With 2009 now drawing to a close, we wanted to say goodbye to the Noughties with a short round up of the year. We’ve put together a list of the top 100 most listened to tracks on Spotify in 2009. The rankings are based on number of streams over the year by all of our listeners.

We’ve also compiled a playlist with all the tracks so you can listen to them all at once. So head over to the top tracks of 2009 page and find out what was the most listened to in 2009.

This is also likely the last post before the holidays so I wanted to take a minute and wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

12x Grammy Award winner, Alicia Keys, is releasing her highly anticipated fourth studio album, The Element of Freedom, later this month. We’re excited to announce that starting Monday, December 7th, Spotify users will be able to stream the album in full, a week before the release.

For a taste of what to expect from the album, check out the great new single, Doesn’t Mean Anything.

Alicia has also put together a playlist of her Top 10 favourite songs and a second playlist with her full collection of songs.

Along with the pre-release we have some great ticket giveaways for Spotify Premium users in each of our launch countries.

• In the UK we have three pairs of tickets to the exclusive launch party on 9th December in London at secret location.
• In France we have two tickets for a concert in May or June of 2010.
• In Spain we have two tickets for a showcase in January.
• In both Sweden & Norway we have two tickets for gig in London at O2 arena May 26, 2010. Flights and hotel will be paid for courtesy of Sony.
• In Finland we have two tickets to a concert performance in Finland or Europe in 2010. Flights and hotel will be paid for by Sony if the concert is outside of Finland.

To win tickets, leave a comment here on the blog with the country you’re in and a explanation why we should pick you to see Alicia live and we’ll choose winners next week. And remember, you need to have a premium subscription in order to win - sign up here and you can enter the competition.

French summary: Le quatrième album d’Alicia Keys, The Element of Freedom, sortira le 11 décembre, mais vous pourrez l’écouter en intégralité sur Spotify cinq jours avant sa sortie - à partir du lundi 7 décembre !

Alicia a également créé une liste de lecture avec quelques uns de ses titres préférés et une autre avec toute sa discographie.

Ce n’est pas tout ! Nous avons quelques places de concert à faire gagner aux utilisateurs Spotify Premium. En ce qui concerne la France, deux places sont à gagner pour le prochain concert d’Alicia Keys prévu en mai ou juin 2010. Pour gagner, laissez-nous un commentaire ici même sur le blog nous disant pourquoi vous devriez être choisi et nous désignerons le ou la gagnant(e) la semaine prochaine. N’oubliez pas que vous devez être membre Premium pour gagner – abonnez-vous à Spotify Premium et participez au concours.

Update: All the winners of the concert tickets have been picked and notified, congrats Otto. ;)

We’re rolling out e-cards today so that you can purchase and send the gift of Spotify Premium to your family or friends for the holidays.

You’ll be able to purchase either one, three or six month premium subscriptions and send your loved ones a tastefully designed email or print out the gift to place under the Christmas tree this holiday season.

Gift codes can then be redeemed on our site so you and your friends can enjoy classic holidays music ad free and on the go.

French Summary:
Voici venues les cartes cadeau Spotify Premium que vous pouvez acheter pour offrir un abonnement Premium à vos amis ou à votre famille pour les fêtes.

Vous avez la possibilité d’offrir un abonnement Premium de 1, 3 ou 6 mois et de l’envoyer à qui vous le voulez, accompagné d’un email personnalisé ou d’imprimer votre carte pour la déposer sous le sapin.

Les codes figurant sur les cartes cadeau doivent ensuite être échangés sur notre site. Ainsi vos amis pourront profiter de leur musique préférée sans publicité et où qu’ils soient.

I wanted to take a moment to introduce Oskar Stål who recently joined Spotify as our new CTO.

Oskar is coming to us from the successful mobile transaction company mBlox, where he was a key part of the technical leadership for the last eight years. As the Director of Development he helped mBlox go from a five-person start-up to a global 100M dollar business. Being part of that amazing journey gives Oskar significant experience in the art of building high performing technology teams and producing scalable, robust services in a fast growing environment.

On joining Spotify he says, “The Spotify team and their accomplishments to date are amazing. Being able to join this group with the vision of bringing music to everyone is just such an extraordinarily great way to dedicate ones energy and passion”.

Oskar has always been passionate about software and technology since he first laid eyes on the Commodore 64 way back in 1986. As a teenager Oskar toured with the C64 to various competitions and gatherings for computer geeks. Even though the long hair has been cut, the C64 still comes out every now and then…