I wasn’t convinced that the Taylor Swift/Spotify conversation would last more than a week. A month after she pulled her catalog, the story is still making news. I’m not judging her decision nor am I taking sides. Let’s assume Ms. Swift has a deep belief in her views, and that Spotify is indeed focused on creating a new music economy where their interests and those of artists are aligned. That’s paraphrasing Daniel Ek’s blog from November 11, 2014.
Here’s another perspective. Taylor Swift has done Spotify a big favor by pulling her music. If you’re reading this you certainly have heard of Spotify. But you’d be in the minority.
According to research conducted by MusicWatch in the US through end-September…
- 2 out of 3 Americans didn’t identify with Spotify, even after seeing it in a list of music services. That’s what researchers call “aided awareness” and it was 34%.
- Awareness among 13-25 year olds is 44%. Better, but still not half.
- Awareness among the 36 and older demographic is 29%.
The good news for Spotify is these awareness levels showed healthy growth over last year’s levels. On the other hand Spotify is not nearly as well-known as Pandora or YouTube. That’s YouTube for music, not dancing cat videos.
Thanks to Ms. Swift, Spotify has lit up the Twitterverse, shared a cover story on Time magazine and garnered coverage on national news outlets such as the Today show, whose target audience is certainly not at Spotify’s core, at least not yet.
Thanks to the attention garnered by Ms. Swift, it’s not difficult to predict that Spotify’s awareness scores will continue to soar. There is no guarantee that awareness will lead to usage, but any first year marketing student will tell you that it’s the first step.
The folks at Spotify need to send Ms. Swift a lovely holiday basket. If the trends go the way I believe they will, she’ll have earned it.
From the Today Show: http://www.today.com/popculture/taylor-swift-not-going-play-play-play-any-albums-spotify-1D80261962