What is the record industries problem with this service here in the U.S. if they already allowed the service in Europe for 3 years (it's the same labels)? I'm guessing the labels wanted Spotify to get rid of the free service and charge probably $100/month for the basic service. I swear, the recording industry won't be content until everyone pays them a monthly stipend just to keep the industry alive, and at that point, they probably won't even be producing music anymore, just taking our money.
Still, I remember paying for Yahoo Music some time ago, it was nice (online, offline, synch to certain devices), but I didn't find myself listening to enough different music to justify the cost. I guess my own tastes are too specific. Besides, online streaming? That was more practical in the days of dial-up than it is with today's ridiculous data capping here in the U.S. How quickly will spotify (or pandora or Amazon Cloud of Google Cloud or Apple iCloud) eat up your phone's data plan? Albums in 260kbps quality seem to be around 100+MB a piece, so you get about what, 20-hours of listening before you hit your 2GB limit with AT&T, good luck with that.