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When it launched in the United States, Spotify did a great job at creating the illusion of shortage and, thereby, a lot of serious buzz. Now, less than a month later, the music streaming service is leaking data and it’s obvious lots of people got invitations.

Spotify launched in the US on July 14 and within a week the company “leaked” that it had already signed up 70,000 paying customers. Now, All Things D claims Spotify’s is once again leaking listener data — 1.4 million Americas are using the free version and 175,000 are paying customers.

How good is this news? Whereas Spotify Europe’s free to paid conversion ratio is 15 percent, it’s 12.5 percent here in the land of milk and Honey Nut Cheerios.

That might seem to be a shortfall until you consider that Spotify Free (desktop) users in the US get unlimited listening for the first six months, which is more than our cousins across the pond.

Also of note is the fact that the great majority Spotify’s paying customers have chosen the $10 mobile option, versus the $5 unlimited plan for desktops.

To infinity and beyond…

Another interesting statistic is that whereas it has taken Spotify Europe 1.5 years to acquire 1.6 million subscribers, they’ve managed 10 percent of that number in the US in about a month. If the trend continues, Spotify could have 1.75 million paying US customers in 10 months.

Personally, I’m not using Spotify much — I prefer Pandora, which curates automagically, and plain old internet radio for music discovery…

What are your druthers?

via Electronista

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