Spotify has reached the 15 million subscriber level, and along with that what the company calls 60 million active users. Whatever the numbers mean, they are a signal that the online music firm has reached a point that could not have been expected a year ago.
The company describes itself and its service this way:
With Spotify, it’s easy to find the right music for every moment — on your phone, your computer, your tablet and more.
There are millions of tracks on Spotify. So whether you’re working out, partying or relaxing, the right music is always at your fingertips. Choose what you want to listen to, or let Spotify surprise you.
You can also browse through the music collections of friends, artists and celebrities, or create a radio station and just sit back.
Spotify’s primary competition includes several large companies, and ones that have powerful subscriber bases, ways to build them and years drawing online media consumers. These include the Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iTunes Radio, Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) All Music Play Access, Pandora Media Inc. (NYSE: P) and Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) Music First.
Business Insider recently lauded the Amazon service:
Amazon Music lets you search through a catalogue of over 1 million songs in addition to a collection of curated playlists. You can stream songs on-demand over Wi-Fi or your data plan, and just like Spotify, you can also download tracks directly to your device for offline playback.
While Amazon, Apple and Google can afford for their services to fail, because of their balance sheets and the fact that music streaming is not their primary business, Spotify cannot. Spotify, therefore, operates without a safety net. That means, even if it has 15 million subscribers and a service that may be superior to the competition, it has a more perilous future than almost all the others in the space.
The best product does not always win.
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