I’m a big believer in the freemium business model, i.e. offering basic services and then offering premium services at a cost. In fact I’ve written about the freemium model a couple of times before.
I’m also a big fan of Spotify, a free music in the cloud application (I’ve got invites, if you want just comment). What I don’t get is why Spotify is implementing the freemium model so poorly.
They’ve got a great basic free model, you can search for artists, you can play all the songs you want, and every 5 or so songs (probably more songs actually) they play a short ad. The premium model is 9.99 GBP with no ads and you get more invites. As someone who’s had 5 invites which keep getting refreshed I don’t really need invites. And I would wager that you probably should just give out the invites to people who tweet or facebook post about Spotify rather then getting people to pay for the right to send out invites.
If I was running Spotify I would offer the playlist ability to only people who are paying. So you can search, and play the songs you want, but if you want to save a playlist then you need to pay up. And you could charge a couple of pounds rather then a tenner for this service. I would sign up and I’m sure others would too.
I’m willing to wager that not too many people have ponied up and not many people will. Until there’s a real difference in what you get for free and what you pay for why would they?
