Spotify Opens Up Non-Facebook Registration, Signup…In Germany.

Hate Facebook? If so, chances are you really hate the slew of new apps and services requiring a Facebook account to even signup/login. Spotify is one such service that does this. But they didn’t use to. (We have a non-Facebook account in-house, actually.) For now, pretty much all of you looking to use Spotify will in fact need to sign up and tie Spotify to your Facebook account. In Germany, however, Spotify is now re-opening non-Facebook account signups, requiring only an email address and password — but only for German users.

When questioned by The Verge, a Spotify spokesperson was completely tight lipped about the whole switcheroo, only stating that the company was “absolutely committed” to their partnership with Facebook.

If you ask us, it sounds like Spotify realizes a lot of people don’t want to deal with the giant (bag of hurt?) that is Facebook, and as such, as losing out on a decent chunk of potential users (and revenue) by not catering to them. Starting with the German market is a bit odd. Though, several times over the last few years, social apps/services have met some pretty hard resistance inside German borders (example: Google Maps). Perhaps Spotify is getting similar pressure from the German gov’t regarding Facebook tie-ins. For now, all we can do is speculate.