Spotify breaks 100 million paid subscribers, holding lead over Apple Music

Spotify on Monday revealed that it has topped 100 million paid subscribers worldwide, putting it twice as far ahead as Apple Music, albeit with a years-long headstart.

Premium subscribers grew 32 percent year-over-year in the March quarter, Spotify said. Total listenership reached 217 million people, aided by 2 million in India, who've only been able to sign up since February.

The Swedish firm is aiming for between 222 and 228 million listeners by the end of the current quarter. Of those, 107 to 110 million are forecast to be on Premium.

The company reported $158.3 million in losses, but recently acquired three separate podcasting firms: Anchor, Gimlet Media, and Parcast. Apple has traditionally enjoyed a lead role in podcasts thanks to iTunes, but Spotify said it intends to build a better ad model with superior "targeting, measurement, and reporting capabilities."

Smartspeakers are another focus, Spotify mentioned, without commenting on rumors that it's developing first-party hardware. The service is a native option on Amazon Alexa- and Google Home-compatible speakers, though not on Apple's HomePod, where only Apple Music has full Siri control.

Spotify was the first major on-demand music platform, launching in 2008. Apple Music has enjoyed relatively rapid growth — its 50 million users have appeared since just 2015, aided by default integration across Apple devices. It recently surpassed Spotify Premium in the U.S., even if ad-based listeners continue to give Spotify an overall advantage in listener base.

The two companies are engaged in a legal war in Europe, where Spotify recently launched a competition complaint with the European Commission. Apple has established artificial barriers to competition, Spotify charges, pointing to the fact that it takes 15% to 30% from third-party App Store subscriptions, simultaneously denying those parties the same level of integration as Apple Music. In its defense Apple has argued that Spotify wants "all those benefits [of the App Store] while also retaining 100 percent of the revenue."

41 Comments

Fatman 8 Years · 513 comments

About 5 years ago

Anecdotal rumblings ...The UX on Spotify is preferred by most, Spotify's play lists are more on the mark. Spotify's free tier helps people get used to the service, create playlists and then sign-up for paid version when ready. The AirPlay2 push plus Verizon promo will help Apple's market share, but Apple needs to be on par or better.Once people are on a service they tend to stick with it.

SpamSandwich 19 Years · 32917 comments

100 million paid subscribers but still $158.3 million in losses? There’s no path to profitability here.

EsquireCats 8 Years · 1268 comments

Play a game: divide Spotify revenue by number of subscribers. You get an interesting picture of what their “paid” subscriber is.

flydog 14 Years · 1141 comments

Fatman said:

Anecdotal rumblings ...The UX on Spotify is preferred by most, Spotify's play lists are more on the mark. Spotify's free tier helps people get used to the service, create playlists and then sign-up for paid version when ready. The AirPlay2 push plus Verizon promo will help Apple's market share, but Apple needs to be on par or better.Once people are on a service they tend to stick with it.

Apple could care less about winning the subscriber count battle. It's about making money, and Spotify has done nothing but lose money since day 1.

lkrupp 19 Years · 10521 comments

SpamSandwich said:

100 million paid subscribers but still $158.3 million in losses? There’s no path to profitability here.

Amazon only recently began reporting profits. Before that it was perfectly okay for them to lose money hand over fist. In the tech blog wars it’s always about market share or share of profits isn’t it.