Last week, it was reported that Virgin Media was close to signing deals with Spotify and four major record labels as part of its plan to launch a subscription music service. Now, Virgin and Spotify have officially announced a new partnership that will offer Spotify’s streaming service across multiple platforms.
According to Paid Content, the service will allow Spotify users to listen to its streaming music library online, over mobile phones, or through digital TV set-top boxes via Virgin’s TiVo service. For now, Virgin will have an exclusive lock-down on the service, which, according to the press release, will have a full launch “in the coming months.”
Leading up to the launch, Virgin will offer deals for Spotify’s paid products like Spotify Unlimited, an online-only, ad-free service; and Spotify Premium, which allows users to access their Spotify libraries on their mobile phones. Virgin also said that it will offer “exclusive features and content,” although it didn't go into details as to what those will be. Prices for the service haven’t been announced, either.
Virgin already has a booming fiber optic broadband service but is lagging in fifth place as a mobile provider, and is hoping that the Spotify service will attract more triple-play bundled subscriptions, says Paid Content. The deal is also a “key move” for Spotify to continue to expand its user base to the more mainstream public.
It turns out that Virgin also already has “a music service of sorts” for mobile, called PushLife, which was purchased by Google last April. A Virgin Media spokesperson told PaidContent that the PushLife service will continue alongside the company’s new Spotify service.
