The charts, which will update every Monday, feature both the top 50 most-streamed tracks of the week and the top 50 most-shared tracks of the week. They’re called the “Spotify 50″ and the “Social 50,” respectively.

“What’s so powerful about the streaming charts is they let you hear what people are really listening to, right now, and not just what they’re buying,” says content head Steve Savoca.

The widget, which is available here at charts.spotify.com, is customizable based on country and can be cycled back to reveal the top 50 tracks for the previous 4 weeks. Last month, Spotify expanded into Mexico and other parts of Asia and Europe, bringing the total countries under the umbrella to 28.

Here’s what the widget looks like. Notice the new global play counts, which will also appear on the desktop app.

Non-signed-in users will be able to browse the top tracks, but will have to log-in to their accounts in order to listen. It’s a great new way for Spotify to get more attention, and a cool way for music lovers to see what their country is currently obsessed with. This week in the U.S., it’s Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ “Can’t Hold Us,” Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky,” and Imagine Dragons’ “Radioactive.”

In March, Spotify announced that they currently have 6 million piad subscribers out of a total 24 million users. Earlier this month, Spotify bought music discovery app Tunigo.

The Verge reports that Google has signed a deal with Universal Music and Sony Music as part of its plans to debut a streaming music service at Google I/O today. The report also says that Google’s service would be much like Spotify – offering instant streaming of any song on desktop and mobile devices.

Now, the interesting part of this report says that Google is planning on launching two separate music subscription services for YouTube and Google Play Music. It’s no secret that YouTube has become a popular music player with many artists uploading songs to the service. A subscription-based music streaming service would also fit in well with Google’s latest attempt to monetize YouTube. For example, labels could use paid channels to offer entire albums on YouTube to subscribers.

As for Google Play Music, a report out of The New York Times says that Google won’t be offering a free, ad-supported tier of its streaming service. There’s no word on how much it will cost, but it’s said to be competitively priced. in other words, expect to pay about $10 a month for Google’s streaming service.

Even without a free option, Google’s streaming service is an important step in its continued path towards media domination. Apple has been a dominant force in music since the introduction of iTunes in 2001, and Google only started playing catch up with the introduction of Google Music in 2011. The introduction of a music streaming service would put Google ahead of Apple until the Cupertino-based company decides to debut its own rumored streaming service.

We’ll find out later today during Google’s opening I/O keynote if a music streaming service is in the cards for the company. We’ll be covering it live, of course, but you can watch Google’s live stream here. The keynote is slated to start at 9 a.m. PST/12 p.m. EST.

All Things D reports the buy, which is for an undisclosed amount. Tunigo is a music discovery app that is available on iPhone, Android, and as a Spotify app. Tunigo is playlist-focused, and features hand-curated selections from the Tunigo team as well as ones from the Tunigo community. Playlists are arranged based on moods, events, activities, and more interesting ways.

According to the report, all of Tunigo’s 20 or so employees will become part of Spotify’s team. The Tunigo apps should keep working as usual.

“The acquisition fits into our overall strategy around music discovery, basically helping our users make sense of over 20 million tracks,” a Spotify spokesman told GigaOm.

We mentioned Twitter because the social networking site just recently unveiled their own music discovery service, Twitter Music. That product came out of the acquisition of We Are Hunted, another music discovery app. It’s interesting that Spotify would make this purchase just a couple weeks after Twitter launched their new standalone service, don’t you think?

Today, many months later, Spotify has finally made it official.

“Exciting times! Today we’re thrilled to announce that we’re bringing a new world of music to eight new markets across the globe,” says Spotify.

Four of the eight new countries come from these regions: Mexico, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore. The other four are Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Iceland.

With the addition of these eight countries, Spotify is now available in 28 markets.

In March, we learned that Spotify had tacked on a million paid users in just three months. That brings the total to 6 million paid subscribers worldwide, out of 24 million total users. It took Spotify nearly a year to go from 3 million to 5 million piad subscribers, but just three months to go from 5 to 6. That’s the goal with these big expansions – to bring those paid subscribers even higher, even faster.

Spotify just launched its first ever ad campaign and updated their logo, too.

Yep, out with the old (left), and in with the new (right).

The new logo is definitely more straightforward and more mature looking. The “o” has been put back in line with the rest of the letters, and the font has been simplified.

Earlier this month, Spotify announced 6 million paid subscribers (out of 24 million total users). That was an increase of a million paid subscriptions in just three months.

Spotify also unveiled their first ever advertising campaign with a few new TV, digital, and social media spots – the first of which debuted earlier this week during NBC’s The Voice. The new logo was seen in these ads.

We also heard the rumor that Spotify is working on its own exclusive video to compete with services like Netflix and HBO GO.

New stuff, new look. What do you think of the new logo?

[Brand New via The Verge]

That’s the tagline of a new ad campaign for Spotify, the first major ad campaign from the music streaming service in the U.S.

The campaign is the work of NYC-based Droga5, and it will feature TV, digital, and social media spots. This is the first of the three new ads, called “For Music.” It’ll debut on Monday night during The Voice on NBC.

