69% of Spotify Subscribers Make Their Decision Within 90 Days

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Major labels Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment are putting heavy pressure on Spotify to limit their free access window to three months.  And now we know why: according to data just shared by executives at the Big Three with Billboard69% of Spotify premium subscribers make the decision to convert from free within 90 days.

Spotify most recently reported 15 million paying subscribers, but a giant stock of 45 million who aren’t.  “We’ve looked at the data, and what has become clear is that the free funnel isn’t working,” a major label also told Billboard over the weekend.

“69 percent of those who subscribe after using the free tier do so within 90 days.”

Meanwhile, Spotify is firing back, and flatly denying that labels are pressuring for limitations on free access.  And, denying that there’s a problem: “Freemium is the only thing that’s working,” a Spotify executive quipped back.

But working for whom, exactly?

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All of this may not be going to a happy place for the hyper-valued Spotify: Spotify is currently in active negotiations with Universal Music Group, and Billboard revealed that the UMG contract officially lapsed at the end of 2014.  Unclear is what other deadlines are looming: just recently, Spotify’s 2011 contract with Sony Music Entertainment leaked, suggesting that negotiations are still ongoing on a refreshed deal.  The CEOs of both mega-labels have been extremely critical of unlimited free.

And then comes Apple.  As WWDC descends upon San Francisco, onlookers are waiting for the mega-mothership of ‘Apple Music‘ to land, complete with significant limitations on free — and major demands that Spotify do the same.

 

Top: Sony Music Entertainment chairman and CEO Doug Morris; image Spotify CEO Daniel Ek from leweb, shot by Magnus Höij and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC by 2.0).

 

The post 69% of Spotify Subscribers Make Their Decision Within 90 Days appeared first on Digital Music News.


Source: Industry News

Spotifree Automatically Mutes Spotify Ads…

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Here’s another reason why more people aren’t converting to Spotify Premium: they’re already skipping the ads for free.  Enter Spotifree, an easy app add-on that simply mutes Spotify ads without you noticing.

This is actually an app that’s been floating around for years, and one of several ad-blocking solutions for Spotify that haven’t been dealt with.  In fact, Spotifree isn’t blocked at all by Spotify.

The secret sauce of this app is that most people aren’t actually looking at Spotify when they’re listening to Spotify, so they’ll hardly notice a 30-second or one minute period of silence.

Which is exactly the point, as you don’t know (or care) about the ads that you’re not listening to.

You’ll never even notice this plug for Jurassic World…

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Nor will you hear this Coca-Cola Six Flags spot.  It’s like these ads were never even there, even though they were paid for.

 

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Then, it’s back to the music, which is seamlessly un-muted after the blocked ads are finished.

Actually, the biggest hurdle to installing this is Apple itself, simply because Spotifree is not by an approved app developer.  But, if you decide it’s worth the risk, all you have to do is re-start Spotify and the muting begins.

 

The post Spotifree Automatically Mutes Spotify Ads… appeared first on Digital Music News.


Source: Industry News