Spotify launches in the United States

Why it matters

July 14, 2011. Spotify launched its on-demand streaming service in the United States, after roughly four years of operating in Sweden and parts of Europe. The launch came after multi-year negotiations with the major US labels over royalty terms. The consequences for hip-hop over the next decade were substantial. Streaming would, by 2015, be the dominant US music-consumption format, and by 2017 it would be how the Billboard charts measured success (the move from album-sales-only to consumption-based equivalent units, in 2014, was driven by streaming). The release patterns of major-label rap shifted accordingly: from quarterly album cycles to surprise drops, deluxe re-releases, single-first strategies, and the gaming of the streaming-equivalent-units rules through track-list inflation (Drake's Scorpion, with 25 tracks, was the famous example). The whole 2020s rap industry runs on the assumptions that Spotify's 2011 US launch made possible. You can argue the streaming model has been a mixed deal for artists (the per-stream rates are low). You cannot argue that it reshaped the industry. It did.