As effective as free can be when attracting new users, eventually the piper requires payment. Spotify is apporoaching its own "payment due" moment and has been stepping up efforts to make its popular free music streaming service profitable. Their effort has been focused on three fronts:
- A premium service is getting much more attention from Spotify as it adds additional features beyond just "ad free" to attaract paid users.
- Spotify is rolling out by far its largest advertising format to date. It will feature wall to wall billboard ads on its music player that appear after just 5 minutes of inactivity as part of a major 3 Mobile ad campaign. (Revolution)
- To buy more time, the startup is on the hunt for another $40-$50 million in venture capital funding. (paidContent)
