{"id":4951,"date":"2015-02-04T07:09:24","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T07:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/skylight.gr\/administrator_wordpress\/index.php\/2015\/02\/04\/spotify-refuses-to-start-operation-in-russia-and-fires-head-of-russias-office\/"},"modified":"2015-02-04T07:09:24","modified_gmt":"2015-02-04T07:09:24","slug":"spotify-refuses-to-start-operation-in-russia-and-fires-head-of-russias-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/2015\/02\/04\/spotify-refuses-to-start-operation-in-russia-and-fires-head-of-russias-office\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotify refuses to start operation in Russia and fires head of Russia&#8217;s office"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/4\/44\/Daniel_Ek_addressing_Spotify_staff.jpg\/220px-Daniel_Ek_addressing_Spotify_staff.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>Spotify, one of the world&#8217;s largest internet music services, has  abandoned its start-up in Russia and fired the head of its Russian  office, according to the message of Alexander Kubaneishvili, the former  head of the office, for the Russian partners (the TASS has a copy of  this message). &#8220;I regret to say that Spotify has refused to <a href=\"http:\/\/itar-tass.com\/en\/economy\/774807#\" title=\"Click to Continue &gt; by BestSaveForYou\">start business<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cdncache-a.akamaihd.net\/items\/it\/img\/arrow-10x10.png\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a> in Russia in the nearest future. There are several reasons for that:  the economic recession, the political situation, new laws controling  (the use of) the internet,&#8221; Kubaneishvili said.  <!--more-->  <\/p>\n<p>Kubaneishvili confirmed to TASS the reliability of the  message,\u00a0adding that he was no longer the head of the Russian office of  Spotify as of Monday. &#8220;My last official working day is February, 12.  Speaking for myself, I can only confirm the fact that indeed, there will  be no start-up\u00a0in the nearest future,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>Spotify headquarters has not given any comment on the spot.\u00a0The  company&#8217;s office in Russia will also be closed down, according to a  source close to the company&#8217;s plans.<\/p>\n<p>Spotify could start operating in Russia in the beginning of 2015 as  TASS previously reported. For that purpose, Spotify negotiated in the  second half of 2014 with the Russian Vimpelcom communications provider  on starting partnership, according to media.<\/p>\n<p>Founded by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon in 2006, Sweden-based  Spotify is a service for online legal music tracks playback. You can use  the service for free with ads or pay $10 per month. At present, the  service has 15 million paying subscribers and 60 million free users. The  company offices are in Australia, Europe, Turkey, USA, Hong Kong,  Mexico and Singapore. Spotify has contractual agreements with such  companies as Universal Music Group, Sony Music, EMI, Warner Music,  Merlin, The Orchard. The DST investment fund owned by Russian investor  Yury Milner is one of Spotify&#8217;s shareholders.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Source: Tass<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spotify, one of the world&#8217;s largest internet music services, has abandoned its start-up in Russia&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}