
Spotify Now Has 15M Paying Users, 60M Overall - corneliusjac
http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/12/spotify-now-has-15m-paying-users-60m-overall/
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josefresco
I had the unfortunate experience of signing up for Spotify, creating a
playlist of a couple of my favorite artists and then having those artists'
songs disappear the next day. Come to find out, they (or their label) didn't
renew with Spotify. Went back to purchasing individual tracks that can't be
deleted from my devices.

I do like the Spotify model, but find between iTunes, Pandora and Sirius my
music needs are saturated.

~~~
kabdib
I recently ditched the Zune "all you can eat" subscription for a Spotify
subscription.

Pretty much the same deal. Stuff comes and goes, and there's no warning to the
user (I imagine that a warning that content is going to go away would increase
piracy).

This is why I still buy CDs.

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jobu
Most likely this huge growth over the last couple months has been the $0.99
for three months offer - [http://www.cnet.com/news/get-a-3-month-spotify-
premium-subsc...](http://www.cnet.com/news/get-a-3-month-spotify-premium-
subscription-for-99-cents/)

It's a great way to inflate subscriber numbers for an IPO, but I doubt it's a
long-term trend.

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ssharp
I decided around two years ago to abandon "owning" most of my music. I started
with Rhapsody and moved to Spotify. I find that Spotify has almost everything
I want to listen to and the $10 / month (actually, $20 since I have two more
accounts on the Family plan), is well worth it.

For people who like to listen to a wide variety of music and like to discover
new music, I don't think you can beat what Spotify offers. If you have a more
tightly contained bucket of music and don't want to expand in too much, it
probably makes more sense to own your collection.

I've discovered a ton of stuff and enjoyed things one-off like live CD's that
I would have never have purchased outright through iTunes.

I ultimately chose Spotify over Rhapsody because of playlists. I think when I
first started, I actually prefered Rhapsody's mobile UI but Spotify's has
gotten better since. I remember using Rhapsody's web/desktop service in the
mid 2000's, but it wasn't an iPod replacement then because it's offline
capabilities were limited and limited to devices that I didn't like. Once
mobile became realistic to stream music, the services started making a lot
more sense to me.

~~~
tragic
> For people who like to listen to a wide variety of music and like to
> discover new music, I don't think you can beat what Spotify offers.

Eh... Sort of. If I want to listen to something within (making it up) the top
50% most successful recording artists, or something relatively recent
otherwise, it's normally got _something_ at least.

If I want to listen to underground hardcore records or weirdy free improv or
something, I'm S.O.L. on streaming services.

Still, I pay my £10 a month, because it's good for a lot of things, and
convenient.

~~~
dyeje
I disagree. It is actually a very rare for me to not find a band on Spotify,
and my listening is mostly focused on esoteric or small bands in a variety of
niche genres.

~~~
fat0wl
there are tons of good bands that are not on Spotify, even modern (florida
noise punk scene is really easy example)

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tragic
Yeah: I listen to a lot of very obscure 90s emo records, which were all fly-
by-night bands on tiny vinyl-only labels (and other similar corners of the
music industry). This stuff is not on Spotify. I did not expect it to be on
Spotify, and thus was not disappointed.

For contemporary stuff of that level of nicheness, Bandcamp is a much better
source. And selling one $5 download/print-on-demand CD is probably more
lucrative than all the Spotify streams most bandcamp bands could ever hope to
get put together, so it's hardly surprising that they go this way. Spotify
seems a more sensible partnership for labels with significant back catalogue
than individual artists. (Which makes it peculiar that I can't browse by
label, but there you go.)

I like Spotify for classical music and jazz, but my tastes are more
'mainstream' in those categories. It also has a surprisingly good collection
of house/techno/etc singles, but I kind of need the files for those for DJing
purposes and such.

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DanielStraight
You can use "label:xyz" in the search field.

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tragic
Well... the more you know.

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relaytheurgency
I'm a paying user. My fiance pays as well. It's a great service, but I wish
they would come out with a "family plan" or something. Often we are both
listening at the same time to a single account which negates the utility of
having two separate accounts quite a bit. However, at work we both listen to
our separate accounts and listening to the same account would not be feasible.
Netflix allows for multiple queues for different users, I think Spotify should
follow suit.

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DanielStraight
If you're in the US, they have this already:

[https://www.spotify.com/us/family/](https://www.spotify.com/us/family/)

It launched a few months ago.

~~~
corobo
Thanks for this! - UK version here
[https://www.spotify.com/uk/family/](https://www.spotify.com/uk/family/)

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arb99
Despite Spotify occasionally being in the news for not paying the artists
much, I bet this does add a lot of new revenue for the music industry.

Before I joined spotify (about a year ago) I hardly ever bought CDs or MP3s
(defintely less than the £120/year that Sptofy costs) - there must be many
other people also who are paying for Spotify now who never used to spend much
on music before

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wvenable
One data point: I haven't bought a CD since the 90's but I now have a paid
Spotify account.

