This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Digital Education & Events
Spotify userbase passes 100 million
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 21 June 2016
So, if you’ve been going around saying Spotify “probably has about 100 million users overall”, well, you can drop the ‘probably’ and the ‘about’ everybody, because Spotify has a 100 million users overall.
The most recent previous stats brag from the streaming service was back in March, when boss man Daniel Ek nonchalantly confirmed on Twitter that his company now boasted 30 million paying users. That the overall active userbase now tops 100 million was revealed yesterday.
Allowing for ongoing growth since then, that presumably means over 30% of the firm’s customers are premium users, ie the kind of customers who are actually contributing to the record industry’s booming streaming revenues.
It also means that more than two thirds of those users are on freemium, which is basically a loss-leader for both Spotify itself and the music industry – even though labels and publishers usually have minimum guarantees on free streams – with the freemium level basically a very expensive marketing platform for upselling premium.
Though the timing of the 100 million users stats brag – and what it tells us about Spotify’s freemium audience – is possibly significant, given that the ad industry is amassing on the Med this week for the Cannes Lions conference. And Ek, who doesn’t do many conferences these days, is on the bill. Which is presumably confirmation that Spotify is keen to further ramp up its advertising business in a bid to reduce the costs of servicing those freebie streamers.
This, and other recent moves to step up the company’s brand relationships, may be, in part, a bid to placate those at the majors who don’t like free streaming or Spotify’s freemium-sells-premium business model. Or it may be more about showing potential investors ahead of any IPO that the loss-leading side of the Spotify business need not be so loss-leading.
But anyway, 100 million users, woo! Buy yourself some ad spots to celebrate.
