[Edit -- Warning -- this is a joke. It is not true.]
STOCKHOLM AND MINNEAPOLIS, April 1, 2019 – Spotify, the leading global music streaming service, and JRiver, the world leader in music-based entertainment, today announced a new, multi-year global license agreement allowing Spotify users to access content on the JRiver’s CloudPlay service.
Under the agreement, the companies will advance their partnership to ensure that streaming realizes its full transformational potential for artists, labels and fans by delivering a comprehensive range of music experiences, providing more flexibility for new and old releases, and collaborating on innovative marketing campaigns across Spotify’s platform by leveraging user submitted content from JRiver’s CloudPlay service.
In making the announcement, Daniel Ek, Chairman and CEO of Spotify, said, “This partnership is built on a mutual love of music, creating value for artists and delivering for fans. We will be working together to help expand access to a much wider range of music through user submitted content while ensuring artists receive the financial recognition for their creative works. We know that not every album by every artist is currently available on Spotify, and we’ve worked hard with JRiver to develop a new, flexible access platform with CloudPlay that will see a dramatic increase in the range of content available. Starting today, subscribers will have access to the full range of content on the JRiver CloudPlay through their Spotify accounts. I want to thank Jim Hillegass for his leadership in everything we have done so far and in everything that we will do together to deliver on the promise of the new music economy for all the people who make music and all the people who love it.”
Jim Hillegass, Founder and CEO of JRiver, said, “Eight years ago, streaming provided low quality content under an unsustainable business model. Over the years, JRiver mocked services like Spotify. Nothing much has changed, except you can make a ton of money being acquired by or partnering with a streaming service. Today, we join the streaming revolution by converting all our user submitted lossless tracks to 128kbps MP3 so they can be enjoyed anywhere on mobile devices with cheap earbuds. Our challenge is convincing JRiver users that transforming their lossless tracks to low bandwidth streaming is secondary to the wide range of content they will now have access to. In a market this dynamic, one evolving more rapidly than ever before, success requires creative and continual re-evaluation of how best to bring artists’ music to fans. At JRiver, we’ve not only reimagined distribution models and technologies, but entire business models. The only constants must be great music and fair compensation for artists and creators. To that end, the long-term success of Spotify, and others like it, is essential to the ecosystem’s enduring health. I congratulate Daniel on Spotify’s continued growth and innovation, and I look forward to working together with him and his team to develop exciting new ways to connect artists and fans around the world and make JRiver a lot of coin.”
About SpotifySpotify is an award-winning digital music service that gives you on-demand access to over 30 million tracks. Our dream is to make all the world’s music available instantly to everyone, wherever and whenever you are. Spotify makes it easier than ever to discover, manage and share music with your friends, while making sure that artists get a fair deal.
Spotify is now available in 60 markets globally with more than 100 million active users, and over 50 million paying subscribers.
Since its launch in Sweden in 2008, Spotify has driven more than US$5bn to rights holders. Spotify is the biggest and most successful music streaming service of its kind globally.
www.spotify.comFor more information, images, or to contact the team, please head over to our press page at
http://press.spotify.com/About JRiver, IncJRiver builds networked media solutions for end users and corporate partners. Products include streaming, downloading, and subscription of audio and video content, unparalleled portable device support, P2P, DLNA, and DRM. For more information, please visit our Corporate Solutions page,
https://jriver.com/company.html JRiver also publishes Windows to Unix/Linux network connectivity software, with over two million users in 50 countries. The company markets its ICE product line through worldwide distribution. For information on connectivity products, please visit
www.icetcp.com JRiver was founded in 1981. Prior to that Jim made Wood Stoves. He still wishes he did.
Date: April 1, 2019