Spotify surpasses 205 million subscribers, better than expected

Spotify The music streaming service reached 205 million subscribers at the end of last year, the music streaming service said Tuesday in its fourth-quarter report, surpassing a major milestone.

The streaming service said 489 million people are now using it Spotify At least once a month, including people who listen for free with ads. This represents a 20% increase over the previous year and represents a record increase in new net listeners. By the end of March, Spotify expects the total number of active listeners to reach 500 million.

Growth in both paid and total users was better than Spotify predicted in October, when it forecast 202 million paid members and 479 listeners.

The latest figures confirm Spotify’s dominance in music subscriptions worldwide. Apple Music, considered its closest competitor, routinely doesn’t disclose its paid membership and hasn’t offered an update in more than three years, obscuring just how big Spotify’s progress is. Back in June 2019, Apple said its service was 60 million subscribers. (According to music industry researcher Media, Apple has about 1% of the world’s music subscription market Last year, Spotify’s share more than doubled that).

Spotify, unlike Apple Music, has a free tier that allows anyone to listen to music with ads. Apple never discloses the number of monthly active users; Almost all people who use Apple Music are subscribers.

Shares in Spotify rose 4.4% to $104.35 in recent pre-market trading. As of Monday’s close, Spotify stock is down more than 40% in the past year.

Looking ahead, Spotify predicted that it would have 207 million paying subscribers by the end of March and increase its monthly active users to 500 million.

In the fourth quarter, Sweden-based Spotify reported a loss of 270 million euros ($293.5 million), or 1.40 euros per share, widening from a loss of 39 million euros, or 21 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue increased 18 percent to 3.17 billion euros in the first quarter.