Tag: subscription music

Can Spotify Keep Growing?

by Jon Maples, posted in Digital Music, Spotify, subscription services

Spotify today announced it had reached 15 million paying subscribers and 60 million total users. It continues to feed the same narrative that the company has been pitching to the industry recently:

  • The company is growing like a weed
  • The ratio of paid subscribers to free users remains stead at 25%
  • It provides enormous amounts of money to the industry that should be flowing to artists

Spotify’s growth is impressive. Outside of the year the company failed to update us on their sub numbers, the company is averaging 18.5 percent increase in both subs and users quarter over quarter. I’m assuming the company didn’t announce for a year as it appears the growth had slowed. But it has picked up again.

If the company can continue the momentum, it will hit its self-proclaimed goal of 30 million paid and around 120 million free users sometime early in 2016.

It is not clear how much Spotify’s growth is because of inroads in each market and how much is due to launching in new countries. The company recently expanded into Canada, which has been fairly barren when it comes to on-demand music services. The service is now available in 61 countries and their territories (hello unlimited free music Guam).

If the company is finding success launching new countries, it’s good news. There’s plenty more expansion to go if the company is to deliver on its promise in becoming a worldwide platform of music listening.  Unfortunately, the easy countries are out of the way.

Now comes the hard part.

Spotify will have to roll out in countries that might not want the competition (India or China), have yet to fully embrace digital (Japan), might not be able to afford the pricing model (most of Africa) or have a combination of all these factors and Vladimir Putin as president, ahem. How Spotify navigates these thorny issues, along with staving off new competitors like Apple and YouTube, will go a long ways toward determining its success.

Meanwhile, I’m sure these numbers mean Spotify’s IPO apparatus will start to crank up. Based on how hot the market is right now, I would expect the company to go out as soon as it can–before the bubble bursts.

Growing Pains: Can YouTube’s Plans Power Music Revenues?

by Jon Maples, posted in Digital Music, marketing, Music, subscription services

This was originally included in Billboard’s print edition dated March 4, 2014. The entire article is not available online without a subscription, but I’m reposting it to my network.

And no, I didn’t write the headline or the deck.

Opinion Column: Screwed By YouTube?

40 percent of its plays are music – even as its rights payments remain disproportionate

Do billions of YouTube views of Gangnam Style translate to millions for Psy?
Did billions of YouTube views of Gangnam Style translate to millions for Psy?

First it was broadcast radio, then MTV. Now YouTube? Could it be that the music industry is a three-time loser in getting its fair share for distribution of content? Did it give away the golden goose by not suing the bejeezus out of YouTube when it was a startup, or at least cut better deals when Google acquired it in 2006?

Of course it’s not a simple question. At first glance it’s clear that today YouTube isn’t delivering the goods. During a MIDEM panel this year, YouTube vp content Tom Pickett said the company had paid more than $1 billion to music rights holders during the past several years. Well, that’s sweet. Hey, you know who else has done that? Spotify. The difference: Spotify did it with a fraction of YouTube’s audience.

Let’s face it: When the worldwide market is $16 billion annually a billion isn’t that much, not when you consider the size and scope of YouTube’s mighty reach and insatiable thirst for more and more fresh content. While there have been some holdouts on paid streaming services, no working artist would dare skip YouTube — one of the world’s largest promotional channels — and limit his or her reach. According to comScore, YouTube’s 159 million active monthly U.S. users watched 13 billion videos in December 2013. And YouTube says nearly 40 percent of all videos were music-related.

But YouTube doesn’t just represent a promotional channel. It delivers a burgeoning stream of advertising revenue, and could soon find more ways to monetize its massive audience. YouTube does pay a split of ad revenue with rights holders, although the rates for ads are paltry when compared with such established players as broadcast radio. The company is trying to boost its revenue-per-impression rate with premium content, but this will take time.

By comparison, Spotify looks more attractive to rights holders, since it already delivers multiple revenue streams. Like YouTube, Spotify pays a low per-stream ad-supported fee for a play by a free consumer, but its average payout is much higher because it offers premium subscription fees as well. That’s why YouTube has long planned a paid subscription service that is finally expected to launch this year. If the company can convert even 1 percent of its active users to pay for on-demand music, it would be the largest service in the United States. At least that’s the theory.

In practice, converting these free users to paying customers could be much harder to execute. Why? Every all-you-can-eat music service has similar pricing. Want to stream your music on the desktop or on your phone? It’s free. Want to save your music to your Android phone? That’ll be 10 bucks. Asking for $10 from a customer base that has become accustomed to accessing all the music they want for the low, low price of free is a steep hill to climb.

The industry and Google will need to partner to create a new value proposition at a variety of price points. What could it offer the music fan for a buck a month? How about a top 40 app for $3? What about a catalog slice, say indie/alternative, for $6? How about a $2 Vevo subscription?

The truth is, all consumers are not alike. Defining those price points and offers will require innovative thinking and risk-taking by both sides. Remember, yearlong Spotify Premium subscribers pay more than three times what the average customer spends in a year for music.

The industry needs to think of ways to serve a mass audience. But if instead consumers see the same old offer of 20 million songs for $10 a month, we could end up with another Google Play All Access Music, which hasn’t blown the doors off with subscriber growth. That would be disappointing for the entire industry.

Perhaps the industry is learning. Certainly holding out content from YouTube would have made it much more challenging to build new revenue streams, so it was the right decision to bring the service into the fold.

Now it’s time to supercharge it.

Note: I have corrected an error. YouTube was acquired by Google in 2006, not in 2005 as it appeared in print. I regret the error.