REM album premiers on Spotify

The music streaming service’s 750,000 premium subscribers in the UK, Spain, Sweden, Norway, The Netherlands and Finland will be the first to hear the 12-track album, produced by Grammy Award-winning producer Jacknife Lee.

Will Hope, Spotify director label relations, said: "We want to give Spotify Premium users the very best exclusives and they don’t get much bigger than REM."

In addition Spotify is launching an online competition to give users the chance to win REM memorabilia, including a Fender Squier Stratocaster guitar, signed by Michael Stipe, Mike Mills and Peter Buck, and a special Spotify playlist compiled by the band.

Despite Spotify generating £11.3m in revenue in 2009, including subscription revenue of £6.8m and advertising revenue of £4.5m, its losses totalled £16.4m.

This month Spotify secured around $100m of new financing from Digital Sky Technologies (DST) and Kleiner Perkins, valuing the company at $1bn.

This article was first published on brandrepublic.com