Would you pay for Spotify?
July 18, 2009
Interestingly, as I started to write this, an ad just played for Sky Player, so it’s sort of ironic to say that there’s not any big names backing the music streaming service that millions have fallen in love with. However, ads are few and far between, and it’s hard to see it paying off in the long term. This is reflected by the lack of interest for the paid version, as the ads aren’t annoying enough to justify £10/month.
It’s a shame that the main interest for the advertising comes from small companies/charity organisations, as it has the potential to target a relatively select audience. That’s why I thought that the adverts promoting artist albums would be successful. In practice however, it just leads me to play the album on Spotify itself, or if it’s not available I’ll go to YouTube. It’s little wonder that Spotify are struggling, since they reportedly pay royalties per song rather than a long term licensing deal. At least using P2P, the service isn’t subject to the same kind of costs the likes of YouTube have for hosting/bandwidth.
Yeah, at the moment, the adverts are about the same level of annoyance as commercial radio – but without the added annoyance of the DJ!
I think the only way to get people to fork out the tenner a month is to add more premium features. If they ever get the iPhone/Android clinets out, make them only available on the premium service and I’ll bet people sign up.
A lot of the ads are self referential for Spotify, but all ads are relatively few and far between. I find it less annoying than the radio, as radio ads last for several minutes and after every three songs. I noticed that Jodi seemed to get a lot less ads than what I tend to though, so maybe it’s based on your listening habits.
Tom said that he wouldn’t mind paying 99p for a party, with no commercials, but to be sustainable Spotify need to do something like you said or just charge for the iPhone app itself, as I’m sure a lot would purchase it.