MUMBAI: Swedish music streaming service Spotify has announced its expansion to eight new countries including Asia, Latin America and North Europe in an attempt to compete with Apple’s iTunes and California based Pandora.

On the blog page company said, “We're taking our first steps in Latin America with Mexico, and Asia with Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore. Plus we're thrilled to make new friends in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Iceland."

Spotify has about 24 million ‘active’ users - those who have used it in the last 30 days - and 6 million paying subscribers, said it would now offer its services in 28 markets worldwide.

Spotify is a free/paid subscription-based service offering on-demand music streaming from major and independent labels, including EMI, Sony and the Warner Music Group. Initially users receive a six-month free trial upon sign-up, followed by the choice to subscribe to the service in order to receive an "unlimited" offering devoid of advertisements or to continue listening for free, with streaming limited to 2.5 hours per week.

Currently, the service is available in 20 countries; USA, UK, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Italy and Poland.

It was launched in 2008 by a team based in Stockholm, Sweden. But now the parent company is in London, while research and development is still carried out by Spotify AB in Stockholm. The company was founded by Daniel Ek, former CTO of Stardoll, and Martin Lorentzon, co-founder of TradeDoubler.

Even as streaming and on-demand music has soared in popularity with 69.5 million users at end of March, they are struggling to make profits due to the cost of royalty fees. Spotify pays about 70 percent of its revenue back to rights holders.