I wonder how many of these 40M users are like me and are searching for other options. I'm using Spotify because of an intro offer, and my Google Play account exists almost solely for the discount on other content. Both have enough annoying design quirks that I've also tried Tidal and Apple Music, but their recommendation engines left me wanting more.
Based on my love of Rdio, I'm really hoping Pandora's rumored new streaming service becomes a viable alternative.
I'm happy their subscriber counts are up, but I've noticed a steep negative trend their library selection in the last month. I poked around a bit for more info. All I could find were complaints that they don't publish this information anymore.<p>Does anyone know how to see if my anectdote is a trend?<p>Perhaps they lost some contracts with major labels, or perhaps there is a way to probe their search API to estimate their library size.
Good on them. Now can their stupid, over-zealous designers stop messing with the product by removing actually useful features such as "Most Played" filtering of your library, etc etc.
Spotify has achieved what no normal entity could. Go them for having a relatively decent free to play with, I'm assuming, a good pay to play model as well.
Between March(they announced 30 million) and now - roughly 6 months later they added 10 million new paid subscribers? How is that even possible? That would average out to 1.6 million new subscribers a month.<p>Reference:
<a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6875477/spotify-30-million-subscribers-apple-music-11-million-subscribers" rel="nofollow">http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6875477/spotify-3...</a>
They still haven't redownloaded their UMG library to fix the horrendous watermark issue. Everything from UMG before 2013 is very low quality due to a bug with their watermarking technology at the time. This includes all the best classical music labels.
I pay for Spotify but it sucks because:<p>1) I can't play it on multiple devices at the same time like every other service I subscribe to (Netflix, Hbo, Hulu). If I ever upgrade to a"family" account, I have to make new accounts for each person (including my kids).<p>2) The UI sucks. I can never find the queue list, so I never know what is playing next. Adding items to a playlist is should be easier.<p>3) The web app is really broken. You have to install the Spotify software to use the service.<p>4) Offline playlists randomly decide they have not been downloaded yet.<p>5) Nothing by the Beatles. Like every other music service, the only way is to rip your old CDs or torrent them.<p>One feature I do like, listening to local music files on the Spotify software. Like, for example, the Beatles.<p>I really wish Grooveshark was still around!<p>[edit] Now that I read that Spotify (and similar companies) are actually losing money I realize that I shouldn't be so hard on them.
So that's like ~$400M of income per month? Their expenses are mostly royalties and those are probably spare change compared to that income. Not bad!