the European music streaming service Spotify finally ready to come to the United States? When U.S. Web users visit Spotify.com they see the above image along with a field below the banner where a they can enter an email address to request an invite.

Haven’t we seen this before, though? Spotify has been rumored to be coming to the shores of the New World for at least two years. It made waves at SXSW in 2010 with a rumored launch in the third quarter last year. That never panned out. Spotify inked a deal with with Sony in January of this year and as of mid-June it had deals with three of the four major U.S. music labels. The only hold-out was Warner Music. Has Spotify reached an agreement with Warner and cleared the final hurdle to bringing the service to the U.S.?

Sponsor

Spotify raised $100 million in mid-June and the question whether a U.S. launch was imminent. That appears to be the case, if the banner can be believed.

Spotify will likely be a freemium service in the U.S. just like it is in Europe. Users have a set amount of music they can listen to for free before bumping into a ceiling where they would have to pay. Spotify changed its terms of service in April, lowering the amount of music users can listen to for free. Users can listen to 20 hours of music per month for the first six months. After that, the limit is lowered to 10 hours.

Will that type of plan work in the U.S. where the music-streaming landscape is much more crowded and competitive? Pandora is a free music streaming service that recently had an IPO. MOG and Rdio are both streaming services that cost $10 a month and allow for customizable playlists. Spotify has a lot of cool features but will it be enough to win the hearts and minds of American users? Let us know in the poll below.

Discuss

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Spotify, the European music subscription service, is exclusively partnering with Virgin Media, making Virgin the only digital entertainment provider in the UK to feature Spotify across multiple services.

This partnership will make Spotify‘s 13 million songs available to Virgin Media customers online, via mobile or on their TVs.

New and existing Virgin Media customers will be able to choose one of Spotify’s tiered pricing options: the unlimited service (£4.99 per month) or Spotify Premium (£9.99) — special offers will be available upon signup. Existing Spotify users will be able to access their accounts via Virgin Media, but anyone using Spotify’s free service will reportedly have to shell out some cash to access Spotify via connected TVs.

Photo courtesy of Flickr, Andreas Blixt

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CEO Daniel Ek says on the Spotify blog, “Listening to the music you want to hear, wherever you want it, just got a whole lot simpler – and cheaper.Your playlists are special to you. You’ve spent untold hours putting together your own mix-tape masterpieces on your computer and want to take them with you, but without the trouble of having to buy each track separately, switching music players or breaking the bank? Then look no further. Spotify’s new MP3 download service makes it possible to own your playlists in one easy step. By introducing a range of MP3 bundles, we’ve been able to offer you some of the most competitive prices available – from as little as 50p per song.”

Of course the U.S. is still waiting for Spotify to make its way over here. Spotify is quite popular in Europe, but has some licensing issues to work out before it can work here. The issues have been lingering for quite some time. Ek said at SXSW last year, that there could be slight changes made to Spotify for an American release if that happens.

In recent weeks it was reported that Google was in talks with Spotify as a potential partner on its own stalled music service. It’s unclear what’s happening with that at this point, but one thing that is clear is that Google loves to compete directly with Apple.

Google has also reportedly hit some snags in the licensing department.

Spotify also launched an app for iPhone and Android to allow users to download their MP3 playlists and sync them to their phones.

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CEO Daniel Ek says on the Spotify blog, “Listening to the music you want to hear, wherever you want it, just got a whole lot simpler – and cheaper.Your playlists are special to you. You’ve spent untold hours putting together your own mix-tape masterpieces on your computer and want to take them with you, but without the trouble of having to buy each track separately, switching music players or breaking the bank? Then look no further. Spotify’s new MP3 download service makes it possible to own your playlists in one easy step. By introducing a range of MP3 bundles, we’ve been able to offer you some of the most competitive prices available – from as little as 50p per song.”

Of course the U.S. is still waiting for Spotify to make its way over here. Spotify is quite popular in Europe, but has some licensing issues to work out before it can work here. The issues have been lingering for quite some time. Ek said at SXSW last year, that there could be slight changes made to Spotify for an American release if that happens.

In recent weeks it was reported that Google was in talks with Spotify as a potential partner on its own stalled music service. It’s unclear what’s happening with that at this point, but one thing that is clear is that Google loves to compete directly with Apple.

Google has also reportedly hit some snags in the licensing department.

Spotify also launched an app for iPhone and Android to allow users to download their MP3 playlists and sync them to their phones.

