Pinboard (guardiantech)

What 10m Spotify subscribers actually means >> Music Industry Blog

guardiantech — 2014-05-24T17:11:01+00:00

Mark Mulligan:

Right now Spotify’s paid subscriber count looks firmly locked in that early adopter segment. If growth rates sustain at this level it will be late 2016 before we see the 20 million mark hit. Free however is booming: Spotify’s free user count though is showing dynamic growth. In fact it is following the right trajectory for a technology breaking through. What’s more the growth is uncannily similar to that of Pandora during the same stage of its growth (see figure below). In fact by its 66th month Pandora had 39m active users, while Spotify now has 40m, also after 66 months. If Spotify’s free and paid user bases continue to grow at their current rates the currently impressive 3-to-1 free-to-paid ratio will widen markedly. Free is where the action is. Just ask potential Twitter suitor Soundcloud with its 250m active users or YouTube with its 1 billion active users.

Before Spotify bought The Echo Nest, it could have snapped up Last.fm >> MusicAlly

guardiantech — 2014-05-14T16:24:18+00:00

Spotify acquired music data firm The Echo Nest in March in a deal rumoured to be worth $100m. However, the streaming music service had also considered buying another prominent company in that space: Last.fm. Multiple sources have confirmed to Music Ally that Spotify talked to Last.fm’s parent company CBS about buying the service in the past year or so – although opinions vary on who made the initial approach, and how much interest there really was from the streaming music service. “Spotify did make an offer at some point for Last.fm,” said one source. “There was an acquisition offer. It was certainly put on the block and I don’t think Spotify came up with enough money. It was a low-ball offer.”

Or possibly that CBS (owner of Last.fm) pushed it forward but Spotify didn't want it. Hard to see any future for Last.fm now - it hasn't got a USP with any real value to the average listener.

A scrappy band finds a way to make Spotify pay for its silence >> Businessweek

guardiantech — 2014-03-20T12:40:18+00:00

Vulfpeck, a small-time funk band with a couple of retro-styled albums under its belt, recently released Sleepify, an album made up of nothing but silence. This isn’t a completely new concept: Anyone with a pompous theory streak will insist that it’s really the silence between the notes that matter—and congratulations if you’re already thinking of John Cage’s 4’33,” a composition performed by sitting there without playing.
But Vulfpeck’s latest album is a business experiment, not a musical one. The idea behind the project is for fans to stream the “songs” constantly, generating royalties for the band in their spare time.

Chart: Pandora maintains lead In crowded audio streaming space >> Statista

guardiantech — 2014-03-11T22:47:10+00:00

According to the 2014 edition of Edison's annual audio report "The Infinite Dial", Pandora remains the most popular music streaming service in the United States. 31% of those polled for the report stated to have used Pandora within the last month. That puts the ad-supported online radio healthily in front of iHeartRadio and iTunes Radio which were used by 9% and 8% of the respondents, respectively. Ranked fourth, Spotify was the first on-demand streaming service on the list with an adoption rate of 6%.

Google Play All Access at 3%. It's taken only six months for iTunes Radio to go from zero to pass Spotify, which launched there in July 2011. The survey was of 2,023 Americans aged 12 and older (see the original report which has some very interesting insights). MIA: Xbox Music.

Analysis: How can Spotify help new artists make a living? >> Music Ally

guardiantech — 2013-07-16T15:30:30+00:00

Stuart Dredge (yes, that one):

my inkling is that the biggest way streaming services can help new artists make a living is to go further still, and become the bridge between people discovering music, and spending money with its creator elsewhere.
It’s happening a bit: Spotify’s new Discover tab often tells me when a band I’ve been listening to is playing nearby, via Songkick. There’s a lot more scope here to provide artists with tools to sell stuff though, including themselves.
What if everyone listening to your music on Spotify could see that you had gigs coming up, or were selling an exclusive/deluxe music bundle on Bandcamp, a DJ mix on Beatport, a limited-edition t-shirt, and so on? What if a streaming service could point all your listeners towards the Kickstarter campaign that will fund your next album?

Yo...: Music Royalty Statement Exposed - 0.020p per stream! >> Rapids

guardiantech — 2013-07-15T16:23:14+00:00

Another band weighs in on the Spotify/royalties point:

Thanks to Thom Yorke for commencing the Spotifight. His recent tweet about Spotify not supporting new bands really sums up the general view of music service by smaller artists.
Music streaming sites pay artists very nearly nothing. Spotify is a vehicle for promoting the more well known acts of its record label owners. Therefore its purpose is to promote the more commercial artists e.g. Rhianna, rather than supporting new bands
Music streaming sites such as iTunes and Spotify WILL kill music. Cash cows like The Rolling Stones won’t be around forever. How can new artists break though when they’re earning, at best 0.22GBP per play. The royalty statement below shows Rapids!’ earnings at the height of their career - a total income of 400 quid.

Spotify patches Chrome exploit that allowed MP3 downloads of any song >> The Verge

guardiantech — 2013-05-08T13:51:18+00:00

Spotify has patched an exploit that allowed a Chrome browser extension to download any song available on the music streaming service. We have tested and can confirm that the Downloadify tool is no longer able to connect to Spotify's web player. By allowing premium users to store tracks locally as part of their monthly subscription, Spotify inadvertently allowed the Downloadify tool to grab a copy of any song from its catalog of over 20m tracks.
Google moved quickly to remove Downloadify from the Chrome Web Store but it is still available via a repository on GitHub. Developer Robin Aldenhoven confirmed to The Verge that the tool no longer works, noting that Spotify had employed a more streamlined and secure protocol that makes it harder to request stored tracks.

Quick work by Spotify; the exploit was only around for a few hours.

Spotify Says It's Headed in a "New Direction" >> AllThingsD

guardiantech — 2011-11-21T18:36:27+00:00

More partners? Erm.. an iPad app? Erm.. We're scratching our heads a bit, here.

Spotify Has 1.4 Million U.S. Users, 175,000 Subscribers >> AllThingsD

guardiantech — 2011-08-09T06:20:22+00:00

A 12.5% conversion rate already. Remember how long it took to reach that in Europe?

Does Spotify Really Want To Be An iTunes Killer? >> Forrester Blogs

guardiantech — 2011-05-04T20:40:37+00:00

Music analyst Mark Mulligan: "The iTunes app is outdated and bloated. It’s long overdue competitive disruption. Spotify’s music app is clean and elegant, just like iTunes used to be. With Facebook integration, a celestial jukebox, music management and even device syncing (of sorts) Spotify may actually stand a half-decent chance of getting many of its iTunes-using customers to start using Spotify as their main music app.
"But despite the PR, Spotify is not actually trying to be an iTunes Killer at all. They’re trying to learn how to co-exist, using the iTunes ecosystem as their habitat. Almost a parasitical co-existence: if the host dies the parasite dies too. The fate of iPods, iPhones and iPads is inextricably linked with iTunes."