Spotify decided to enter the Russian market due to the law on personal data

Spotify , one of the most famous music services, decided not to enter the Russian market in 2015. Alexander Kubaneishvili, who was supposed to head the company's Russian office, confirmed this information. On Monday, he sent letters to potential partners of Spotify, in which he explained the company's decision to refuse to go to Russia. “There are several reasons - the economic crisis, the political situation, the new laws regulating the Internet,” the manager wrote.

A source close to Spotify clarified that in addition to the main cause, the economic crisis, the company was frightened by the new law on personal data, which obliges Russians to keep data on the territory of Russia from September 1, 2015. “Spotify is a cloud service that cannot work so that the personal data of Russians are stored in Russia, and the Swedes in Sweden,” he said. The service architecture is designed so that, in order to comply with the law, it will be necessary to change its device completely, and this will result in increased costs.

Spotify has been preparing to enter the Russian market since the beginning of 2014. Then Spotifay LLC was registered. Shortly thereafter, it was announced that Kubaneishvili would be responsible for the development of business in the local market. Prior to this, the manager was responsible for the advertising business and relationships with partners at Google, was engaged in online sales at Microsoft, was the director of sales at Gigafone Technologies.

Founded by the Swedes Daniel Eck and Martin Lorentzon in 2006, Spotify allows you to listen to music structured by catalogs and tags, as well as receive recommendations based on user preferences. The service is represented in 58 countries: its offices, in addition to European countries, are located in Australia, USA, Hong Kong, Mexico, and Singapore. Spotify partners include Universal Music Group, Sony Music, EMI, Warner Music, Merlin, and others. About 60 million people use the service.
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You can use part of the Spotify content for free in exchange for listening to an advertisement, and the full catalog is available for a subscription fee. The subscription fee, according to Spotify, is different in different countries, and the spread is very large - from $ 2.93 in the Philippines to $ 18.42 in Denmark. On average, a subscription costs about $ 7 per month, and at the current rate in Russia it would cost almost 500 rubles. In Russia, legal music listening services, such as Yandex.Music and Zvooq, offer a subscription fee of 150–200 rubles. per month.

There are several major players on the legal online music market in Russia - Yandex.Music, Zvooq, Guvera, Deezer.