Who’s paying for what? We’ve been getting hit with a lot of subscriber updates here and there, including a few at MidemNet this weekend. So here’s the latest monetization intelligence, please share if we’ve missed something!
Spotify
- Paying Subscribers: 750,000 (per Spotify, shared immediately after Sony (NYSE: SNE) Music US signing this month.)
- Subscriber Mix: 90% paying full premiums (source: Digital Music News, citing European partner sources late last year)
- Royalty Payouts: €43 million ($58.5 million) in 2010 (source: Spotify, shared with ballade.no this month).
Rhapsody
- Paying Subscribers: 750,000 (per Rhapsody president John Irwin, January 20th).
- Of note: Increase of 100,000 since April, 2010; RNWK estimates broader US music subscription market at 1.5 million).
Napster
- Paying Subscribers: 760,000 as of Best Buy purchase (May, 2008). (Current number unknown, likely smaller.)
Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) UK
- 100,000 paying music subscribers (per Vodafone content services director Lee Epting at MidemNet 2011).
- Of note: Global goal is 1 million by 2012.
Sirius XM (NSDQ: SIRI) Radio
- Paying Subscribers: 20 million+ (per company, threshold accomplished December, 2010)
- Monthly Subscription Cost: $12.95 (or higher)
Nokia’s Comes With Music
- Paying Subscribers: 107,000 worldwide, 33,000 in UK (Music Ally, July 2009). Now being wound down outside of Asia, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa.
Pandora
- Financial Status: Profitable (as of late-2009, per CEO Tim Westergren)
- Registered users: 65 million (per Westergren, October 2010)
- Active users: 25 million (in September, 2010), average monthly sessions at 11 hours.
Rdio
- Paying Subscribers: Company will not disclose to Digital Music News. No other sources or information at present.
Slacker
- Paying Subscribers: More than 200,000 paying $4-5 monthly (source: Slacker, to Digital Music News late last year)
iTunes
- Paid Song Downloads: 10 billion, cumulative since mid-2003 (source: Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), reported February, 2010)
- Broader Story: In the US, a-la-carte downloads gained a modest 1 percent to 1.172 billion, per Nielsen Soundscan. Digital albums gained 13 percent to 86.3 million. The global picture appears more healthy, though also primed for plateau.
eMusic
- Paying Subscribers: 400,000 (per eMusic to Digital Music News, November 15th).
- Of note: Zero growth since 2007.
MOG? last.fm?
I would have liked to see some stats for: HypeMachine, SoundCloud, EchoNest & Wolfgang’s Vault
Are any of these, or anyone else, offering better than MP3 quality. Seems to me we need a site that at least offers lossless CD quality and upwards (24/96?).
Antony, the only one I know of is http://hdtracks.com/ for 96kHz / 24-bit files
at the end of January the platform “www.highresaudio.com” goes online. they offer music in different genres in high end audio quality.
http://www.fargotube.com has been live for a few months now. You can get music and video via streaming or download, and pay per download, per view, per file or per month. Subscribers generally choose a particular musician’s channel, though it might be possible to subscribe to FargoTube as a whole.