Spotify has 2.5m paying subscribers

"This week is Thanksgiving in the US. And we’ve got our own reasons to give thanks too.
Fanfare! Drum roll! Yes, we’re excited to announce that we’ve now welcomed 2.5 million paying subscribers to the service.
So we’d like to say a big thank you to all our subscribers, new and old. Keep spreading the good news about Spotify!
Of course, we’ll continue to focus on providing you with the best music service possible. We’ve got some exciting developments in the works, which we’ll share with you very soon."

Source:  Blog post by Spotify, 23rd November 2011

Earlier - 2m subscribers announced in September

Earlier - 1.5m subscribers announced in August 

Netflix lost over 800,000 subscribers in Q3 2011

"Netflix ended the third quarter of 2011 with just 23.8 million total subscribers — 810,000 fewer subscribers that the previous quarter, the company revealed today in its latest earnings report.
So, where did those lost subscribers go? Most of the losses are attributedto the company raising subscription rates by 60 percent on its DVD-by-mail service. The low numbers are also reflective of Netflix’s unpopular decision to split its DVD-by-mail business into a separate company called Qwikster — a move that Netflix later canceled after receiving backlash from its customer base."

Source:  VentureBeat, 24th October 2011

Sky TV makes an average of £535 per customer per year in the UK

"Sky is a machine. The economy may be tough, and Sky may have felt it necessary to freeze prices. But the broadcaster doesn't have to worry when the average take per customer is a hefty £535 a year. Meanwhile, although the household growth rate is slowing (26,000 in the quarter when the new football season started), turnover is up by 9% in the quarter to 30 September and operating profit ahead by 16% at an adjusted £295m.
When it comes to Sky's traditional business of pay-TV, it is clear that somewhere between 40% and 50% of all UK homes will end up taking its service. Its current base of 10.2m TV customers is quite enough to provide a meaningful available audience for all those US imports and sport services. But clearly, growth here is reaching its limits, and Sky is probably unwilling to slash the price it pays for football just to boost profits in the short term.
Then again, Sky doesn't have to. Its growth can come from upgrading people to HD (3.9m done so far), and from its faster-growing internet and telecoms services. In an era of household retrenchment, bundling services to take advantage of discounts is clearly of value. Telecoms customers grew by 26% in the last year to 3.2m; broadband subscribers by 24% to 3.5m. It is through these activities that Sky can rely on for its next phase of growth."

Source:  The Guardian, 19th October 2011

Spotify gained a million new users after integration with the Facebook homepage ticker

"At f8 last Thursday, music services such as Spotify, Vevo, Rdio and Mog gained the ability to publish the listening activity of their users to Facebook’s new home page Ticker. The exposure to the friends of their users through the tickers has led to big gains for some music partners.
Most significantly, Spotify has gained one million new monthly active Facebook-integrated users since f8 to reach 4.4 million MAU. It spiked from 1.12 million to 3.25 million daily active users the day after f8, and appears to be settling back to roughly a quarter million new DAU. Rdio, MOG, and Deezer have also seen significant gains in their numbers of Facebook-integrated users."
Source:  Data from Inside Facebook, collected from looking at app users, reported on 26th September 2011

Google Plus has an estimated 43m users

"If the algorithms are all working right, then Google+’s “unofficial statistician” Paul Allen believes that Google+ now has over 43 million users. Allen, whose name you might know as being the founder of Ancestry.com has a method whereby he estimates the total number of users on Google+ based upon uncommon surnames.
In the past, according to PlusHeadlines, Allen has been startlingly accurate:
July 4th – 1.7 million users
July 9th – 4.5 million users
July 12 – 10 million users
September 9th – 28.7 million users
September 22nd – 43.4 million users
These numbers tie up almost exactly with confirmed reports that we’ve seen in the past, as well as our own findings from Google employees."

Source:  The Next Web, 22nd September 2011

Facebook has more than 800m active users (full stats)

"People on Facebook
More than 800 million active users
More than 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
Average user has 130 friends
Activity on Facebook
There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)
Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
More than 2 billion posts are liked and commented on per day
On average, more than 250 million photos are uploaded per day
Global Reach
More than 70 languages available on the site
More than 75% of users are outside of the United States
Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application
Platform
On average, people on Facebook install apps more than 20 million times every day
Every month, more than 500 million people use an app on Facebook or experience Facebook Platform on other websites
More than 7 million apps and websites are integrated with Facebook
Mobile
There are more than 350 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices
There are more than 475 mobile operators globally working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products"
Source:  Facebook Statistics, retrieved 27th September 2011

Spotify has 2m paying subscribers

"Streaming music service Spotify now has more than 2 million paying subscribers in eight countries, according to a new report today.
Spotify saw a huge boost in premium subscribers after its U.S. launch in July. The company’s premium service is a paid, advertisement-free version of its streaming music service that lets people share playlists.
The startup has added about 400,000 new paying subscribers since the launch, according to comments made by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek in an interview with CNBC. Ek is presenting at Facebook’s f8 developer conference Thursday, where he is expected to share additional information about Spotify’s stateside penetration into the music streaming market."

