Spotify has reported its financial results for the first quarter of 2019, revealing that it has passed 100 million paid users.
This gives Spotify around twice the number of premium subscribers as the last reported figures for Apple Music. However, Apple Music may still have more paid subscribers in the United States.
Spotify noted that:
“Premium Subscribers grew to 100 million, up 32% [year-on-year], reaching the high end of our guidance range of 97-100 million, and marking an important milestone in Company history. Outperformance was driven by a better than plan promotion in the US and Canada and continued strong growth in Family Plan. We also saw strong growth from the expansion of our Google Home Mini promotion, as well as the price reduction to our Spotify Premium + Hulu offering in the U.S.”
The streaming giant lists a few reasons for its growth. One of these is the extension of an Google Home Mini promotion to two new markets, the U.K. and France. This allows new and existing Family Plan master account holders to claim a free Google Home Mini voice speaker.
The company also observes that it has launched in India, meaning that it is now available in 79 countries. Spotify now has more than 2 million users in India. (Apple recently tried to one-up it by reducing Apple Music prices in the country.)
Things get better, but still losing money
Overall, Spotify’s monthly active users grew 26% year-on-year. This brings the total number to 217 million, slightly below the 215-220 million guidance range.
Despite the impressive figures, however, Spotify still isn’t generating profit. In all, it posted an operating loss of $52 million on revenues of $1.68 billion. This was slightly better than analysts were expecting. The result was Spotify shares increasing 4% in pre-market trading.
Apple, for its part, hasn’t revealed exactly how much money Apple Music makes. But it has the luxury of being able to treat it as a loss-leader due to the associated benefits that Apple Music brings. “We’re not in it for the money,” Tim Cook said in an interview last year.
Source: Spotify
