Spotify has reached over 1 million US subscribers, 16 months after its launch in the US. This takes Spotify's total base of paying customers to 5 million, up from 4 million in July, the company announced at a press event in New York, reported the Financial Times. The growth puts Spotify in line with Rhapsody, the US-based digital music service launched in 2011, which claims the US market lead with around 1 million subscribers. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek also announced that its total payments to record labels and other industry bodies doubled in the last nine months to USD 500 million. This was driven by higher user numbers, more advertising inventory and "a higher propensity" among users to convert to paying subscribers, he said. New features to aid music discovery, unveiled at the event and recently tested with subscribers, had increased some users' activity on Spotify threefold, Elk said. The event also saw the appearance of Metallica, which has agreed to license its catalogue to Spotify. The deal was announced with an onstage reconciliation between Metallica and Sean Parker, the Spotify investor and director whose Napster file-sharing service was sued by the heavy metal band in 2000.