Source:  VentureBeat, 21st September 2011

Spotify has 1.5m paying subscribers

"At the end of June, Spotify had more than 1.5 million paying subscribers for its streaming music service, according to a report prepared for a rightsholder and subsequently seen by Music Ally, which outlines the company’s performance between January and June this year. Spotify did not leak the report to Music Ally, and has declined to comment.
The report clearly identifies a surge in subscriptions after Spotify introduced restrictions on its free service at the start of May, including a 10-hour monthly listening limit and a five-play cap on individual tracks. The changes came at the behest of some of Spotify’s major-label shareholders, who wanted to see an uptick in the company’s conversion rate of free to paid users.
They certainly got that. Music Ally can reveal that between March and June this year, Spotify lost 1.6 million free users, but gained 644,000 520,000 paying subscribers.
Here’s how that breaks down: In March, the company had 4.73 million free users and 1.02 million paying subscribers, with a total active user base of 5.75 million, of whom 17.8% were paying. Then the restrictions were announced in mid-April and implemented on 1 May. By June, the leaked report reveals that Spotify had only 3.13 million free users, but 1.54 million paying subscribers: 32.9% of its 4.67 million active users."

Source:  MusicAlly, 18th August 2011

Nearly half of all American singles have tried online dating (estimate)

"Online dating has come of age. Once a seedy corner of the internet, digital romance is today nearly as commonplace as e-commerce. Of the 87 million singles in the US, nearly half of them, or 40 million, have tried online dating, according to the US Census. Some surveys estimate that one in five new relationships, and one in six new ­marriages, begins online. “This is one of those businesses where scale really ­matters,” says Ginsberg, noting that Match has facilitated 1.2 billion e-mails since 2005, and 110 million virtual winks [a way for members to “break the ice” before e-mailing] in the past six months. She also says there is no reason to expect growth to stall any time soon, as online dating becomes more mainstream and new singles of all ages come online. “With the divorce rate in this country being 50 per cent, we’re a ­reflection of that society,” she says."

Source:  FT.com, 29th July 2011

Netflix has 25m subscribers

"Netflix hit 25 million subscribers and broke records for both its revenues and its earnings in the second quarter, but cut its earnings outlook for the next few months since it expects some fallout from its recent price hike.
The company added 1.8 million subscribers in the quarter and posted a net income of $68 million on revenues of $789 million — both records. But the quarter, which ended June 30 and was unaffected by the price increase, was a transitional one for the company. As the company noted in a letter to shareholders: “The streaming-only plan continued to gain in popularity, with nearly 75% of our new subscribers signing up for it. As a result, our average subscription price reverted to a slight quarter-over-quarter decline.”
The company also noted that “With the rapid adoption of streaming, DVD shipments for Netflix have likely peaked.”"
Source:  Mashable, 25th July 2011

Pandora has 100m registered users

"Pandora, the popular internet radio service, today announced 100 million registered users and 36 million monthly active users. More than 100 million people have registered to listen to Pandora's free personalized radio service across hundreds of consumer electronic devices including computers, smart phones, TVs, set-top boxes, alarm clocks, tablets and car dashboards. On a monthly basis, 36 million listeners access Pandora across these multiple platforms as Pandora continues to increase its share of the radio listening market.
During the Company's first Analyst Day, Pandora's CEO and President Joe Kennedy noted that Pandora is redefining radio, where 80 percent of all music listening occurs. Pandora ended 2010 with 2.3 percent market share of all radio listening in the United States. Six months later, Pandora has increased its market share to 3.6 percent of all radio listening in the United States."

Source:  Press release from Pandora, 12t July 2011

1.5m people paid for music subscription services in the US in 2010

"Music subscription services had 1.5 million paying users in the US last year, up from 1.2 million in 2009. That’s according to new figures from the RIAA, which says revenues for these services still fell from $213 million in 2009 to $201 million in 2010. The RIAA’s report also reveals the continuing decline in mobile music sales, which fell from 306 million units in 2009 to 221 million in 2010, with ringtones down 41%, ringback tones down 26% and even full-track music downloads down 23%. 1.16 billion download singles were sold in the US in 2010 – up 2.1% year-on-year – for a value of $1.37 billion, up 12% as higher prices on iTunes took effect."

Source:  Data from the RIAA, reported by MusicAlly, 3rd May 2011
Full stats from the RIAA here