Spotify users in the U.S. who started using the popular streaming music website on Facebook will have to start paying for the service when their six month trial runs out.

Spotify lets music lovers enjoy listening to select tracks or albums with no buffering delay and has been available in Europe since 2008 when it started services there.  Spotify launched in the U.S. just last July then in September integrated its services with Facebook.  Spotify lets members listen to music for free for the first six months, but after that there is a ten hour and/or five plays per track a month limit. This means that the large numbers of people who started using Spotify via Facebook will bring the company a surge of revenue, should users choose to sign up for the premium service.

Spotify Facebook App Brings Surge of New Members

Spotify’s Facebook app enjoys a high engagement rate of 50%, and app tracking service AppData reports that the website currently enjoys 12.3 million active users a month, and about 5.4 million active users a day, although the daily numbers fluctuate. By sharp contrast, before Spotify launched its Facebook app in September, it had just 3.4 million active monthly users and, on average less than half that number for daily active users. Other music services have launched apps on Facebook since September, but none have been nearly as successful as Spotify, partly because Facebook forces Spotify members to log on via Facebook, and because Facebook has given Spotify excellent exposure in the News Feed and Ticker over the last few months.

Internet radio company Pandora is so far the only music website other than Spotify to achieve substantial growth on Facebook, reaching 9.5 million active monthly users and 1.2 million daily active users, even though it was not involved in the September launch of music apps.

About David John Walker

Dave has a B.A. in Mathematics, loves writing and reading about the latest developments in technology and social media, and has been working as a freelance writer for five years.