LONDON (Hypebot) – After Spotify introduced restrictions to its free service in May, it gained an impressive 520,000 subscribers.
According to documents obtained by Music Ally, these changes also contributed to Spotify's loss of 1.6 million free users between March and June of this year.
The music service gained a total of 644,000 paid subscribers between January and June, with the surge happening after the restrictions. All of the shifts were clearly the goal of the major label partners who apparently forced the shift. Here's the breakdown of all Spotify users as of June 2011:
3.13 million free users
1.54 million paid subscribers
Total: 4.57 million active users
Paid users account for 32.9% of 4.67 million active users, according to Music Ally.
The new restrictions on free European accounts included 5 plays per track and 10-hour monthly limits. Similar similar restrictions are expected to be added to U.S. accounts sometime after the currently available 6 months free subscriptions expire.
