Rhapsody reaches 2.5 million subscribers, touts success of unRadio service

The past couple of weeks have seen a flurry of news from Tidal, Spotify and Deezer. Now Rhapsody adds its voice to the mix by stating that the company has now reached the milestone of 2.5 million paid subscribers between the Rhapsody and Napster services Worldwide.

This represents a 60% increase from last year and a great performance for a company that just two years was regarded as the “underdog” of streaming music and that now, thanks to a number of successful partnerships such as that with Telefonica for the South American roll-out, is likely the third biggest on-demand streaming service in the world (in terms of paying subscribers).

Spotify is way ahead, with 15 million paying subscribers, whilst Deezer is likely to be somewhere in the middle. Deezer hasn’t released official global numbers since Nov 2013 when it stated it had 5 million paid subscribers, but that has likely grown especially with the Muve acquisition.

Back to Rhapsody, the company states that 70% of its usage is exclusively mobile and that its new unRadio subscription in partnership with T-Mobile in the US has seen a 67% increase in paying users during the holiday season, a pace that has continued in Q1 2015.

So, what’s next for Rhapsody? The company has done a very good job over the past year developing successful partnerships, that is likely to continue and it appears to be the only tried and tested method for adding new users at a fast pace without incurring large marketing costs.

The company’s branding though is still an issue: the fact that the service is known as Rhapsody in the US and Napster in most other territories means that it is not yet recognised as the global music streaming powerhouse that it actually is. It will be interesting to see whether the company will continue using both names, adopt one over the other or opt for a complete rebrand sometime in the future.


(Andrea Leonelli)