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SPOTIFY NOW HAS 75 million people using the service, and more than 20 million are paying for it.
The last time it updated its figures in January, it said it had 60 million total active users and 15 million paying for the service, while a year ago, it was 40 million and 10 million respectively.
It also mentioned it paid out €2.65 billion in royalties to artists and rights holders, €265 million of that happening in the first three months of 2015, declaring that the service is “good for music, good for music fans … and good for music makers.”
Spotify has been regularly criticised by smaller musicians and artists for the small amount it pays out to them. After Taylor Swift pulled her catalogue from the service, Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek defended the freemium model saying “our interests are totally aligned with yours. Even if you don’t believe that’s our goal, just look at our business.”
The streaming service also announced a new funding round worth €465 million, giving it a valuation of €7.5 billion.
Both announcements come in response to Apple announcing its music service on Monday. As well as being the first Apple-made app to appear on Android, the service will allow users to stream music, play tracks from their own library and offer playlists curated by experts.
The service costs €9.99 a month but comes with a three-month trial period for users to try out. It will be made available on most Apple devices by the end of the month and on Apple TV and Android devices this autumn.
When it was announced, Ek tweeted ‘Oh ok’ in response before later deleting it.
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Best thing I ever did was get a spotify account
I haven’t pirated a single song since I got spotify, it’s great.
….of course, I never pirated anything before that….not one thing….
Hope you don’t have a wife and she reads that!
Or partner
Good save Brian
Streaming with lower profit margins is the future for the music industry. People won’t pay for something they can easily download illegally.
The best €10 spent every month. Their customer service is also excellent.
Listening to Apples Tim Cook launching their service yesterday, he makes it sound like it an whole new innovative service they have come up up with. Phrases like”this will change the way you listen to music forever”. It’s like they are 4 years behind everyone else but they don’t realise it.
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Posted from my iPhone
Tweety Mc Tweeter,
Are you trying to be ironic (posting from your iPhone lol)
Anyway Cook needs to sell his product and make it sound appealing. So as far is it goes with comparing to how iTunes users used to listen to music; it will change how they listen to music forever
I hope Spotify will react and price match Apples family account.
Spotify have already said they will meet apple on price plans :-)
While I like spotify for what it can provide the app is actually pretty poorly designed and still a bit buggy.
The addition of Siri to use with Apple service may be enough for me to switch.
The music tagging in spotify is also pretty bad if Apple do it better that would effect my decision too.
Couldn’t disagree more. Think it’s a fantastic app which I never have trouble with. Plus it works with my Sonos system which Apple’s app won’t.
At least I know why somebody is red thumbing.
The app crashes regularly on my phone, tablet, laptop and PC. Randomly can’t connect too.
Try to look up some artists and it fails to show the album but all the tracks are listed on a playlist instead.
If you stick with popular acts you might not notice how badly labelled the music is.
Apple music will work with the sonos. The sonos website has already been updated to show this and it’s also mentioned on apples site.
Sonos support says otherwise:
https://ask.sonos.com/sonos/topics/so-any-discussions-with-apple-about-apple-music
That’s a good point; you cannot use spotify with voice control powered by Siri. You can ask Siri to launch the spotify app but that’s it
I can’t understand why anyone use’s these service. Any song you want is on youtube for nothing
What are you talking about? YouTube has no nothing to do with streaming music, or paid music.
Well You tube actually have their own paid streaming service now so that is not really true.
Nick mc,
If you are talking about the MusicTube app; it’s online only and it does not have every song you want. There is a lot of indie artists not available there and YouTube
It’s good for sampling new music but is not that reliable as it can be buffering for ages
Mickmac..u can’t play songs on youtube offline dats y hi
I think Apple are going to destroy Spotify. You can’t run an entertainment empire from Sweden
Try Qobuz through a DAC for the best quality music ever. Apple or Spotify will never match Qobuz. Apple will just imprision its users even more into their Eco-OS- system.
I miss being able to buy physical singles as a big music buyer and hope this will not spell the end for buying music altogether
Being able to stream artists like The Beatles and (ahem) Taylor Swift will surely convince many to move from Spotify to Apple Music
have your say