Spotify to launch in 80 new markets across Asia, Africa, Caribbean, Latin America – CNET

Angela Lang/CNET

Spotify said Monday it will expand significantly to more than 80 new markets across Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and Europe over the next few days, a rollout that would expand its availability to more than a billion people around the world. The company will also make Spotify available in 36 new languages, including Romanian, Hindi and Swahili, so it supports more than 60 languages total.

It is Spotify’s broadest expansion to date, bringing the service to a total of more than 180 markets. All the new markets are listed at the end of this article.

Spotify at the moment is available across about half of the world, “but there are still millions of creators and billions of listeners who don’t yet have access to Spotify,” CEO Daniel Ek said, adding that more details would be released shortly.

The new Spotify countries will have the ability to sign up for free and paid Premium plans; in select markets, Spotify will offer Individual, Family, Duo and Student Plan options too. It will be available on mobile and with its desktop web player, with some exceptions. The company will work with partners to introduce Spotify on more platforms, including TVs, speakers, wearables and cars in the coming months.

Listeners will be able to select and search from Spotify’s worldwide catalog — one that may be limited by licensing rights, but Spotify said it “will continuously work with local rights holders and partners to expand its catalog to include more local offerings.” In the majority of these markets, Spotify will launch with its full podcast catalog, with some exceptions. For the others, the company said it would will work with local partners to introduce more podcasts.

The news came out of Spotify‘s Stream On event, intended to reveal how the streaming-music giant wants to improve both creator and fan experiences on its service. Monday’s two-hour virtual event was expected to release news both for listeners of Spotify and for audio creators using the service. The company revealed it will launch HiFi, a new subscription tier for high-quality audio, in select markets later this year.

On Monday, Spotify said that its expansion into new local markets would work to make the service available as quickly as possible in as many places as possible, so some markets will launch with a core library of content and features that will evolve over time.

Spotify, the biggest streaming service by both listeners and subscribers, hasn’t held one of these events since 2018 when it overhauled its free mobile tier. It amped up what you could hear with a free account, unlocking on-demand songs that previously were available only to paying customers. Changes like those, and Spotify’s obession with expanding into podcasts of late, have vaulted the company to 345 million listeners and 155 million paying subscribers as of the end of last year.

Spotify’s new markets will be Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Curaçao, Djibouti, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lesotho, Liberia, Macau, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Micronesia, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Check CNET’s full coverage of Spotify’s event.