The New York Post is reporting that Spotify, the online music service, is less Appetite for Destruction and more Chinese Democracy. Spotify has attracted 3 million subscribers since launching last summer but only about 600,000 of those customers actually pay for the service, about 20%.
The free model is meant to entice users into the paid tier, in which members have unrestricted access to music from PCs and mobile devices. The conversion rate from free to paid has been less than 20 percent.
On the bright side for Spotify, the company is earning a lot of praise for what is pretty much the coolest use of Facebook Timeline we’ve seen in a long time. It traces the history of music starting with the year 1000. There’s music embedded in the entries so when you come upon, say, Guns N’ Roses (the band I referenced way back in the first sentence), you can listen to their music and decide whether or not you feel welcome in the jungle.
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