After months of bombarding music fans and technology enthusiasts with prelaunch invites, Spotify officially enters the Canadian market on Tuesday.

Considered the global leader in music streaming, with more than 10 million subscribers in 58 countries worldwide, the company enters a market where some of competitors, including Rdio and Deezer, have been operating for years. That said, the company should benefit from curiosity and pent-up demand for a product that has long been available around the world.

“We spent a lot of time studying the market in Canada, and we know that Canada in terms of a music market is one of the most vibrant in the world, so we were really keen to treat this as not just another launch,” said Ken Parks, chief content and managing director, Spotify, in an interview last week. “We’re going to be launching with the most comprehensive Canadian music catalogue in the world.”

Parks cites deals with smaller local labels like Arts & Craft, Dine Alone, Nettwerk and several French-Canadian labels to appeal to the Francophone market. Signing those deals is one of the reasons the launch here was delayed, he said.

There was much speculation almost two years ago that Spotify was close to launching in Canada, signing deals with many of the major labels, but for some reason that process was put on hold.

“No comment,” said Parks asked to confirm the speculation. “I’ll tell you this ... It takes time to get into markets like this, and to make sure you have done everything right. When we launched in Europe in 2008, we had been negotiating for the better part of a year and a half, when we launched it the U.S. in 2011, we had been negotiating for 18 months to two years.”

Music streaming still faces criticism for the relatively small payout that artists get from services — on its site, the company said it pays between $0.006 and $0.0084 for a single play of a track —Parks combats the negative publicity by saying that Spotify has paid over $1 billion (U.S.) to artists, and reportedly 70 per cent of its total revenues go to royalty payments.

The company’s argument is all about volume, in that as more people pay for subscription services, the payouts will get higher, and recent numbers show that streaming is growing. Last week, the Recording Industry Association of America reported first half numbers for the year, with U.S. revenue for streaming-music services rising 28 per cent to $859 million compared with $673 million in the same period last year. In that same period, digital download service revenues, like Apple’s iTunes, were down 12 per cent in the U.S. to $1.3 billion.

Those growth numbers include all types of streaming services. The market includes subscription players like Spotify, Rdio, Deezer and streaming radio services like Sirius XM, or free services like Songza and Pandora, or in Canada, CBC Music as well as on-demand services like YouTube and Vevo. It is a crowded market, and those in the industry argue that many consumers don’t yet fully understand the benefits of these services.

“Increasingly, the lines are getting blurry between theses companies, especially as the services have offered more free options. That has helped to build more awareness about what the benefits are,” says Russ Crupnick, managing partner, MusicWatch. “But, I still think for many of them there still needs some education to be done. I think the real challenge is how you get somebody to pay the first dollar.”

With illegal downloading and free competitors out there, Spotify, which also has a free, ad-supported version, charges $10 for its premium subscription product, like many of its competitors. Recently one analyst suggested that perhaps a lower rate, closer to $3-4 a month might be necessary for wider adoption of subscription services.

“Whether or not this is the right price point still remains to be seen,” says Parks.

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“We think we have a great value proposition — all of the music in the world with you, anywhere on any device — for what it is really the price of couple of pints. At the same time, we do live in a world where there is infinite supply of music and where you can get it for free, be it radio, online or YouTube, or certainly, pirate sites.