Taylor Swift boycotted Spotify in November, and landed the best-selling album of 2014. But maybe all that drama is helping Spotify, big time: according to data triumphantly released this morning, Spotify now has 15 million paying subscribers, and 60 million users worldwide.
That’s 2.5 million paying subscribers (and 10 million users overall) in just two months, i.e., the biggest growth spurt in Spotify’s history.
i’m guessing this had more to do with their 3 months for 99 cents promotion.
Bingo. Spotify for Christmas was an easy gift this year.
Absolutely agree! Avg. global sub is at max $5 = 75M /mth.
With some ads Spotify might go over one billion in 2015 pulverizing just that from downloads and delivering over 20 billion in actual goods to deadbeats and semi deadbeats.
Proven business model?
Dear Mr. Ek, Convert yourself and all Radio to discovery based music store then ask for $5B IPO.
I think that was started by Spotify in early December (correct me if I’m wrong):
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/12/04/hey-taylor-spotify-now-offering-3-months-premium-99-cents
There was also a “Friends and Family” promotion offered to premium subscribers. You could add a limited number of F/F for $5 a head per month. They get their own ID, playlists, etc.
But get real. Like all things in Heaven and on Earth it was Taylor Swift’s doing.
Definitely. Who could resist having all the music I wanted for 99 cents? Even Taylor’s fans probably bought it.
Classic line of “all press is good press”….
I can see someone saying… i don’t listen to Taylor… But on this “Spotify thingey”, I can listen to the Baha Men all day!!! This is wonderful!!!
The Streisand Effect!
their promotion as well as the recent launch into CANADA with a populace of 35 ought Million people many of whom prefer free or cheap music, together alone, would cause such a surge in numbers.
how much is taylor and her team paying you Paul?
how much pressure is whoever, the industry included, putting on you to continually talk about a mostly redundant and unimportant figure musically and historically, Paul?
albeit a good reason to find another rag to sift through. i prefer solid well thought out and exhaustive reporting, this is pure marketing and promotion for a safe boring hipster model who happens to sing a bit, a typical mor industry puppet who will go down as one of the greats, with a body that will make you yawn for having very little substance other then young immature loving angst and teenager tweener girl crush love stuff that is un-relatable for anyone matured even a little, which is fine of course, we all know boy bands like 1D and tweener safies are the bread and butter of the business and get put on a pedestal for the units they move rather then the music they make, so obviously they will always get the most coverage etc. but to see an outlet like this continually hammer her, well it can lead to only one conclusion.
Pretty mean spirited. I agree with most of the other commenters that the $.99 for 3 months was really the driver, but no need to get personal.
Geez. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today…
Can’t help but think about those boycotts against Uber by taxi drivers. The awareness gain was monumental.
There were some other factors I’m sure, as others have said, but Taylor Swift uttering one word about Spotify was better awareness marketing than Spotify’s gotten for themselves their entire existence.
meh, there are far more influential voices in the world. shes not the top of twitter and all the way down at #21 on facebook.
the only thing her thing did was likely remove some spotify users, those hard core devoted swifites, the type to live and die by each fart she toots, the types who yield a knife and want to kill any fame face wonder boy shes hanging off in whatever setup pazzi photo she takes, or else the old music badness who is currently in her corner making her out to be someone making incredible art and pushing boundaries but only doing so because they see their revenues diving and figure shes the best product to get behind for a few different reasons, none of which having anything to do with music, art or historic relevance.
sure the odd drone sitting at home glued to the latest show tween talent show finding and blessing the world with the greatest superstar deity wunderkid stars hanging on her every word maybe checked out spotify if she ever mentioned it any of her marketing promotion stunts, but im not so sure her huge massive team would have written such a political speech for her, i really dont know, maybe she did, i dont follow her or her huge budgeted circus show too much.
she does use real musicians though, of course her incredible budget helps in that, so at least thats something anyways.
i could do with a lot less taylor and her posse and a lot more real music, but the tweens and soccer moms and her posse are the current trend setter tastemaker show controllers right now, so thats not likely.
itd be nice if tv and the internet and just every day life in general had choices and opt outs, i would tick her box to ensure i never get pummeled with anything her at the moment and would prefer to only see anything her when i so choose to do as such, but that wont ever happen will it? shame…
Of course there’s far more influential voices in the world. In music? Not many. But that’s still irrelevant. Spotify’s marketing has been shitty since the initial launch with the invite-only gimmick. That worked, then besides an ad campaign that seemed to last a month, I see almost no advertising for them ever. Certainly no worthwhile marketing.
Taylor Swift saying something, good or bad, and the subsequent media frenzy, got more people knowing Spotify existed than ever before, I would put money on that. Yes, another star act could have, but they didn’t.
hmm, interesting, you may be right, but what if spotifys marketing plan and advertising was nothing more then to leverage the media outlets and show cronies she and her huge budgeted marketing team whipped up appearances on to push product, all to ask her about spotify just so they could get her pre-written and approved response by her board room suits and corporate players, or whoever it is, and that was what did it and nothing she herself did proactively??
personally i think it has more to do with other things and of course the recent unveiling in canada myself, but hey, to der old merikkkans canada is basically sliced off at the border and only exists for dem ol merikans to get through to dat der alasker up der or else to make fun of or steal from or whatever… cause really, who the heck in canada has internet and computers in their igloos?? and other then da bizeebz do we even have any epically pure writers, producers and artists of such gargantuan bigger then jesus do it right pure epic awesomeness status? i think da bizzeebz may be all canada has as far as i can tell, but what the heck do i know?? he must have been like from another world or something, like jesus, and likely we will never see such quality superstardom amazingness pure deity epic godlike talent from canada ever again, wherever canada is anyways…
anyways, im obviously fully out of touch with the masses and the culture and just what people want altogether, so who knows. i guess whatever taylor toots out is pure gold and can be accepted as the truth and straight up honesty as thats what her cute little pure goody two shoes best role model and greatestest ever face portrays.
i dont consider her a star personally and quite frankly, anything she and her posse says means about as much to me as half a square of toilet paper, but hey, who knows what stans will do, and any show superstar deity of the grandest most epic amazingness certainly has a few and as ive said before, im obviously completely out of touch with anything and everything and especially the people and what anyone wants.
😉
just goes to show Spotify’s true unsympathetic stance with artists. i.e care about the numbers and getting one on Swift rather that fixing the hole their service is creating.
Daniel Ek has come off as a world class dbag in all this. Way to go Daniel.
Pretty sure Paul drew up that graph/’thank you, taylor’ no?
Or was it removed from the blog or something?
Spotify remains a music consumers’ dream. Taylor Swift remains pop garbage.
Seriously, now you don’t have to listen to her songs come up in commercials. This is best case scenario. Hope more modern pop stars follow.
Correlation ≠ Causality
The hotter it gets outside the more ice-cream vendors are observed selling ice-cream on the street, but putting ice-cream vendors on the street in January wont make it any warmer outside.
Yes. There was a story about Scott Borchetta pulling Taylor Swift’s music from Spotify while Big Machine was looking for someone to buy at the end of 2014.
Yes. Spotify had an increase in premium subscribers during the same time.
No. Taylor Swift is not responsible for the increase in Spotify subscribers.
Correlation ≠ Causality
Thank you.
They’ve discounted the family rate to $4.99 and now have a $.99 per month deal for three months. Let’s see what the actual numbers are when the $.99 deal runs out in April and Google and iTunes streaming goes into full effect.
Oh, ok so streaming is on it’s way out because there is going to be two more services. That makes sense.