Survey Tells Tale Of Two Spotifys: Piracy Killer vs. Flawed Service Losing Users
In addition to the growing debate over payments to artists from Spotify, a new survey points to two very different pictures of the streaming music service's future. On the one hand the Mediavision survery of Swedish users – Spotify's home country and where it has operated the longest – showed what others have: Spotify reduces piracy – 9% last year alone. But...
The same survey also shows that 43% of Swedish users are planning to replace Spotify, in part or in full, with alternatives like YouTube. 48% are planning to move to other streaming services.
"We are mystified by the findings of this report, and believe both the research method and the results to be fundamentally flawed," Sofie Grant of Spotify told The Local. "Spotify has continued to grow its userbase across Sweden and the world, and now has well over 10 million registered users and over 2 million paying subscribers".
For artists and labels worried that Spotify discourages sales and pays out too little, the survey only adds to their dilema. If payments from Spotify are compared with the zero income received from pirated music, anything looks good. But if users leave the service – whose payments to rightsholders are based on a percentage of income from ads and paid subscriptions – then per play payments will only shrink further.
Spotify is the Starbucks of the streaming world. They’re the ones with the buzz and are educating the mainstream on streaming music, but don’t necessarily have the best product. Once users embrace Spotify and understand the subscription model, they’re likely to want to leave and go to other services. Deezer, Rdio, Mog etc need to be patient and focus on offering a better product.
Great metaphor and I totally agree, we need to have more of these services and IMHO once one of them goes from Clicks to Bricks we’ll have a real solution. I wonder who would consider doing such a thing. hmmmmmm
Survey Tells Tale Of Two Spotifys: Piracy Killer vs. Flawed Service Losing Users is survey very interesting and informative…
I just sent this post to a bunch of my friends as I agree with most of what you’re saying here and the way you’ve presented it is awesome.