Spotify Doubled Its Market Share In 2011
According to reports by IFPI and some other data available, it seems that Spotify doubled its market share in 2011 as compared to 2010. And by market share we mean the global streaming music market as followed by International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
Also, according to public records the company had filed in the UK we can tell Spotify's revenue was $99 million in 2010. Towards the end of 2010 they also shared that they had some 750 000 paying subscribers world wide. According to IFPI estimates, the global market for subscription services had about 8,2 millioin paying users. This yields Spotify a market share of around 9,1% in 2010.
Why Elisa's Blockade Is Such A Big Thing
The court's order to make Elisa block access to certain websites became our most retweeted story yesterday. It received almost 1500 retweets in about 24 hours. I'm sure the plaintiff didn't anticipate the implications this will have, not only on Elisa but on a variety of other things - potentially even harming themselves. The more significant result to this is perhaps that Finland received a lot of negative publicity in the digital media space for its court's decision. In a time when countries are competing for appeal in the eye of digital media entrepreneurs, a lot of potential candidates saw Finland's position diminish. This may sound far fetched, but it really isn't. Let me explain why.
Spotify Achieves Another Milestone, 2.5 Million Paying Subscribers And Growing
It appears to be a Spotify fest lately ever since the music streaming service announced their partnership with Facebook, bringing the service almost instantly to millions of Facebook users. Due to their reach in more countries, Spotify now announced they reached 2.5 million paying subscribers of the service.
While it would have been great if Spotify shared details on their user demographics, Spotify has kept this information in the shadows. What is more important here is that Spotify has managed to achieve this feat at a time where many listeners have been getting music for free from pirating. To have paying subscribers means that your users love the service and that they don’t mind paying a fee to avail more features, rather a “better user experience”.
TuneRights Is A Stock Market For Songs
How much do you value your favorite musicians? I suppose if you were an economist you might say something like, "by calculating the present day value of future cash flows," and TuneRights would be just the site for you. Musicians are looking for any way to monetize their works these days, and a Swedish startup is trying to provide them a way to get cash upfront for their songs-- by selling part of their songs' rights to their fans.
Spotify Brings Music Streaming To Windows Phone 7 Devices
Today, Spotify is trying to rapidly expand to every platform. The music streaming service has had things moving in the right direction, and the deal with Facebook seems to have supercharged its expansion. Last week Spotify announced the release of the Spotify app for the Windows Phone 7 devices. Big news and another platform to grow with, and there seems to be no stopping for the service.
The application is branded in the stylish WP7 Metro style, and is available for almost all the Windows Phone 7 devices. It has all the major features that every Spotify user would love, including:
Tuubio Launches A Personalized Radio App
Radio is one of the few mass media technologies that has not been widely explored by start-ups. While many companies build services around music and news, few combine both in smart ways. Tuubio, a start-up from Helsinki that has been in stealth mode for the last 5 months, has just launched their service - a personalized radio app. For the moment it is available only on Android phones or tablets with a browser-based client and an iOS app coming up soon.
Spotify Shakes Hands With Western Digital To Bring WD TV Live
About two weeks ago we reported on Facebook integrating Spotify to the social network for music streaming. A partnership that had mixed reaction from across the globe given that Spotify isn’t available in every region. At the end of last week, Spotify stretched itself further into our living rooms by announcing its partnership with Western Digital.
LoudEvents Is Matchmaking Service For Artists And Live Music Venues
LoudEvents is a matchmaking service. Don’t mistake it to be the same as boy finds girl, boy likes girl and they get connected eventually. The service comes as part of a startup - LoudRevolution - and its claim to fame is its ability to help artists find the best venues for their next performance and find a fellow artist to perform with in that venue.
Mobile Backstage Launches A Facebook App, Names David Hazan CMO
Music fans are bands' most precious resource. They can take artists to fame and earn them money. Creating and maintaining a strong fanbase is, therefore, extremely important for any band. Mobile Backstage offers artists directly engage with their core fans through a fully customized mobile app. Now their solution is also available as a Facebook app, though for the moment it is in free invite-only beta. Artists can apply for an invite here. Steam Republic, the company behind Mobile Backstage, also hired a new Chief Marketing Officer - David Hazan, a seasoned professional in music industry that would help the Helsinki-based start-up establish presense in the US.
Jenkatehdas Get Initial Funding
The first Finnish online rock venue, Jenkatehdas, gets funded by Tekes and two business angels: Jyrki Kontio and Topi Löppönen. The amount of angel investment was not disclosed, though it is known that Tekes invested 140,000€ project money into the start-up. The money will speed up the company's growth and help it start international expansion. Jenkatehdas host live concerts in their studio which are streamed in real-time on their website. Users need to purchase tickets (priced at about 5€) in order to watch the concerts and interact with each other and the band.
