"They just want the music to be there.  We're very much focused on providing the music you feel like listening to.  You don't see long lists of stuff on Rara, you see a pictoral, easy- to-use interface."  

10 million songs for $4.99 a month....the cost of easy access to music just keeps dropping.

More importantly is Taylor Swift's new release on RaRa

"There's another possible twist here, which is that more mainstream users simply consume less.  Which means greater per-stream payouts for copyright owners - that is, if and when these masses arrive."

Greater per-stream payouts, yes, but a much lower net payout.

I strongly believe streaming is still in its pre-mainstream infancy. 

Your Spotify numbers are incorrect. Spotify has 4 million paying subscribers. The US has 3 million active users and the number of paying subscribers is unknown. 1 million, which means a conversion ratio of 33 % is unlikely.

And about RaRa. This service has started here in the Netherlands about a year ago. Not very succesfull so far. 

Yes, 4mm+ WW.  In the US, I think you're raising the 'who knows' issue that comes with Spotify's general lack of user/subscriber disclosure, though the last semi-reliable figure on this I saw was 600,000 in April.  Extrapolating from that, I think we can say approaching 1mm US, approx.  Let's see how that compares to something official, if/when that happens.

Also, I've learned to be very cautious with Spotify-reported active user numbers.  They were somehow fixed at 10mm WW indefinitely, despite obvious undercounting/under-reporting.

/paul

Rara will never be a success. Why? Because they make you pay to even look at the damn service. Not offering a free service is understandable. But they don't offer 7 or 30 day trials either. They don't even let you look at the player or library without paying. You see nothing other than the home page unless you choke up money. Screw that.

I have tried every streaming service ever released in the US except Rara. I am not going to pay for something when I don't even know what I am getting. Rumor has it they have a crappy bitrate quite a bit below 128kbps. It doesn't matter what codec they use if that is the case. Rdio/Mog/Spotify will blow it out of the water.

I looked around RaRa for a catalogue also.

What kind of business asks you to buy something without allowing you to look at it first?

If you sign up, you will receive in your email a link for a 7 days totally free experience, but only web is allowed. You cannot use that trial on the apps.

signed up, no email :-/

I have never seen that either. The company has been very firm on their "must pay to try" stance.

Rara offers a 3-month trial period for $1 or £1 (and presumably 1 Euro, etc) a month.  I guess they have taken a calculated view that anyone who isn't willing to pay that much is likely to be a time-waster. 

Whether Rara will ever be a 'success' depends on your definition of 'success'.  In commercial terms, success is making a profit.  Rara's business model would allow them to make a profit at a much lower level of takeup than a freemium service like Spotify.  It is better to make a modest profit than a large loss.  Rara is a spin-off from Omnifone, which is already making a modest profit, so they seem to know what they are doing.

Another consideration is that Rara's subscription-only model would enable them to give a higher average pay-per-play to the content providers.  When they launched last year they aready had all four Majors on board, without apparently having to give them an equity stake.  At that time they did not have a deal with Merlin, the biggest indie-label group, but according to their new press release they now have Merlin and other big indie labels on board.  I think it is conceivable that Rara (and other subscription-only services) could attract artists and labels away from Spotify. 

I should say that I use both Rara (paid) and Spotify (free).  They both have their plus points.  Rara is easier to use, but up till now Spotify has had a more comprehensive choice, so I tend to use Spotify as a fall-back for things I can't find on Rara.  I can't detect any difference in sound quality. 

Paying $1 is not a trial. You still have to pay. You may be the only person I have ever known to do this. I know a lot of people who stream. When they saw you had to pay to even see what songs they had in their catalog. Every single one said f this

That may say more about your circle of acquaintances than about the viability of rara's business model.  People buy many things without trying them out first. They decide to buy based on reviews, advertising, personal recommendations, and simple curiosity. Requiring people to pay a small starting fee (only $1 if you cancel within a month) is an effective way of screening out people who are determined never to pay for music. 

As it happens, I do think it would be wiser for Rara to offer a very short free trial period - maybe a week - just to enable people to check that it works on their equipment.  But that's a matter of commercial judgement.  The one thing we can be sure of is that they are not losing as much money as Spotify.

Physical products, yes. But Rara is definitely the only major streaming service to not offer some sort of a free trial and to be honest, the only online service that I think of in general that does not offer a free trial or money-back guarantee. At this day in age, people get paid to try services. Either by free service or some sort of financial reward. Rara says no, you are going to pay us for a service you may or may not like and we will not let you see exactly what you are paying for up front either. Ask questions such as bitrate and they won't tell you because that is not public knowledge. Really, is it that bad? I know for a fact it is public knowledge. Anyone can setup traffic monitoring software on their own computer and stream Rara to find out what the bitrate is. It is not exactly secret. Just another example of a company that is disconnected from reality. Rara is completely sealed behind a pay wall. This is not just bad for business, it is simply incomprehensible.

Something interesting about Rara is that you won't find many reviews. Because reviewers don't want to pay for it. Very few people recommend it and it has almost zero impact in social media because social media is all about sharing and being open. You can't share a service that costs money to try. Rara has slightly over 200 likes on their Facebook page (although it shows 2,100 on their website). Spotify has over 3,140,000. There is no comparison.

Talking about streaming going mainstream. That may start at the end of this week when Windows 8 is released.

Xbox Music is baked into every single copy of Windows 8. It provides free access to 30 million songs, as part of the default music player. When you fire up Windows 8 and hit the big "in your face" Music tile you get immidiate access. Windows Music Player turned into a streaming music service. Imagine the impact that will have. 

Read this and you will get the picture:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattbuchanan/how-xbox-music-just-made-spotify-obsolete

It could well be the end of Spotify. They will not be able to reach the scale they need to get profitable. Good news for some of the regular visitors here maybe.

Probably not much. Windows 7 and older are completely locked out of the service. It appears so is OS X.

A webbased and IOS version is in the making. Microsoft will release them later. They will use Xbox Music for promoting Windows 8 first of course.

Read it again: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattbuchanan/how-xbox-music-just-made-spotify-obsolete

Windows 7 sold 240 million copies in its first year!! If Windows 8 matches first-year sales of Windows 7, and just 10 percent of those users latch onto Xbox Music, it'll have a user base that's substantially larger than Spotify's. 

Sounds logical, based on the numbers.  Microsoft has such a mediocre record in the music space, however.  I say, let's see how this pans out.

/paul

That was my initial thougt as well  But after I installed a Windows 8 trial and saw how the system works, I don't think Windows 8 users will bother to install Spotify. There is no need at all, you click the Music tile and get access to the 30 million streams together with your own music library.

That is assuming windows 8 sells well. They have already hit some road blocks and lots of bad reviews. I would be surprised if the system outsold Vista.

Just found out an update to Windows 8 costs just $30. I'm sure this will outsell Vista. Downloading now.....

the cool kids dictate trends in the U.S. 

The cool kids love Spotify. get over it already. 

From my point of view, the critical driving force around streaming is bandwidth.  Geeky view maybe, but the reality is that most companies in the USA block or prohibit streaming music. 

Although most people have bumped up their personal connections the ISP's haven't really done a great job of ensuring that you get the bandwidth you pay for.  The 'shared' network slows when your neighbor starts streaming that TV show, videos, nfl, cooking and everything else that is flooding today's internet user. 

Now add in the huge increase in wireless use.  In a growing number of users it is the Only or primary access they have to the internet.  Shared wifi often can't handle a large group streaming at the same time.

Put all of those things together and streaming is forced to be a slow growth proposition.  Add payments or other obstacles and it slows adoption even more.