Apple Music’s batch of exclusives haven’t been able to stop Spotify’s impressive growth of paid subscribers over the last year.
Spotify revealed today that it new has over 50 million paid subscribers for its music streaming service, which is more than double the 20 million subscribers Apple Music had at the end of 2016.
News of Spotify hitting the milestone was published on the company’s Twitter account this afternoon. Spotify’s last subscriber numbers were released in September 2016 when the company announced that it had 40 million paying streamers.
Thank you to our 50 million subscribers. #Spotify50 pic.twitter.com/eXkOV71bwu
— Spotify (@Spotify) March 2, 2017
Spotify’s impressive subscribers
Spotify was the first music streamer service to hit 100 million active users total last summer. Meanwhile, Apple Music has experienced steady subscriber growth thanks to a bunch of exclusives from top artists.
A couple of new features could be coming soon to Spotify to lure in even more listeners. Leaked images this week showed that Spotify plans to launch a lossless CD quality-audio tier soon. Prices for the premium audio could cost users between $5 to $10 extra a month.
Time to achieve @Spotify paying subs :
0 ~> 10M = 4 yrs
10 ~> 20M = 13 months
20 ~> 30M = 9 mnths
30 ~> 40M = 6 mnths
40 ~> 50M = 5 mnths— Rich Greenfield, LightShed (@RichLightShed) March 2, 2017
Unlike Apple Music, Spotify also has a free tier that draws in a lot of new users. Apple Music gives users a three-month free trial before charging $10 per month for an individual account.
Despite the high number of paid subscribers though, Spotify is still struggling to become a profitable company. Investors hope CEO Daniel Elk will take the company public soon, but recent reports claim that may not happen until 2018.
