The news was announced today on the Spotify blog.
The "paying" is the key here -- as Spotify has 10 million subscribers across the U.K., Finland, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Spain (that means that about 9 million use the free service).
The Swedish music-streaming service provides users with unlimited streaming of songs (on-demand) from major and indie labels, with more than 10 million tracks available. It has two kinds of subscriptions: free with ads, or paid sans ads.
For comparison's sake, Rhapsody -- the veritable grandfather of the music subscription sphere -- has 750,000 subscribers. Many other services such as MOG and Rdio decline to release details about their user bases.
This news comes at a time of possible change for the much buzzed-about service. For a while now, users in the U.S. have been waiting for the service to breach their borders, an event that could soon be on the horizon. There have been numerous reports of late that Spotify is close to or has already closed deals with major U.S. labels, and then there's the rumored (and supposedly sizable) funding round.
We wonder what effect this news will have, if any, on a possible U.S. expansion as well as the service's profitability -- the service apparently lost $26.7 million in 2009.