[kuschku]

There's literally a section on the Wikipedia article detailling how it launched in a handful of countries, expanded to the US, and only then expanded to most of the EU:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify#Geographic_availabilit...

Spotify launched in Sweden, Finland, France, Norway, Spain, followed by the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

After the US expansion, Spotify finally expanded to Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Switzerland

That means Spotify launched for 222 million europeans, expanded to 300 million US-americans, before becoming available for the remaining 281 europeans.

You'd never see a US company launching e.g. only for Washington, Oregon, California and Nevada, expanding to China, and only afterwards become available in the remaining states.

[troupo]

They launched in 7 countries before launching in the US. In the same year as they launched in the US they also launched in 4 other countries.

In 2012, after their "expansion" in the US they had five times as many paying users outside the US as in the US.

[kuschku]

I edited the comment with a few more numbers, if you'd like to re-read it.

[troupo]

> Which is why Spotify became available in Sweden, the US, and the rest of the EU in that order.

All that matters is the original comment: "Which is why Spotify became available in Sweden, the US, and the rest of the EU in that order."

Where reality is Spotify became available in 7 countries before attempting to expand in the US.

Which is, funnily, what you literally wrote in your edit:

> That means Spotify launched for 222 million europeans, expanded to 300 million US-americans, before becoming available for the remaining 281 europeans.

Edit Where by "expanded to the US" is literally "failed to capture any significant market for a long time"

[kuschku]

> Edit Where by "expanded to the US" is literally "failed to capture any significant market for a long time"

Sure, but they still decided to expand to the US, despite a worse outlook, before expanding to the remaining EU countries. As said, you'd never see a US company do that.

[troupo]

The US is a large, rich homogeneous market with a population of over 300 million. There's no wonder foreign companies want to get a foothold in this market, and it's no wonder US companies don't tend to look outside of the US until there's nothing to do in the US.

I don't think anyone disagrees about that.

[kuschku]

Sure, but that's exactly my point: The primary factor limiting EU startups isn't regulation, it's that they don't have access to a large, homogeneous, monolinguistic market