
Spotify Is Crazy To Forecast 50 Million U.S. Users In A Year - earbitscom
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/07/08/businessinsider-spotify-is-on-crack-if-they-really-think-theyll-get-50-million-us-users-in-a-year-2011-7.DTL
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kalleboo
IMHO Spotify stopped being interesting when they had to drop their ad-
supported all-you-can-eat free tier. That's what really drove growth in Europe
and make it ubiquitous here in Sweden.

Now that that's gone, they're just another dime-a-dozen paid music streaming
services that nobody wants to pay for.

edit: For anyone wondering what the big deal with Spotify is, is that it was
completely free. Anyone could just download the app, and then listen to any
song they wanted to, legally, completely free - there were just short ad
breaks every couple of songs. This free legal option meant that there was zero
reason to pirate music anymore, so everyone flocked to it.

If you paid €10/mo you got a higher bitrate, no ads, offline playing and
access to the iPhone/Android apps. The pay option was attractive if you were
going to have a party (ads are a turnoff in situations like that), or when you
end up requiring the iPhone app since you don't have any music files to put on
your MP3 player anymore since you've just been listening to everything on
Spotify...

The record companies really hated giving away music (despite Spotify being a
goldmine for them - Spotify is currently the #1 single source of income for
record labels in Sweden, making them more money than any single retailer), so
they had to kill it a couple months back (rumor has it they had to kill it in
order to secure U.S. rights).

Without the completely free tier, they'll have a really hard time getting new
users.

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Confusion
It never was completely free: there has always been a limit on the number of
hours per month you could stream music.

Anyway, your analysis is wrong, because you think your usage predicts
everyones usage pattern. It doesn't. I'm a happy paying subscriber and will
stay one for a while to come. If I hear one new CD a month, it's already worth
it. Even if I don't, I love being able to just legally browse and listen to
almost any music I can think of.

~~~
lovskogen
Are you sure? When I tested it, early on, it was unlimited hours of streaming,
with ads now and then.

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Confusion
All the time it was available in the Netherlands, the limit was something like
40 hours a month, as far as I recall.

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usaar333
So I keep hearing about Spotify, but as an American I've never had a chance to
use it.

I use Grooveshark a lot though. What is Spotify offering over Grooveshark?

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burke
The biggest difference is that Spotify is curated content. On Grooveshark, if
you search for an album, you may get three copies, each missing songs and
improperly named. Spotify has one real release of the album.

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lovskogen
In a lot of cases, three albums on Grooveshark beats the hell out of _none_ on
Spotify.

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evandena
Spotify is fully legal, Grooveshark is quasi legal and may not see another
year.

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lovskogen
What investment will you lose if they shut down?

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lovskogen
My one big gripe with Spotify is that they don't serve up a lot of the music I
listen to (WARP-label), and it seems that all music before 2005 is either a
karaoke or cover track – when I search.

It's just too limiting, for me at least.

~~~
otaku888
I'd check again, they have a load of warp now. I also noticed all the Autechre
albums are back on again. Things appear to be more like they were in the early
days of spotify.

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lovskogen
Boards of Canada too?

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otaku888
Yep. :)

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jerrya
So, this may mark me as an old fart, but um, does Spotify play The Beatles? If
so, I'll switch from Rhapsody.

But yes, 50M users in a country of 300M does express a certain confidence.

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pakafka
Nope, no Beatles yet. Still exclusive (via legal means) to iTunes.

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jerrya
Thanks, that's good (sad) to know.

Right now, I use a combination of Rhapsody and Google Music to get The Beatles
(from CDs I own and have ripped.)

~~~
encoderer
While it's a fundamentally different approach -- Pandora has the Beatles.

I've been a Pandora One subscriber (no ads for $30/year) and I'm quite happy
with it. Sometimes I do want _A_ song, but in general, outsourcing my playlist
to their algorithms has worked out great.

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scootklein
what spotify has over its competitors is distribution through facebook [1].
this single factor makes the rest of their competitors numbers (and quite
frankly their own numbers) more or less irrelevant. keep in mind, too, that it
says "users" and not "paid subscribers"

[1] [http://blogs.forbes.com/parmyolson/2011/05/25/facebook-to-
la...](http://blogs.forbes.com/parmyolson/2011/05/25/facebook-to-launch-music-
service-with-spotify/)

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rdl
Yeah, it's crazy to think it will only be 50mm users in the USA, after people
have been coveting this for so long, and Spotify has done so well in Europe.

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jinushaun
If you read the article, it states that in 3 years, Spotify has only managed
10 million users. It's unlikely that they'll gain 50 million users (from one
country) in one year, when they barely got 20% of that in three years from an
entire continent.

~~~
earbitscom
I agree completely with your sentiment, but it's important to note that US
music consumption makes up, I believe, more than half of the worldwide market.
So, in fact, the US is a larger market than all of Europe. That being said, 50
million registered users by some gorilla math, maybe. Real, active engaged,
users - no way.

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rdl
Yeah, I'm assuming the crazy math (5-10mm real users, the remainder being
alternate accounts, abandonware, etc.) Plus, multiple devices per user, which
you could be really crazy and count as unique users -- laptop, home, work,
ht/game system, iphone, ipad each.

Plus, USA = "everywhere"; I'd assume if there were service in Europe and the
USA, a lot of people in non-USA non-Europe would be VPNed or otherwise appear
as US users for these purposes.

~~~
earbitscom
I more meant anyone on Facebook who listens to a track streamed from Spotify
while on Facebook and not having even been to Spotify's site or having
downloaded any client, could be called a "user". 50 million people finally
seeing real music integration on Facebook listening to a track or two doesn't
seem unrealistic, but if that's what they call a user, they're being very
generous to themselves.

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shapeshed
an FT.com article put paid subscribers at 1 million, 15% of their user base.
They've just closed $100 million of funding. Based on the FT ratio the
projections equate to 7.5 million paid US subscribers. They'll need to retain
those customers to make a return and the market is very competitive. More
crazy valuations.

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justinph
I saw the CEO speak at SXSW a couple years ago. I still can't figure out what
the big deal is.

