Posts tagged US

Americans aren't embracing Spotify

Garett Sloane and Clair Atkinson at the New York Post:

It has been nine months since Spotify debuted in the US and was hailed as a coming music revolution, offering subscribers all-you-can music for up to $10 a month. Now, insiders close to the music labels say the revolution has not been all that was promised, with fewer people paying for subscriptions than expected

…

Since last June, Spotify has signed up 3 million US subscribers. About 20 percent — or 600,000 — pay for the service, according to data obtained by The New York Post.

I have to say, I’m still not convinced by the long-term sustainability of Spotify. And, because of that, I’m not prepared to pay money to rent music that, further down the line, I may not have access to due to Spotify going bust. Why not put the money towards buying music that I own?

I like the idea of free Spotify for finding music and deciding if I like something (though with the 90 second samples you now get with iTunes, I still use that mostly). But I’m really not bought into the idea of renting music.

And these new statistics about Spotify in the US only add to my sense that I don’t (for now at least) want to pour any money into it.

Has Facebook reached its peak?

Inside Facebook:

The United States lost nearly 6 million users, falling from 155.2 million at the start of May to 149.4 million at the end of it. This is the first time the country has lost users in the past year. Canada also fell significantly, by 1.52 million down to 16.6 million, although it has been fluctuating around that number for the past year. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom, Norway and Russia all posted losses of more than 100,000.

Whilst Facebook is still growing as a whole, the nations that were the first to jump on board are starting to see a slowdown. Has Facebook maybe peaked for people in the US and the UK?

I’m very much still a user of Facebook, though not nearly as much nowadays. I cross-post my status updates from Twitter and share the links to my KERUFF posts but, other than that, I don’t use it much. There are a few people whose updates I follow but I have blocked huge numbers of my Facebook ‘friends’ from appearing in my feed.

For me, Twitter definitely has the larger proportion of my time. I discover much more interesting stuff through Twitter and it’s a much simpler approach.

I won’t be leaving Facebook behind any time soon, but these stats - though not yet a trend - don’t surprise me at all.