DMN zooms in on what Spotify has been up to lately, and what this means for artists and fans…
Healthy Subscriber growth.
Spotify announced on March 21st that it had hit 30 million subscribers. DMN predicts that they have approximately 32 million paying users based on the fact that the streaming service has been adding 1 million paying users a month on average.
The fact that Spotify have the most paying subscribers out of all the music streaming services means that generally artists will gain more streams on the service. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that artists will make more money, as there are other streaming platforms that pay more per stream. Spotify’s 70 million users that are signed up to the free ad-supported version still allows artists to generate revenue off those streams, though the per-stream payment is much lower than the premium tier offers.
Reduces family plan price to better compete with major rival, Apple Music.
Spotify didn’t want to let their family plan stand in the way of being the number one streaming service in the market. The major benefit of Apple Music, aside from its radio service, was the family plan – the fact that up to 6 users could have full access to the streaming platform for just $14.99 a month.
This was a major advantage that the service had over Spotify – whose service used to cost over $30 for up to 5 users. But, now the streaming platform has updated their family plan which now matches the price of Apple Music and other streaming platforms in the music industry. This new price option may be enough for subscribing families to move over to Spotify’s service, as there is now another affordable choice.
Starting to focus on streaming exclusives?
Spotify hasn’t really dabbled into streaming artists exclusives. In fact the streaming service has previous dubbed long-term exclusives as ‘bad for artists and bad for fans’. However, the streaming platform has recently hired Troy Carter, and according to reports this was to expand on artists and songwriter relationships. There is speculation that Carter was hired to focus on setting up exclusives for Spotify.
The fact that Spotify may want to start working with artists on exclusives is a big move for the streaming platform. Now that the competition is heating up with both Apple Music and Tidal adopting this move as a major strategy to bump subscriber numbers, it makes sense for Spotify to also get involved in the action. By giving artists the chance to exclusively release their music to those paying for a premium subscription may prevent artists from opting for exclusive releases with other streaming platforms.
The exclusives may also cause non-paying users to see the value in paying for the premium subscription. For music fans, this also adds value to their premium service. Though, the wider issue of windowing artists music can be frustrating for a music fan, as they may end up paying for multiple services.
Battling massive lawsuit.
Spotify has been battling a massive combined $350 million copyright infringement lawsuit brought forward by David Lowery and Melissa Ferrick. Also, according to legal filings obtained by DMN, a Dutch photographer by the name of Dana Lixenberg is claiming copyright infringement over an image of Notorious B.I.G. on Spotify’s artist page.
The fact that Spotify is battling such lawsuits, is not great for its reputation as a service, though this may bear little effect on music fans option to sign up on not. This may however have a more profound effect on artists – If they are constantly hearing about copyright infringement lawsuits and unpaid royalties, then they may think twice about making their music available on the platform.
Loosing features.
Spotify ditched Musixmatch – that little button located next to the play bar on Spotify desktop which once allowed users to access lyrics to the songs they are playing. That feature is no longer available, regardless of the button still being present, it simply doesn’t actually populate any results. According to Spotify, the lyrics feature is now unavailable due to ‘big improvements to the feature’, and they promise they will share the ‘updates soon’ with their users. According to one source ,that could be a blown-out replacement by Genius, the well-financed, wiki-style lyrics site.
A service that looses features is never a good thing – music fans find this disruptive, especially those that were active users of the feature. Though, if Spotify quickly replaces this feature with an upgrade it may do little damage.
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