On February 22, during its ‘Stream On’ event for creators and partners, the music platform Spotify announced their plan to expand their worldwide coverage to an additional 85 countries over the next few days. The service offers more than 70 million individual tracks, as well as over 2 million podcasts in their directory.

The geographical location that Spotify is looking to launch their platform into includes more than 1 billion potential new listeners, according to the company. A handful of countries to be included are Pakistan and Bangladesh – span Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. To ensure that the platform is user-friendly in each location, Spotify has added native support for 36 new languages to their system. Now having over 60 languages within their platform, the company will be able to give their subscribers personalized experiences.

Currently, Spotify operates in 93 unique markets after its most recent official launch on February 1st in South Korea. South Korea is the world’s sixth-largest music market, and a significant addition to the potential listener’s outreach. The largest single country that Spotify remains shut out of is China, which is not unique to just Spotify. According to executives within Spotify, its full global music catalog will be available in each of the new markets, and the entire podcast catalog will be available in most of them. “We will work with local creators and partners to expand our music offerings and deliver a Spotify experience that meets the unique needs of each market,” Spotify said.

“Having more listeners on our platform creates more opportunities for artists and podcasters to make a living from their work. More creators means more audio content for our users to discover,” said Alex Norström, Spotify’s Chief Freemium Business Officer. “This creates an essential flywheel between creators and listeners that is the foundation of our business — and in the end, it is what will propel the audio industry forward.”

Spotify’s Q4 of 2020 reported 345 million monthly active listeners, including 155 million Premium Subscription listeners. With both numbers increasing by 27% and 24% respectively from last year to now, it is obvious that Coronavirus has not hindered the audio streaming tech giant. Additionally, the platform is planning to create a free and premium plan available across all of its markets. Select markets will have the option to subscribe as an individual, family, duo, or student and receive different subscription rates.