Spotify: 250,000 New Users Daily After Facebook Deal
Spotify is reportedly seeing 250,000 new users join each day, in the aftermath of its deal with Facebook last week, with monthly active users leaping by 1m to 4.4m. The figures, shared by music industry consultancy MusicAlly, contrasts sharply with criticism of Spotify's decision to tie new sign-ups up with the social network. Spotify currently offers six months of its unlimited access package free to new users.
However, to get that unlimited access package, you'll need to have a Facebook account, since the company has merged its own login system and that of the social network. In a statement, also given to MusicAlly, Spotify described it as "like a virtual 'passport', designed to make the experience smoother and easier."
Although that mandatory registration didn't go down well with Facebook's critics, the usage figures would suggest that people are quite content to register with the service if there's free music to be had. After the initial six months of unlimited access, Spotify downgrades each account to 10hrs of access per month, obviously hoping users will stump up cash for what previously they got free.
"To us, this is all about creating an amazing new world of music discovery. As most of our users are already social and have already connected to Facebook, it seemed logical to integrate Spotify and Facebook logins. We already use Facebook as part of our backend to power our social features and by adopting Facebook's login, we've created a simple and seamless social experience.
From today, all new Spotify users will need to have a Facebook account to join Spotify. Think of it as like a virtual 'passport', designed to make the experience smoother and easier, with one less username and password to remember. You don't need to connect to Facebook and if you do decide to, you can always control what you share and don't share by changing your Spotify settings at any time.
We're constantly trying new things, always looking for feedback and we're always going to listen to our users, making changes based on this feedback wherever we can." Spotify statement