Spotify free version
I thought I'd like to try out Spotify, and so headed to spotify.com to sign up for the free service. I don't really want to pay the monthly fee until I'm happy it works with the way I want to listen to music (whatever that is - moving to a service like this rather than relying on my own collection of CDs and MP3s is likely to change how I do so). The free service is supported by ads between tracks, but I can live with this until I make a decision about whether I like it enough to pay.
But you can't easily use the free service as a trial: they've done a Google, and you need an invitation from someone who uses the premium service to use it. I asked a friend who uses it, and they couldn't find the invitations in their interface. So I'm not trying it out, and so Spotify have effectively lost a fairly likely paying subscriber.
Putting this extra hurdle in the way of trying out the service seems a bizarre marketing decision. I can't think of a rationale for it, other than trying to copy Google. I suppose it's likely to be to do with the relative values of the advertising revenue stream and the subscription revenue stream. And to make it hard for a user to find the invitations (which is not what Google does!) is a poor piece of interface design.
But you can't easily use the free service as a trial: they've done a Google, and you need an invitation from someone who uses the premium service to use it. I asked a friend who uses it, and they couldn't find the invitations in their interface. So I'm not trying it out, and so Spotify have effectively lost a fairly likely paying subscriber.
Putting this extra hurdle in the way of trying out the service seems a bizarre marketing decision. I can't think of a rationale for it, other than trying to copy Google. I suppose it's likely to be to do with the relative values of the advertising revenue stream and the subscription revenue stream. And to make it hard for a user to find the invitations (which is not what Google does!) is a poor piece of interface design.