Rhapsody now has 2.5 million paying subscribers

headphones

Looks like Rhapsody’s carrier deals are starting to pay off: The streaming music service now has 2.5 million paying subscribers around the world, and grew its subscriber base 60 percent over the last year. New numbers released by the company Wednesday also show that 72 percent of subscribers listen to Rhapsody (or Napster, as it is called outside of the U.S.) exclusively on their phone.

Rhapsody has been busy striking deals with carriers like T-Mobile in the U.S. and Telefonica in markets like Germany, Brazil and Chile. In the U.S., the company launched a service dubbed unRadio last year, which is essentially a Pandora-like personalized radio service. unRadio is included with some data plans, and costs $4 per month for all other users.

With these new radio services, Rhapsody is obviously getting much lower revenue per user compared to services like Spotify or Beats that focus on $10 a month subscriptions. The company didn’t elaborate how many of its  new users subscribe to a full-featured music package and how many are on cheaper radio-like service tiers.

However, Rhapsody’s SVP for the Americas Paul Springer told me last year that the goal isn’t to upsell every customer. “I’m perfectly happy with lots of unRadio customers in perpetuity,” he said back in July, adding that the company is looking to offer “a portfolio of products” instead just the one big bundle of music.

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Tuesday, March 10, 2015
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