Spotify says that is shows viewers “the journey of one individual being carried on a sea of people, speaking to the emotions that music inspires in each of us: the way music sets you free and unites us all.” It also features a nice “I am the Walrus” reference. Check it out:

Here are the other two ads, “Her Song” and “Getting Weird.”

Spotify is rolling out their new ad campaign as rumors surfaced that the company is planning on getting into the business of original video content.

Business Insider cites “two sources briefed on the company’s plans” as saying the company is planning on investing in original video content that would compete with providers like Netflix and HBO.

From the sound of it, we’re not looking at movie and television show availability in a format like we’re used to for music from Spotify, but rather video content produced specifically for Spotify users. Perhaps this will be something of a water testing into video for the company, and if successful, we’ll see it grow to compete more directly with the Netflixes of the world. But that’s a big if, and certainly a lot to ask of a service that we don’t even know for sure is going to exist.

Nicholas Carlson reports:

Our sources said that Spotify is looking for partners that can help it fund and create exclusive content. It is unclear if these talks would lead to a new round of investment in Spotify itself.

Spotify, so far, has not commented on the rumor.

Earlier this month, Spotify announced that it has added a million paid subscriptions in three months.

The Verge reports that Amazon is currently in talks with record labels on setting up its own subscription-based music service. If successful, Amazon could prove a formidable rival to incumbents like Spotify as it really has an established business in selling physical and digital music.

Of course, it probably will be a while before we see anything from this. Those privy to the meetings say that Amazon and the record labels are now just beginning to talk, and that said talks are “very informal” at this point in time.

Amazon is just the latest company said to be in talks with record labels about setting up a subscription music service. Analysts have predicted that Apple will get into the streaming Internet radio business this year to take on services like Pandora. Google is also reportedly getting into the streaming music scene with YouTube.

Out of all the rumored players, Amazon seems the most well suited for the music streaming business. It already has an established cloud infrastructure with Amazon Cloud Player. There’s also the rumored existence of a Kindle phone and $99 Kindle Fire HD; both of which could provide the perfect platform to launch a streaming service on.

As always, the above is nothing but a rumor for now. That being said, it’s completely within the realm of possibility so don’t be surprised if Amazon announces something similar to Spotify this year.

Starting today, users in the U.K. are no longer limited to 5 plays – the cap has been removed. Until now, Spotify Free users in the U.K. could only stream a specific track 5 times before it was removed from their available options – forever. This 5-play cap kicked in 6 months after users signed up for the free service.

Spotify first installed the 5-play cap back in 2011, when they also cut the total listening time (after 6 months) in half, from 20 hours per month to 10 hours per month.

Here’s what Spotify had to say:

We’ve got some mighty fine news for all Spotify Free users. From today, there’s no more 5 play-per-song limit. You can listen to your favourite songs as many times as you like.

That’s right, no more greyed-out songs. The tracks that you couldn’t listen to before will once again be available for your listening pleasure.

Give it a try.

This move means that free users in the U.K. can now experience Spotify in a way similar to most everyone else in the world – unlimited track streaming with a monthly total hours cap that is supported by ads. U.S. users have never had to deal with a specific track cap.

France is currently the only country that still has the 5-play-per-track cap.

Earlier this month, Spotify expanded its web player beta in the U.K., giving users another way to use the service. Spotify’s web player, first announced last year, is set to hit the U.S. later this year.

[Spotify UK via TechCrunch]

The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, which is part of the European Commission, has released a study called “Digital Music Consumption on the Internet: Evidence from Clickstream Data.” The study followed over 16,000 European Internet users and found some interesting browsing habits for those who frequently visit pirate sites.

It was found that a large portion of users who are interested in music were found to visit both “pirate” sites and online music stores. In fact, they found that clicks on online music stores would be down two percent were it not for the existence of these “pirate” sites.

The study also found that free, legal streaming options are becoming far more important to the overall music industry. The finding helps support a previous finding that said streaming services were actually helping the industry earn more revenue. Going even further, the Commission found that visits to online music stores were up seven percent as a result of streaming services.

In short, the researchers found that music piracy, and legal streaming services, have no negative impact on digital music sales:

“Taken at face value, our findings indicate that digital music piracy does not displace legal music purchases in digital format. This means that although there is trespassing of private property rights, there is unlikely to be much harm done on digital music revenues.”

Of course, it should be noted that this study doesn’t outright confirm that piracy leads to greater sales. The study only found that people were more likely to visit online music stores and click. We could assume that sales happened, but we just don’t know.

The general ambiguity of the study may be why the Commission isn’t ready to make any recommendations for new laws or relaxing of current laws yet. It’s a shame really as the music industry has been rather successful in having sites censored by local ISPs claiming that the sites negatively impact its business. Research like this, however, may convince judges that there’s more to take into account when issuing Web stie bans in the future.

You can check out the study in its entirety below:

JRC79605 by torrentfreak

[h/t: TorrentFreak]