Ditch The Plastic: WildChords Teach How To Play A Real Guitar
Everybody likes playing a music instrument, though a lot of us don't really know how to. That is partially why game consoles that make us feel like we know what we're doing are so popular. Learning to play a real instrument is much harder and is definitely more tedious: you have to practice a lot before you can play a Beatles song. That is why Ovelin, a Finnish start-up, decided to develop Wild Chords, a computer game that is played with a real guitar. We talked with Chris Thür, co-founder and CEO, to find out more about the game and the company behind it.
Hitlantis Gets $1.5M Funding
Indymusic discovery platform from Finland, Hitlantis, this week closed a substantial angle round worth $1.5M. The team of investors include senior Nokia executives, JSH Capital Oy, Hasan & Partners, PM Ruukki Oy, Notion Oy, Rock Island Investment Oy, T&T Enterprises Oy, as well as other private individuals from the media and telecom sectors. The new funds will be used for product development and market expansion in 'key territories'. What those territories include was not stated but one can guess US is one of them. Asia is the other: Hitlantis recently launched a localized version of their service in South Korea and hinted that other markets would be opened soon. Moreover, unofficial sources claim the company plans a series A round of up to $7M for the fall.
Playmysong Now In Hollywood
Playmysong, a Finnish start-up that lets visitors in venues choose songs to be played there, launched their service in the Roxy Theater, one of the most legendary rock clubs in Los Angeles. Playmysong ventured to US earlier this spring, their first location being Overlook NYC bar in New York. Roxy Theater is the first location to use the service in California. Getting an impressive venue like that to use Playmysong is a huge bonus when it comes to customer acquisition.
Facebook And Spotify Rumored To Partner To Bring Music Streaming To The Social Network
This is definitely making things for Spotify as (unconfirmed) reports rolled out that Facebook will be launching a music streaming service. This is expected to be launched in the first week of June. The service is currently being tested and upon launch will have users of the social network seeing a Spotify icon just beneath the Photos and other links on the left hand side.
GigsWiz Does A Site Overhaul, Gets A Facelift
GigsWiz, a Finnish startup that empowers artists to assist their promoters in selling more concert tickets online, revamped its site layout, making it way more interactive than the previous design. Moreover, as the blog post on the announcement of the new design claims, GigsWiz will soon release a 'shell bomb behind the curtain'. While waiting for it to drop, it is worth taking a closer look at the new design.
Spotify Enables iPod Syncing, Aims To Replace iTunes
Spotify has taken a major step forward today with the announcment of their new feature to enable iPod syncing. Previously, the company has enabled mobile syncing to only premium customers, but today - that too is being opened up to everybody. However, it isn't quite what you're expecting. Spotify mobile opening up to everybody basically means that you're able to use the mobile application to play your own MP3-files and sync them to the application from your computer. Nevertheless, this is a big step forward for Spotify in being the "one-music-application to rule them all".
Spotify To Limit Free Account In Search Of Better Monetisation
Spotify announced today that they will limit the Spotify Free account from May 1st in a few different ways. The reason behind all this is naturally to further monetise and convert those using Spotify Free to the premium accounts. At the end of March, the company also announced, as part of its move to further monetise the user base, to give all new premium subscribers a free 7-day test of the service before billing anything.
Flow'd Strides Further Into Music Scene
Back in December 2010 we mentioned Digia’s entry into the music scene with a new mobile app called Flow’d. The application enables users to connect with their favorite artists and in doing so, gives artists some nice tools to engage their fans. The app isn’t a new idea but rather an improvement to previous location based applications that adds more value to the existing concept.
WiMP Brings Music Streaming Service To Sweden
WiMP, Scandinavia's latest music streaming service will open itself to the Swedish users, beginning March 3rd. This would allow users to signup for the service for 30 days to listen to free music. The service will offer users a quick and easy way to access a countless songs in its archive and has been specifically customized to cater to the Swedish music lovers.
GigsWiz Brings Its Ticketing Service To The US
GigsWiz, the Finnish startup that launched last year as what we all would call a fan and artist friendly ticketing service has sailed across the European continent into the US. The startup offers bands tools to manage and collect requests from fans, also providing them with an extensive analytics on what friends want to hear and where.
Rdio's New Investment Analyzed
Rdio, an on-demand music streaming service from the Skype founders, took one more important step in the race for the hearts, minds and wallets of music-lovers. We wrote previously about the impressive team behind the start-up and their close ties to the four major music labels. On top of that influential human capital, this week Rdio added some monetary capital to advance their business - they closed a $17.5M funding round from new and existing investors. The money will go towards spreading the service to new platforms and new regions as well as for further R&D. How significant is this investment for the company and its competitors?
Spotify Sails Closer To US, Signs Deal With Sony
Europe’s most popular music streaming service, Spotify is finally edging closer to cross the ocean and land into the US market with rumors of it attempting to sign deals with major labels in the US market. Last week Peter Kafka hinted that it might have struck the cords with Sony US. This will be a distribution deal and wouldn’t necessarily steer clear Spotify to invade the US market.
