The Financial Times reports Spotify’s growth is accelerating:
After hitting 2.5m subscribers in November, the Anglo-Swedish digital music service has now reached 3m, with more than 20 per cent of its active user base paying every month to banish advertisements or listen on smartphones.
That ratio is up from 15 per cent in March last year, when Spotify crossed 1m subscribers. The latest figures mean it’s added another million since September’s 2m milestone, suggesting its growth rate is accelerating.
The service’s partnership with Facebook certainly has a lot to do with Spotify’s growth and has turned the service into a growing venue for music discovery. As a user of the service, I think it is a superb tool for finding new music and, used through Facebook, I get to better learn my friends’ musical tastes to boot.
Isn’t that a big part of the joy of music–discovering and sharing new bands/musicians with your friends?
Given Spotify’s growing popularity, the question musicians must answer is whether or not to make their music available on the service. GigaOm has pointed out that indie labels have pulled their catalogs from the service due to Spotify’s low royalty payments.
I think it comes down to where you are in your musical career. Do you need exposure for yourself or your band or do you have enough name recognition where royalty concerns trump publicity?