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Music lovers rejoice (tentatively); according to recent reports, popular European music service Spotify could finally be coming to America.

According to the New York Post, “two music-industry sources” report that Spotify is very close to signing a deal with Sony Music and has also linked up with another label, which the Post does not name. We’ve reached out to Sony and Spotify; while we’ve yet to hear from the latter, Sony offers no comment.

U.S. citizens have been waiting for a stateside launch with bated breath for a while now — we hoped for it during last year’s SXSW, saw it delayed back in July due to negotiations with record labels and finally saw 2010 roll into 2011, sans Spotify.

According to several sources, the rub is this: U.S. labels just don’t feel comfortable with the freemium model, therefore, they want high cash advances. Consequently, Spotify reportedly balked at fronting the money.

The labels’ hesitation is understandable — Spotify is not a straight-up subscription service. Users are privy to all-you-can-eat music for free, if they don’t mind dealing with ads (you can pay to nix the advertisements) — and, let’s face it, most of us would deal with ads to get unlimited free music.

Also, Spotify isn’t exactly raking in the dollars; it lost $26.7 million in 2009.

We’re interested to see if this deal actually comes to fruition, as it would pose a direct threat to services like MOG, Rhapsody and Rdio, which require a user to pay a monthly fee for on-demand content.

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Continue reading: Is Apple In Talks to Buy Spotify? [Spotify Almost Bought By Google Now Targeted By Apple?]

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We’ve been reading reports tonight that the popular European music service Spotify has hit yet another delay in making an entry in the U.S. market.

According to Billboard, Spotify’s negotiations with U.S. record labels have broken down and are “back to square one.” Apparently, the startup is still aiming for a 2010/early 2011 U.S. launch, but there’s no telling how long label negotiations could take or if they will be successful at all.

When we last heard from Spotify CEO Daniel Ek at SXSW 2010, he projected a Q3 U.S. launch and the unveiling of several new mobile applications. And while the service’s social and music features just keep getting better, the company is actually farther from a U.S. debut than they were this spring.

In Europe, Spotify operates under a freemium model. Users can get unlimited streaming music in an ad-supported interface. Users can also choose to pay for an ad-free experience that also includes mobile access. But elements of this model have been sources of contention for the major record labels stateside, notably Warner Music Group, according to Billboard’s sources.

In the meantime, Spotify competitors abound — Pandora in particular stands out as having been able to navigate political and record-label hurdles to keep itself operational and profitable. And Google and Apple are both rumored to be working on streaming music solutions, too.

Perhaps the larger question is whether American music lovers will still care about Spotify once it finally comes to our shores… if, indeed, it ever makes it here.

What do you think: Will Spotify’s leadership be able to play nicely with American record labels and launch their highly anticipated app in the U.S. this year? How about next year? Feel free to share your speculations in the comments.

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Popular European music streaming startup Spotify has been able to survive and thrive in a tough market that has seen its fair share of startup casualties. In an effort to maintain its growth, it has announced the largest upgrade since it first launched in 2008.

The goal: turn Spotify into a “total music management platform“. The means: a hefty dose of social features.

These social features include:

• Facebook integration. Spotify users can now import their Facebook friends and can view the music their friends have posted to Facebook.
• An inbox. To encourage more interaction, Spotify has added an ‘inbox‘ feature that allows users to send tracks to their friends with just a few clicks.
• Public profiles. With public profiles, it’s easy for Spotify members to give others the ability to view their activity on the service.
• Playlist updates. These include a “popularity count” feature and playlist update tracking.
• Track replacement. If a friend in another country sends a track that can’t be streamed in your location, Spotify will try to find a replacement.

There’s an obvious common thread running through all of the social features: discovery. Music is in many ways very social. Chances are your friends have similar musical tastes, and that they’ve introduced you to some of your favorite music.

While Spotify’s new social features are just that — features — they have the potential to make the service infinitely more useful and interesting. That, of course, would not only be a good thing for users, but for Spotify. Earlier this year, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek stated:

If we can enable sharing of music on the internet, that application is
going to be huge. That could be bigger than uploading your photos on
the internet. Hundreds of millions of people want to share music with
their friends . . . It would be as big if not bigger than what Facebook
or Twitter is. Our ambition is to be one of those players that drives
that.

Needless to say, Spotify has big goals. And it will reasonably need to realize some of them if it hopes to win over record labels, many of whom still have good reason to be quite skeptical.

Photo credit: Jon Åslund via Flickr.