100 Days After Beats Music Launch: “It’s Working” says CEO Ian Rogers
Beats Music has taken a bit of a beating in recent days,with industry insiders expressing concern over early subscriber numbers and pundits pounding the startup for its bravado filled launch. Butr overnight CEO Ian Rogers responded, saying that the three month old music streamer was off to a strong start: "Guess what… it's working."
"We’re just getting started, but already one thing is becoming clear," wrote Rogers, "numbers don’t lie: a curated, personalized music service that drives discovery and connects listeners directly to artists is worth paying for."
Selective Stats
While selective with the stats that he shared, Rogers touted Beats' conversions from free trial to paid subscribers. "We set incredibly high expectations for converting trial listeners to paid listeners through our AT&T partnership, specifically through our one-of-a-kind family plan (five subscriptions for $14.99/month)," according to Rogers. "One hundred days in and the rate of conversion from trial to paid has far surpassed our projections by more than 40%, and 33% of our overall subscriptions have come through AT&T."
More than half of listeners access Beats via an iPhone and iPad and the recent enabling of Apple ID in-app subscriptions has led to 5x increase in daily paid conversion, making it the #1 music app in iTunes.
More stats:
Curation: "Curated playlists have generated 690 years worth of listening hours to date. In addition to our curators – our community of listeners have already created more than 2 million playlists of their own."
Use: "60% of our listeners using the service multiple times a day. They’ve also collectively followed artists 27 million times and actively “loved” 17.5 million tracks, genres and albums."
Discovery: "In the past 100 days, more than 70% of our listeners streamed a song for the first time due to one of our curated features."
Indie Music: " One in four plays on Beats Music is from an independent label, who receive the same payment as major label acts.
Selective stats for sure. Of their “one-of-a-kind family plan” ~170K are in trial and 8K are paying. That’s not even close to 40%. Not favourable.