Mobile Entertainment has run an interview with Oleg Fomenko, CEO and founder of Bloom.fm. The piece is mainly an introduction to the service and what its intentions are – a lot of which will already be more than familiar to Music Ally readers. There are, however, a number of interesting figures and quotes in the piece that are worth picking up on. Fomenko says that half of Bloom’s users are under the age of 25 while 80% are under the age of 35. “We’re going for a demographic that is historically associated with paying very little and obtaining music for free on YouTube or illegally,” he says. “It’s a difficult market, but it’s evolving.” He says that the bottom tier price point for the service (£1 a month) is eminently affordable and he can’t understand how anyone (students are the example he gives) could argue otherwise. “£12 a year isn’t something you cannot afford,” he asserts.
He claims the company’s recent ad campaign in London (notably newspaper ads and bus ads) has helped raise its profile in the capital to the point where it is second only to Spotify in terms of consumer awareness. “Because we’re not the first, we have to be the best,” he says, perhaps alluding to Spotify’s head start into the market. Where he breaks with his green rival is in claiming that the mobile should not be considered a premium device and have mobile access priced accordingly. He ends by suggesting that Bloom could soon be doing some hard bundled deals with handset manufacturers to be installed on their devices. “Handset manufacturers are interested too and we’ve had conversations where they’ve said they really like the app and UI,” he says. “We’ll get partnerships to really boost numbers.”
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