Spotify now has more active users than any other music streaming service on the planet, but when it comes to paid subscribers, it looks like growth has stalled.
The Swedish music streaming service revealed today that it now has 100 million active users — up from the 75 million it had last year — however its paid subscribers total hasn’t budged since March.
Spotify says its current paid subscribers total is 30 million, which is the same it was three months ago. Apple Music currently boasts 15 million paid subscribers while Google is also looking to compete in the arena with the new YouTube Music service on both iOS and Android.
Despite having two times as many subscribers as Apple Music, Spotify has been struggling to finally turn a profit. The company posted losses of $209 million in 2015. Part of the problem is only 10% of its revenue comes from ads listened to by free users, yet it doesn’t have a free-trial period that encourages listeners to subscribe.
The music streaming wars are set to get more fierce as Amazon is rumored to be preparing its own standalone music service. Apple Music isn’t resting on its laurels either. Apple revealed at WWDC that Apple Music will get a big redesign this fall, adding more discovery features and a simplified UI.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
One response to “Spotify is first music streamer to reach 100 million users”
How many people use a mobile device or computer? near 2 Billion? 100 million users is around 5% of the total market of computer/mobile device users, and 15 million paid is even smaller than that.
The major question is, is Spotify actually making a profit. If they aren’t, how many paid users do they have to have and how many non-paid users do they need to have to break even.
Anyone see Silicon Valley on HBO. In the show, they had a new s/w and they were making a big deal about the number of downloads, but the number of active users was far less and that’s what they were worried about. Obviously, that’s a TV show, but the fact remains. It doesn’t matter what market share a company has, or how many users, it matters on whether the business is profitable and stable to keep their lights on. Otherwise, the business will either go out of business or it will just get sold off to someone else that might be able to squeeze a profit.