Spotify Continues To Grow Faster Than Apple Music Thanks To Free Tier (macrumors.com)

Joe Rossignol reports via Mac Rumors: Spotify today announced it now has over 140 million subscribers worldwide, including users that only listen to the free ad-supported tier. Spotify last said it had over 100 million subscribers in June 2016, so it has gained around 40 million listeners in one year to remain the world's largest streaming music service. Spotify didn't update its number of paying subscribers, which stood at over 50 million worldwide as of March 2017. By comparison, Apple at its Worldwide Developers Conference last week announced that Apple Music now has 27 million paying subscribers, just weeks before the streaming music service turns two years old. Apple Music doesn't have a free tier, and Apple doesn't regularly disclose how many users are using the free trial.

Comments

Free is the reason I still use it

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't feel the need to pay for another subscription service, so I use the free option.

If they didn't offer it, I wouldn't pay for it either, so they might as well make some money from ads.

Re:Free is the reason I still use it

[quenda]

Why free when they keep doing "3 months premium for 99c" promos for "new" users?

I have not watched adverts since the VCR was invented. If all the ad-free radio services were to shut down, I'd have to dust off the 20GB mp3 collection.

Re:Free is the reason I still use it

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Seriously man, it's less than $10/month. I used to spend twice that per week, on music.

Re:Free is the reason I still use it

[Anonymous Coward]

Difference is you paid once and you kept the music for ever. Now you pay and, in return, you'll have nothing in the moment you stop paying. Also, a physical music library is cooler (and more impractical though) than a Spotify subscription.

Re:Free is the reason I still use it

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Sure, but there are only a handful of albums I would buy and cherish and listen to forever. Having a Spotify subscription does not prevent me from also buying select albums.

However, it does allow me to listen to new albums in great quality (no more shitty Youtube videos) without having to buy them first. This gives me a better basis for determining whether I actually want to buy it. And if (which is a very big "if") I decide to cancel my subscription, I'll still have all of that music, the music that matters most to me.

Do I like the occasional Pantera song, maybe in a playlist I'll make for a party? Sure. Do I like them enough to actually spend money on an album? Nah.

As for the "coolness" of a physical music library, that's highly subjective. Hundreds and hundreds of CDs start to take up a lot of space, never mind LPs.

Re:Free is the reason I still use it

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah the silly people who rent instead of buy. They tend to do this with cars, home and even music. Then wonder why after decades they have nothing to show for it.

I prefer to own.

Re:Free is the reason I still use it

[qbast]

And what do you have to show for it ? 20 year old car? Music albums you got bored of decade ago?

Re: Free is the reason I still use it

[Anonymous Coward]

Egocentricity is the world's most normalized disease.

Re:Free is the reason I still use it

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Everything I have, I own outright. The only exception is my apartment, but only because I couldn't afford to buy it outright, otherwise I would have.

I see a Spotify subscription as a membership of a vast library of music, bigger than any person could ever amass in a lifetime. Obviously, I have some favorite albums (and I own a lot of them on CD or LP, or as purchased downloads from Bandcamp), but that doesn't ever begin to cover all the music I listen to. Say I feel in the mood for some German rap music or Bolivian sludge metal, for whatever reason. I don't have any in my collection, since it's a very occasional thing, and the selection and quality on Youtube is shit (and pays artists shit-tier royalties). But it's right there, on Spotify. Instantly available, in great quality and quantity, with the most popular tracks marked for convenience.

The whole obsession with amassing physical belongings as some sort of status symbol is ridiculous. I'm working hard on getting rid of most of the junk I have laying around. Too much stuff tends to clog up your life.

I'd rather have...

[Anonymous Coward]

...27M paying customers than provide free infrastructure to 100M freeloading leeches.

Re:I'd rather have...

[fj3k]

Technically they're paying by listening to advertising.

Apple music did something clever

[rsilvergun]

if you're in college you get it for $5/mo. See, it's not just about growth, it's about the right kind of growth. The kind of people you can raise their rates on and they won't care because they still have jobs.

Re:Apple music did something clever

[Anonymous Coward]

Can the long-term jobless get unlimited music for a penny? To fill their empty lives with something other than the sounds of silence after their friends and families abandoned them? Where is the nearest Trumptown shelter for coal miners?

Sure, we're losing money on each free user...

[Theaetetus]

... but we'll make it up in volume!

Free users?

[Anonymous Coward]

"You can keep them all."
- Apple.

Re: Free users?

[Anonymous Coward]

"We want to destroy free music services, because we can no make money from them." -Apple.

Re: Free users?

[Anonymous Coward]

"We'll offer a free service to lure users and then annoy them as much as we can with ads, hopping they'll start paying."
- Spotify

"I want everything for free. I deserve it. Musicians can go and fuck themselves."
- AC, probably.

Re: Free users?

[tepples]

For the first two years that the iPhone and iPod touch were available, iTunes was the only music player that could run in the background. Because iPhone OS 1 lacked an App Store, only Safari could play music, and it would pause playback when the user switched away. Though iPhone OS 2 introduced the App Store, it also paused non-Apple apps when the user switched away. Only in iPhone OS 3 did Apple introduce multitasking for third-party apps, but by then, millions of users were already locked into what would later come to be called the iOS ecosystem.

It's got to get smarter

[in10se]

I've tried Spotify (free version) numerous times since it launched. I've listened to and rated hundreds of songs, but the music suggestion algorithm on Spotify radio just sucks. I'm constantly skipping tracks because they play music I don't like.

I like Pandora, but their selection of music is so small. They tend to play music I like, but quite often it's a lot of remixes of songs I previously rated up.

Re:It's got to get smarter

[moeinvt]

Does the free version generate a "Discover Weekly" playlist for you? If so, check out those songs, or next time they offer 3 months of premium for free, try it out and see what they pick.
Every Monday you get a list of 30 songs that they've generated based on what you've been listening to. I am freakin' amazed at how well it has been picking songs for me. Acts I've never heard of. The only downer is that I'm finding all these good bands that have come and gone so there's no chance of ever seeing them on tour.

Re:It's got to get smarter

[robkeeney]

I use the free tier. It generates Discover Weekly and Release Radar. It also give 6 daily mixes, generated from selections from several of my playlists. I've found plenty of great songs via Spotify, maybe more than I ever found in all my years of using Pandora.

My only complaint with Spotify's free tier is that most of the commercials they play are trying to get you to subscribe! I'd really rather they just play commercials for stuff I might actually want to buy.

Re:It's got to get smarter

[rot16]

Discover weekly has served me well. I used to listen to the whole playlist a few times and then added the best songs to my songs library. Top result so far has been that I liked 28 of 30 songs. That's rather impressive.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

People create trial accounts every 3 months

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of people are creating accounts for the 3 months free trial and then new accounts every three months. That has to be helping with growth.

It's about the platform support and openess too

[Keruo]

You can get Spotify playing on a toaster running NetBSD. Apple Play? Not so much.. you're stuck with what they let you buy from them.