Spotify now has 60 million active listeners, and 15 million are paying

By

post-308804-image-5cea1250b5fd1b334fd5dff7333f37b4-jpg

Spotify now has a whopping 60 million active listeners, 15 million of which are paying for a Spotify Premium subscription, the European company confirmed today. Spotify has added around 2.5 million paying subscribers in just two months — and that’s despite being given the boot by Taylor Swift.

These incredible numbers make Spotify one of the biggest music streaming services on the planet, and showcase the company’s impressive growth that rivals like Beats, Rdio, and Deezer can only dream of. In just eight months, Spotify has added 20 million active listeners.

Spotify’s catalog consists of more than 20 million songs, all of which are available on-demand with unlimited listening. In addition to the company’s $9.99 Premium plan — which brings offline music and other benefits — it also allows users to listen for free on both mobile and PC, so long as they’re willing to have a few ads mixed into their playlists.

It isn’t all plain sailing for Spotify, however. Despite its popularity, the service still has long had to contend with heavy losses due to hefty music royalty rates. Its U.K. business didn’t record its first profit until October 2014 — six years after it made its initial debut.

Spotify also has to deal with the bad rap it gets from artists and other members of the music industry. Taylor Swift isn’t the first high-profile star to criticize the company for its royalty rates, which the company revealed to be just $0.007 per play back in 2013, and she certainly won’t be the last.

But these things haven’t stopped millions of users from signing up every for month for unlimited access to all the music they can listen to.

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.