Spotify Has 1.4 Million Users in the US, 175,000 Who Pay

As you may recall, streaming music service Spotify leaped across the pond to American users last month with the blessing of the major music labels. For those of you who don't recall, Spotify is trying to do for music what Netflix Instant did for streaming video: instead of a Pandora-style system that lets you listen to music that an algorithm chooses, Spotify gives you access to all the songs in its cloud to organize into playlists and listen to as you please.

Well, the numbers are starting to come in, and so far things look promising: the US version of Spotify has racked up 1.4 million registered users in spite of the free tier's invite-only status. Of those users, roughly 175,000 are paying users, a conversion rate of 12.5%, though this figure doesn't distinguish between the two different pay tiers ($5 a month gets you unlimited streaming and no ads, $10 allows you to play songs on your mobile device, both allow you to use Spotify without an invitation).

While cloud music services like iTunes in the Cloud, Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music still rely on you, to some extent, to purchase and populate your online library yourself, Spotify's all-streaming a la carte option can be more appealing to people who want to listen to what they want, when they want, where they want.

Source: AllThingsD