Spotify
Spotify reports that their individual conversion rate of monthly active users from basic to premium plans is arond 40%. This is incredibly high for a freemium platform. Since the main difference is the ads that play between songs, the main draw of their premium plan is a more consistent and better user experience, rather than an increase in user functionality. In the user’s mind, Spotify Premium is a way to reduce friction in the listening experience and it comes down to the “listen experience” friction is more costly than monetary friction.
Figma
While Figma doesn’t offer conversion statistics, Figma has changed the design software landscape by offering advanced collaboration and impressive, versatile capability offerings. Since Figma is designed for multiple people to work on the same project, there is an inherent social pressure to produce a certain amount of work on a project. Similar to platforms like Notion, Figma’s premium value lies in the increased team productivity. One person not having premium is enough to slow the whole project down and stall progress for the whole team.
NYTimes
The value of New York Times comes from consistent, quality content. Instead of focusing on features and capabilities that attract customers, they focus on maintaining their current subscriptions while banking on their reputation to attract new subscribers. While they also have features like games and cooking, which increase the value proposition for the platform, these diversify the value of the platform which makes subscribers more likely to stay.
