Online Music Streaming | Beats Music. Deezer takes on Spotify with 5m paying subscribers and new discovery features. Streaming music service Deezer says it has more than doubled its number of paying subscribers to five million in the last year, just 1m less than rival Spotify. The milestone was announced at an event in London, where Deezer also revealed that it has 12 million monthly active users, a catalogue of 30m tracks available to stream, and partnerships with 25 mobile operators and ISPs around the world. "We multiplied our subscriber base by 2.5 in one year. Nobody else can do this, and we did it outside the US, so it's a very strong footprint," said Deezer chief executive Axel Dauchez, referring to the fact that while Deezer is available in more than 180 countries, the US is not one of them. Deezer's growth is being fuelled by those telco deals, particularly where the cost of subscribing to its service is bundled into people's monthly mobile contracts.
"Discovery is a critical factor which makes the link between the music creation and the listeners. 6 Million People Pay For Spotify - Is That Good Enough? Who says freemium doesn't work? For Spotify, the hybrid free/paid business model has reeled in 6 million paying subscribers out of its 24 million total listeners. Not bad. But as the music streaming space heats up, the company will face some enormous challenges, both in the short term and down the road. Spotify is growing fast. The company added 1 million new subscribers over just the past three months, according a report from CNET. Spotify confirmed those listener and subscriber numbers in an email to ReadWrite, but declined to comment any further on how its total revenue breaks down. Spotify's Growing Competition: Google, Deezer and Daisy The company really needs to keep these numbers up, because its neighborhood is about to get a whole lot more crowded — and complicated — this year. Of course, Spotify has the advantage in the U.S.
The more daunting threat is going to come from Google. The pie is growing, as are the number of forks surrounding it. The model is different. Spotify Explained. Spotify was designed from the ground up to combat piracy. Founded in Sweden, the home of The Pirate Bay, we believed that if we could build a service which was better than piracy, then we could convince people to stop illegal file-sharing, and start consuming music legally again. A key part of this has been in ensuring that Spotify has a free tier.
By offering this free tier, Spotify is able to compete with piracy on cost and bring music consumers into the legal framework. From there, Spotify does a very effective job at converting those users into Premium subscribers.This theory that ‘given a free and legal alternative, people will pirate less’ has been proven over the last 5 years with significant reductions in piracy across the territories where Spotify is established. This chart shows the % of each age group who choose to pirate less content when given a free and legal alternative. Source: Columbia University Copyright Infringement and Enforcement in the US.
Sweden Denmark Norway. Spotify Raises $250 Million, Valuing It at $4 Billion. Get Ready For The Streaming-Music Die-Off. Streaming music gets one thing right. Services like Pandora, Rdio and Spotify are amazing for the consumer, and in that singular way, the music industry hasn’t been better in … probably ever. At long last, we have the celestial jukebox we dreamed of a decade and a half ago. Nearly any song is at our fingertips in seconds and that privilege costs far less than what an album used to, if it costs anything at all. This bubble of end-user bliss comes at the expense of almost everyone else, from artists right down to the people who pioneered the idea of renting music over the Web to begin with. How long can it last? License To Ail Streaming services are ailing. Meanwhile, Turntable.fm, a comparatively tiny competitor with what should have been viral DNA, just pulled the plug on its virtual jam sessions this week—and it just might be the canary in the coal mine.
Not-So Disruptive Disruptors Streaming services rely on a weird conceit, but it's not a new one. (via The Root) A Broken Model. Free Music Or Not, Spotify Still Has a Paid-User Problem. Update: Surprise! Rdio just announced its own free, unlimited streaming service. The same logic applies. Spotify has a subscriber problem. Let me rephrase that—Spotify has a lot of problems. Refreshingly, none of its woes manifest in its end product—instant, glorious delivery of every song imaginable, right into your earbuds. Unfortunately, its big problems—big like recording industry big—all throw the sweet, sweet tune of its on-demand digital jukebox into jeopardy. See also: Get Ready For The Streaming Music Die-Off On Wednesday, Spotify announced that it would lift the ceiling on how many hours of music you could stream for free each month.
Great news, right? The Numbers Don't Add Up For Spotify users, or would-be Spotify users, the latest move is just another awesome perk for a service that’s so chock-full of awesome perks that it’s basically just one big totally awesome perk. Spotify pays out more than 70% of its revenues to rent the music it in turn lends out to subscribers.