Spotify signs deal to bring its service to the living room

Spotify has signed a deal to take its music-streaming service beyond the PC and into every room in the house, in a move to encourage more customers to pay for a monthly subscription.

Spotify will today announce a tie-up with Sonos, a company that specialises in wireless music systems. It will allow customers to play any of the eight million tracks on Spotify through Sonos speakers located anywhere in the house.

Only those customers who have signed up to Spotify's "Premium" subscription, which costs £9.99 a month, can use the service.

Spotify on Sonos will be available in the UK later this month. John MacFarlane, founder and chief executive of Sonos, said: "By partnering with a leading music streaming service like Spotify, we can now offer more of our customers the ultimate jukebox experience at home."

Sonos was described by one expert as "well-established among music lovers, although perhaps not so well known among the general public".

The deal marks the latest step in a hectic period of expansion for Spotify, as the chief executive and serial entrepreneur Daniel Ek works towards the company's long-awaited launch in the US, scheduled for some time before the end of the year.

Spotify has seven million users, but of those only 500,000 have signed up to the Premium account. The rest listen to music on the site for free, although they also have to listen to adverts. Marija Jaroslavskaja, analyst at Screen Digest, said: "It has an issue with converting people over to paying."

Yet she backed the latest deal, saying: "Every new device Spotify arrives on gives it a chance to convert more subscriptions.

"This deal is good news for the company because people are more likely to pay to bring music into their living room."

Spotify was set up in 2006 to offer a legal alternative to the explosion in music piracy. It has licensing deals with the major labels Universal, Warner, Sony and EMI.