Techradar is running an interesting piece about the mobile version of Spotify which was recently released for the iPhone and the Android platform (with more mobile versions on the way).
Noting that the majority of reviews for the iPhone version have been largely negative (5,985 of the current 9,164 reviews are a mere one star), they argue that punters just aren’t that keen on forking out £9.99 month, and the deal looks decidedly stingy when compared to what the BBC offers in return for the license fee.
And then there’s the BBC. If you look at the Beeb’s breakdown of where the licence fee goes, £2.01 per month gives you all the BBC’s radio output – that’s Radio 1, Radio 2, 40-odd regional stations, the specialist DAB-only channels, the Asian Network and the talk and sport channels – while a further £0.61 per month gives you online, which means podcasts, streaming and iPlayer.
£2.62 for the Beeb compared to £9.99 for Spotify? Suddenly Spotify doesn’t look quite so attractive.
Part of the problem is that in order to exist, Spotify has to pay the bills – and you can be confident that it’s paying rates that the BBC would laugh at. By all accounts the going royalty rate for streaming music is around 1p per stream, which doesn’t sound like a lot until you start getting lots of users.
One user listening to ten streams per day is 10p a day, or £3.00 per month – which means Spotify’s paying more than the BBC spends on its entire radio and online output.
We’re not entirely sure that it’s fair to compare Spotify with the BBC, but like a lot of others, we feel that the asking price of £9.99 per month is just a bit too steep.
Maybe it’s because we’re all a bunch of cheapskates, but if they made it a fiver we’d be in like a shot.
How much would you be prepared to pay for a service like Spotify?
Read the full story here
This is ridiculous. Comparing Spotify which is a private sector business with the BBC which is a large public sector business is a complete dis-analogy. Spotify clearly need to pay the bills like the BBC but unlike the BBC they have other stakeholder groups to consider such as Shareholders. In order for any business to grow it needs capital which you can bet Spotify has got from a) a start-up cash injection and b) shareholders who will be dying to tap in to their profits. Because of this you can also argue that Spotify are more bothered about their business and how their products work (the quality) because they need to sell to stay open for business where as the BBC uses taxes. Maybe you should try comparing it to other relatively new, private sector businesses and see how they’re doing.