Five for free, and then plus five for five!
Like every crappy excuse-making CEO before him, the leader of Shazam, long our favourite free iPhone app, if not the favourite free app of all time, has now decided to charge $5 for the privilege of unlimited song recognition. When recognizable.
Current users don’t fret! You’ll be able to keep listening and not having to tax your brain too much: Shazam will continue to work in an unlimited way for current users.
But the free version for those downloading it now will only offer 5 song recognitions a month! The $5 version will be unlimited, and include song charts and more information about artists, i.e., all kinds of stuff you don’t care about, since all you want to do is identify that song that’s in the background right now.
Shazam has had 10 million downloads in its free capacity. Will people really pay $5, as cool and wonderful as it is? How many of the new users do you think will pay? Aren’t you glad you went on that frenzy of downloading tons of free stuff recently? Then again, if you have an iPhone you probably already have Shazam–and probably use it a lot. It is after all The Killer iPhone App. And this, ehPhone.ca readers is the crux, what identifies this as the willing call that the powers that be at Shazam are placing: that enough of the next 10 million will pay to justify the $5 fee. And how many new users will download the free version, and find they have more than 5 songs they want to identify each month? More than 10 or 20 songs? Thousands of users instead of millions? Still worth it, Shazam honchos?
Would it be many more-fold if the app was $0.99 instead of $5.00?
Oh, and all figures are in US funds. And just a reminder: don’t use this app without a data plan unless you’re on wifi. Just don’t.
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November 23rd, 2009 at 8:06 am
The government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.