We have been amazed at the reaction to Discovr, a music discovery app for iPhone and iPad, since it launched earlier this year. We have experimented with lots of different pricing levels and timings but there was still one we hadn’t tried, free.
So on May 3rd we set it free for a three day test, with no press or marketing campaign. The results blew us away, over 150,000 downloads in the three days, number one rankings in key countries, top 10 overall rankings in multiple countries, crazy twitter reaction and amazingly good feedback. Here is a breakdown over the 3 days:
So what would you expect the country breakdown to be? A bunch of US downloads with some other countries thrown in? Not at all:
That’s right, Japan and Germany make up the majority of the downloads. A good case study for having localization. It would be if we had done translations (it is coming).
So where did all these users come from? There were lots of different sources including the app price tracking sites, social networks and then from the high rankings in the App Store itself. There is also a nice after-effect of the free run: any revenue we lost for going free for 3 days was easily made up for with a couple of days of strong sales after switching back to paid. What’s interesting is that we are now seeing sales that are consistently higher than before the free run.
And finally the number of reviews and ratings of the app during this short period was as many as in the months before. I guess it’s people’s way of thanking for the free app. Here are some of the amazing ratings we have from around the world:
So don’t be afraid to try out free, it can get you a bunch of users and momentum. We might even try it again one day. And remember there is more to the AppStore than just the US.
Stuart Hall is the lead developer on Discovr, you can follow his ramblings on Twitter at @stuartkhall. Discovr is powered by data from the legendary Echo Nest.
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