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Comment by bufo | Hacker News Reader

I can only wish them luck, it will be interesting to see if this model will be a successful one, since so many similar companies have trouble trudging on. They paid €45 million of licences in 2010 [1], and 2 million subscribers is probably close to €10 million revenue. They also have aggressive advertising.

[1] http://www.ballade.no/nmi.nsf/doc/art2011011911391428493018

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They paid €45 million of licences in 2010 [1],

Per year.

and 2 million subscribers is probably close to €10 million revenue.

Per month, right?

And may even higher than that, because Spotify Unlimited is Euro 4.99, but a fraction of the subscribers also uses Spotify Premium at 9.99.

that's €10 million revenue per month, right?

I love the Spotify iPhone app, but when I've compared their selection to Rhapsody, I find that Spotify is lacking much of the music on Rhapsody. Right now I'm paying the ten bucks a month for both, but I need to curtail that soon. Do I take selection over user experience or vice versa? If they paid 45 million Euro for the number of songs they have, I assume Rhapsody must have paid even more! I think the clear victor here is the music industry.

Rhapsody doesn't have a free version, other than the trial period when you sign up. Spotify does, but has to pay the labels for their usage too. So Rhapsody in all likelihood paid out the the labels a lot less than Spotify.

Especially since I pay $25 a YEAR for 256bit AAC streaming audio to all of my computers and mobile devices. Spotify is simply too expensive.

"too expensive" for what?

Spotify's draw for me was more than the music selection or quality. It's more than just a streaming music service—I use the playlist sharing/collaborative playlist editing features heavily, and I like the general UI/UX on both iPhone and OSX.

I don't like having a thousand apps on my phone though. It's nice to just go to Apple's Music app and play any song on my library.

So, you pay the equivalent of two traditional CDs worth of music for a year of audio. That sounds like a pretty good deal, actually, even if it is streaming.

iTunes Match, so it's streaming and download.

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