In a blog post on the company newsroom website, the “world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service”, Spotify announced that it will be expanding its “international footprint” and bring its sound to 80+ new markets in the next coming days, including in Uganda.
“As part of our ongoing commitment to building a truly borderless audio ecosystem … Spotify is embarking on a sweeping expansion that will introduce the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service available to more than a billion people” reads the statement in part.
According to the statement, the 80+ countries being added to the count represent a billion people in the new markets, and with it will be 36 additional languages added to the platform in order to accommodate the new multilingual countries.
These new countries are from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and Latin America. The full list includes;
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.
Spotify will launch with free and premium plans allowing for family, duo and student plans offering a music catalog and podcasts to its new users. For the creators, the company promises to work with local creators and partners in order to expand their reach to global audiences with a “Spotify experience that meets the unique needs of each market”.
Previously and currently, any access to the platform in those countries has only been possible with VPN (Virtual Private Networks) that have widely been used in Uganda to access social media platforms that have continuously faced government shutdowns.