~~~
charlesdm
Same. Spotify is just too damn convenient not to pay for it.

Not having to copy over my playlists to my phone, but just being able to sync,
that feature alone is worth the €10 subscription to me.

I discover a song, add it to a playlist from my mac, and I can listen to it
next time I leave the house.

~~~
niels_olson
Spotify is really sort of a separate internet for music. Anywhere you are, if
you hear about a new genre, you can immerse yourself in it within seconds.
Imagine doing that back in the days of Tower Records? Even the Tokyo location,
or Amoeba Music can't cover the territory like Spotify can. I've tried.

~~~
charlesdm
And that's why I love their product. I haven't seen any streaming service do
it that well.

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quaunaut
My biggest issue with Spotify is still their catalogue. I listen to primarily
foreign electronica, and it constantly feels like none of it was there. When I
finally did want to grab music from American artists, half weren't on Spotify.

Something I've wondered for some time, is if the world needs a music service
that both allows smaller artists to stream their music from it, but also
negotiates with companies like iTunes/Spotify/AmazonInstant to allow their
music there as well.

~~~
stephenc_c_
Some sort of deal to get SoundCloud and Bandcamp artists' content available on
Spotify would be great.

~~~
dudurocha
This! I think Spotify/Rdio/Deezer/etc should make a deal to license music on
Soundcloud. The best indie music, mashups and mixes are on SoundCloud.

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pclark
The "incrementally even more convenient than piracy" for Spotify (and also
iTunes Rentals on Apple TV) has really surprised me.

I used to use oink/what.cd to download all my music, but now that I use
Spotify I never stray from it. A friend emailed me J.Coles newest album in MP3
but I opted to just wait until it was on Spotify for the sake of simplicity
and accessibility.

Similarly with movies, whereas I would once always simply torrent them,
sitting in front of my TV and just renting them for $4 feels so much cheaper
than battling an advertising laced torrent site and figuring out how to stream
it from laptop to TV.

Pirating stuff was much easier than buying CDs or DVDs, but purchasing stuff
online has became even easier than piracy.

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jeremymims
When I was in high school (quite a long time ago now), I'd try to buy 2-4
albums a month. That was an average cost of $25-$50 to listen to 20-50 new
songs... some of which I enjoyed, some of which I didn't.

$10 per month to listen to almost anything is such an astounding underpricing
of the value I personally derive from the service. I can hardly believe my
good fortune to be alive at a time when I can pay so little to listen to so
much with so little effort.

~~~
bsder
And this is exactly why the music industry is failing.

Even if every American paid $100 per year, that maxes the revenue at $30
billion with no further growth possible.

Now _how_ much of that it going back to the music creators? Almost zero.

If I take your high school numbers and extrapolate ($250/year across 300
million) with a $.50 per CD (20 albums per year) we get a $75 billion business
with $3 billion actually going back to artists. For 20,000 CD's (roughly the
number of releases last year) that's 150,000 per year back to the CD creators.

That's an _ENORMOUS_ difference.

Yes, these are all bounds (not everybody would buy--there were fewer CD's in
the past--CD's were more expensive to produce), but you can see the
difference.

Now, this isn't all Spotify's fault, but the middlemen are taking _WAY_ too
much out of the pie.

In addition, there are so many entertainment options that music has to compete
with that it will never get back the privileged position it had in the late
60's to early 80's before both VHS and videogames.

~~~
fat0wl
this is my whole point I've been ranting about -- Spotify absolves peoples'
guilt but they are just feeding the middleman, who seems to be taking the
WHOLE pie.

i think pure torrents + physical sales would actually result in better money
for artists than the same situation + Spotify.

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rahilsondhi
Shameless plug: I'm a paying Spotify user but they don't get hiphop mixtapes
and they miss some hiphop singles, so I built
[http://hooked.fm](http://hooked.fm). It's new hiphop music and notifications
when your favorite artists release new music.

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fat0wl
if the money never gets to the artists what is the point? its good to build up
an infrastructure but this is more to keep the industry's pockets lined than
the artists, so i've seen at least a few who encourage to just torrent their
work instead.

there are some who argue that the pricing model is not really incorrect/askew,
but i think even they tend to admit that its insignificant income from the
perspective of the artist.

