European iTunes alternative Spotify land in App Store in some countries

Spotify, currently in beta but with over a million users, is an online music service with, according to Wikipedia, over 3.8 million tracks available for users to

This could be interesting news for Middle Eastern music fans but I wouldn’t hold my breath that Spotify will be available here anytime soon. When I try Spotify I just get this message (hope that will change soon):

Unfortunately, due to licensing restrictions we are not yet available in your country. We understand that you are currently in unknown country (your IP address …). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please contact us at support@spotify.com.

Many see Spotify as a serious iTunes competitor but Spotify’s Global Community Manager, Andres Sehr, said in an interview in The National that Spotify is more of a competitor to illegal downloading rather than iTunes. I think that makes sense especially since you can with Spotify you can store up to 3,333 songs on your iPhone for offline listening, according to Mashable.

In the free version Spotify plays ads in between songs. You can also subsribe for about $14 per month and then you get no ads and higher quality music at 320kbps.