US Might Never See Spotify, Of Course Unless It Kills Its "Freemium" Model
There has been quite a a hype about the Swedish Music Streaming company, Spotify setting its feet on the US soils and honestly many have been waiting for this for long. Sad news, Spotify has just drained all hopes by pulling off the US launch altogether, thanks to all sorts of roadblocks created by US record labels. Quite astonishing, given that the music streaming service should have been fully functional in the region before 2010 ended. Things have turned out contrary to all such expectations.
Hard. Rock. Online. Hallelujah!
Jenkatehdas is a music start-up from Finland that's been operating in stealth mode for about nine months but publicly released their service this September. The company describes itself as a Finland's first online rock venue: they host exclusive live concerts in a rented studio and stream it in real time. The audience needs to purchase tickets to be able to view the show (4-5€) and can interact with the band by signing into the chat room on the website using Facebook credentials. Yesterday Jenkatehdas streamed their second third concert ever with Jukka Poika & Sound Explosion Band. Antti Eronen, founder and CEO, did not disclose the number of people watching the show but said he was "really happy with the number of tickets sold, since they were in triple digits". Most of the viewers stayed for over 50% of the show. All the more impressive given that the show was targeted primarily for the Finnish audience (all ads were in Finnish and the band is best known in Finland) and that the start-up is mere months old.
Making A Business Out Of A Surprisingly Broken Industry
GigsWiz isn't even a year old and already they have a very solid and impressive track record behind them. I talked to Joonas Pekkanen, the finance guy as their website puts it, about their newly released ticketing service that in all simplicity helps bands sell more tickets. Having had this talk, I finally realised how fundamentally broken the industry has been. One of the main concerns the promoters have had, according to Joonas, is that bands really aren't helping out in promoting their own gigs. Now think about that for a moment, you as an entrepreneur (which artists are, but most probably don't think like it) aren't helping out people to sell your own services that your produce - how crazy is that?
Click to fame with SongHi
Last spring we wrote about SongHi Entertainment and their launch of a closed beta product that helped easily create music with virtual instruments in a collaborative environment. Six months later, SongHi is a social music service that allows anyone to start playing and sharing their own music with a game-like interface in the browser. SongHi is live in the Nordics and Baltics, has partnership deals with Sony Music Finland and Universal. Also, it already started generating its first modest revenue this October. The point of the game is to create your own music and become famous among other users. SongHi's artificial intelligence is used to make sense of the amateur's music, making any mediocre player sound great. If you've been an active user, the game rewards you with stars to up your rankings, but you'd need to buy SongHi coins to purchase virtual items like intruments or fancy decorations for your virtual studio. You can't buy your way into fame but you can make it substantially easier by being a good consumer!
Hosting Music In GoogleDocs
Music storing and sharing is the last thing I associate with Google Docs. Yet there is a Finnish company –Spinlet - that recently launched a service to do just that. Spinlet does not offer music itself but it provides tools to listen to it and share it with friends. How it works is you upload the music you have from your computer to GoogleDocs and then download it through Spinlet to your mobile phone. Once you download the application to your mobile phone you can manage and search tracks as well as create playlists. Complying with the current fashion, Spinlet is also integrated with major social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Brightkite.
Is Apple Blocking Spotify In US To Protect iTunes?
CNET ran an article on Spotify and its troubles of setting up business in the US. Many believe it's the stubbornness of the record companies that have slowed them down to a halt almost. However, the CNET article states that Apple maybe protecting its iTunes Store from Spotify and talking with record labels to think twice about the ad-supported model. According to the CNet article, Apple executives are worried about the effects of a free music service might have on the rest of the market.
GigsWiz Launches A Service For Measuring The Demand For Live Concerts
Gigswiz, a Finnish startup founded by Juuso Vermasheinä with the ex-Floobs duo Kai Lemmetty and Joonas Pekkanen, has just launched in Beta. The service aims to enable bands and artists to better tell where they have fans who'd be willing to come and see them play. The team hasn't wasted any time as the beta launch came just months after they started to work on the idea in this February.
The service is an analytics platform for the live music industry and it should help bands, their agents and local promoters make better informed decisions on where bands should arrange concerts and tours. GigsWiz gathers fan requests through widgets that sit on the bands’ web sites and is looking to combine it with real-time consumption data from online music services. The actual widget can sit on the band's web pages, MySpace pages and Facebook pages.
Spotify Expands To Netherlands
Spotify has just announced that it will expand its service offering to Netherlands. Netherlands is the seventh country Spotify is available. The other countries are Finland, France, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK. Dutch people can now sign up to the service using the link on their website.
It seems that Netherlands came before the US in the end, which shouldn't be a big surprise. Clearing rights and getting the legal side of things sorted out is not a light job to do. It might also make better business sense for Spotify to grow their business in Europe before hopping to US - a show of strength that might ease legal issues later on.