(as someone who is not into pop music, i really don't care about building a
whole economic/industrial mechanism just to make sure that beyonce & WMG keep
getting a disproportionately large piece of the pie compared to independents,
that is not really in the spirit of the internet IMHO it is just a web-based
continuation of the old system that smaller artists hated...)

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ryanSrich
It's so hard to put a value on something like Spotify. I use the Spotify
Pitchfork app pretty much every day to find new music. Before that I'd have to
read Pitfork.com and then either torrent or buy that artists music. This
forced me to be super selective in who I gave the time of day (because reading
+ downloading would take hours). With Spotify I can listen to 4 whole albums
in one day.

If I find an artist I like I will definitely go to one of their live shows. I
feel like I spend more on an artists now than I did when I bought their album
outright.

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fat0wl
hah great for Pitchfork... i'm sure they are making much more than the artists
off this deal.

regardless, they don't cover the bands i like and half the music i like isnt
on spotify so i just do it the old-fashioned way using discogs.com, downloads,
and some good sites that have "related artist" webs. wouldn't you know it, the
best site i know for related artist webs isn't a major industry service, its a
torrent site! & they accomplish it trivially through user-edits...

so i guess my point is i think its true that Spotify can be convenient for
some people, but it doesnt refute my point that they are not trying to do
anyone favors (unless it fits their current branding strategy). Spotify is not
some techno-anarchistic's grand vision of the music industry. it's not helping
music fans discover more about their tastes, it is generally colluding with
industry to guide listeners toward their profit sectors. I wouldn't be at all
surprised if there is a complex sequence of kickbacks between labels, Spotify,
and the venues themselves, designed to minimize artist royalty/payouts. If you
follow the music industry you know the deals for artists are generally pretty
bad & I don't really believe in the "but I go see them live!" rationale
because some artists don't tour or aren't big arena acts. AFAIK it's really
hard to recoup tour costs unless you are playing decent-sized venues at every
stop.

i guess it is just hard for me to get into the feelgood mentality of the music
scene when i feel like the technology available could allow us to be much more
taste/trend/industry-agnostic but instead seems to just be an extension of
industry power (Pitchfork being a major industry player as well...), and I
generally feel like the quality of the artistic output is in decline so I
don't want to buy into most of the over-produced crypto-pop junk they are
selling (fans of 60s/70s/even 80s music are accustomed to a much greater
wealth of musical diversity). As I mentioned though, I am not into music
journalism i just use artist webs. Maybe if there were some tastemaker I
really wanted to follow I would see this as more convenient but I just don't
experience music that way. Or at most I'd be like "well, convenient for me,
sucks for the artist".

I think I mentioned in my previous comment -- it's not that I can even prove
the pricing model false, I just know it doesn't do shit for the artists... 1
sale of a self-published physical album is more profitable for most of them
then a year's worth of Spotify listens.

i bet a solely torrents + physical sales model would actually be MORE
profitable than involving Spotify... Spotify to me is really only a mechanism
for absolving people from the guilt of theft, and conveniently it funnels
money back to yet another corp.

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jnellis
They just had a buy 1, get 2 months free promotion during December. I wonder
if that 15M paying users will be more or less come end of March.

~~~
victorantos
I think premium is too expensive for my needs. So I found a way to use trials
from time to time. Basically create a new paypal account every time you want
sign up for a new Spotify 30 days trial...

~~~
k-mcgrady
Or pay the $10/£10 the times you need it and cancel the subscription straight
away. Seems like an awful lot of work to setup PayPal accounts to avoid paying
$10. I understand that can be a significant amount of money for some people
but why is it so important to have Spotify from time-to-time that you would go
through that process?

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dudurocha
That is an outstanding conversion rate. I wonder how it compares to its
competitors.

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alkonaut
I assume that means they also make a healthy profit? Oh, nevermind.

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matt_morgan
How does Spotify count users? They can game the proportion of paying/non-
paying users by discounting infrequent unpaid users, for example. A more
interesting number might be the number of /plays/ by paid vs. unpaid users.
I.e., normalize it for activity.

~~~
dogma1138
Say they do? that's still 15M people paying 10$~ per month. 150M a month is a
revenue of 1.8 bln dollars per year that's quite a big sum of cash...

At some point people stop looking at the paying to non-paying ratio of your
costumers and when you starting bringing close to 2bln a year you are probably
there.

No one really looks at how many "free apps" people download from the app
stores and says Apple are padding their numbers when the app stores brings
higher revenues than the GDP of many countries.

~~~
matt_morgan
It's important because as it says in the article, artists (Taylor Swift, e.g.)
care about how much people get for free. So the ratio of paid to unpaid is
pretty much the heart of this news.

