Spotify Reaches 96M Paid Subscribers Compared to Apple Music's 'Over 50 Million'

[MacRumors]

Spotify today shared its Q4 2018 earnings report, detailing a 36 percent growth in Spotify Premium subscribers from the year-ago quarter. Specifically, Spotify now has 96 million paid subscribers around the world as of the end of 2018, compared to Apple Music's over 50 million paid subscribers.

According to Spotify, there were a few factors that bumped up subscriber numbers in 2018, including a promotion where Family Plan account holders in the United States were able to claim a Google Home mini free of charge. The company also pointed towards its year-end "Spotify Wrapped" event as a major factor for its Q4 subscriber boost.

In December, we also launched our annual Wrapped Holiday brand campaign where existing users were able to explore stats about their listening habits throughout the year. The campaign saw the highest traffic ever to the Wrapped site spotifywrapped.com, with 28 million users visiting the site in just one week (up from 20 million last year total.)

The Holiday campaign became the #1 trending topic on Twitter globally and generated over 5 billion streams of the "Your Top Songs 2018" playlist, now the fastest growing personalized playlist in Spotify history.

In total, Spotify has grown to 207 million monthly active users (also counting those on its ad-supported tier), a growth of 29 percent year-over-year. Thanks to all of this, Spotify had major milestones in Q4 2018, reporting operating income, net income, and free cash flow as all positive, marking the first time that Spotify has operated at a profit in its history. The company said that operating expenses of EUR305 million were down by 17 percent compared to the year-ago quarter, resulting in an operating profit of EUR94 million.

Spotify today also announced that it has acquired two podcasting companies: Gimlet and Anchor. Spotify first announced its strong push into podcasts in July 2017, when a Bloomberg article claimed that the streaming music company was "coming after" Apple Podcasts. It has since added more and more podcasts into its catalog, and will now gain the advantages of the shows and technology offered by Gimlet and Anchor.

Gimlet is a content creation company that is the home to notable podcasts like Homecoming and Reply All (Homecoming was recently adapted into an Amazon Prime original series starring Julia Roberts). Anchor focuses more on the technical side of podcasts, offering users a place to record, host, distribute, and monetize their podcasts, with full analytics on each episode once they go live.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said that with the acquisitions, Spotify will focus on the curation and customization aspect of the service that it already uses for music streaming. "These acquisitions will meaningfully accelerate our path to becoming the world's leading audio platform, give users around the world access to the best podcast content, and improve the quality of our listening experience while enhancing the Spotify brand," Ek explained.

Article Link: Spotify Reaches 96M Paid Subscribers Compared to Apple Music's 'Over 50 Million'

 

[Justin Cymbal]

Wow!

This is the first quarter ever that Spotify turned a profit and the stock still went down (in pre-market trading)

I still think Apple Music is better though...

 

[Heineken]

Apple Music was launched in June of 2015.

 

[Populus]

My winner combo is: iTunes Match + Spotify free + YouTube free

If Apple gets rid of iTunes Match then probably I'll become a Spotify premium subscriber. That's after downloading all my iTunes Match library.

 

[lsutigerfan1976]

Both have their pluses. But i love the playlists on Spotify vs AM. And love Spotify connect. Not everything i have is Apple stuff. So for ppl like me. Having Spotify connect to work with all my non Apple stuff is so underrated. But if someone had all Apple stuff. I could see how they prefer AM.

 

[jezbd1997]

Spotify all the way. The app designs and music discovery is 10x better than Apple's.
Also doesn't mess with my local iTunes library like Apple Music did.
Cloud only=no issues.
I gave Apple Music another go when it gave me the option for a free trail recently and just couldn't stand the colour scheme and the complicated interface... I wish one day Apple will sort it out but Spotify is just too good in this business.
I mean we all know Spotify has been around longer so they know what their users want, which is why they are gaining more subscribers

 

[Mike MA]

Really surprised how Spotify managed to keep or even increase the gap since Apple Music arrived. Every consumer will benefit from this competition.

 

[gsmornot]

If Apple wanted they could copy the Instagram/Snap model. Look at Spotify and duplicate all of the features that people like about it forcing Spotify to innovate until they run out of ideas. Clearly Apple has decided they are doing well enough for what they want to do and with all the other business ventures have what they need for the long term. Spotify on the other hand is music and podcasts and it may not be enough for the long term.

 

[jezbd1997]

Really surprised how Spotify managed to keep or even increase the gap since Apple Music arrived. Every consumer will benefit from this competition.

Better interface + better discovery means more users, pretty simple.

 

[martyjmclean]

Not surprised... even with its few problems, it’s the best streaming platform.

 

[JosephAW]

Apple can solve this problem by buying out Spotify like they did with LaLa and then announce they will be shuttering the service and rolling the accounts over to Apple Music. Simple.

 

[Abazigal]

Paid subscription numbers are basically worthless for Spotify when they are being offered at $0.99 for three months or some similar promotion.

Apple’s 50 million paid users is the real deal here.

 

[Nozuka]

Still waiting for Apple to bring high fidelity streaming like Tidal. (with FLAC)
But at this point, spotify will likely come first.

 

[arkitect]

Apple can solve this problem by buying out Spotify like they did with LaLa and then announce they will be shuttering the service and rolling the accounts over to Apple Music. Simple.

That is not quite the best suggestion.

Can you imagine the size of the anti-competitive fines… let alone the law suits?

Besides, for those of us who rate Spotify as the superior service, why should it become our problem to get shoved on to Apple's second rate service?

 

[dominiongamma]

Apple can solve this problem by buying out Spotify like they did with LaLa and then announce they will be shuttering the service and rolling the accounts over to Apple Music. Simple.

Hope Apple does not do this, Android users would leave in a heart beat because Apple is a toxic brand to Android users. I would leave Apple because they don’t need to buy companies all the time. They could innovate.

 

[Abazigal]

Wow!

This is the first quarter ever that Spotify turned a profit and the stock still went down (in pre-market trading)

I still think Apple Music is better though...

Well, Spotify did warn of continued losses going into 2019 and slowing growth. That’s likely what the market is reacting to, that this quarter was more an anomaly than the norm.

 

[Dreamer2go]

To me, Apple Music is way better in terms of wanting to buy songs. The previews of the songs are too short (30 seconds). I'm not sure when, but I just noticed that there is a huge "LISTEN NOW" button on the right hand side on the album page of the iTunes music store. That way, I can use Apple Music, listen to the specific song on the album first, then decide if I want to get the track or not. LOVE IT!

 

[Heineken]

Not surprised... even with its few problems, it’s the best streaming platform.

Your personal subjective taste is not an objective measurement of what is best.

 

[miflgr92]

Paid subscription numbers are basically worthless for Spotify when they are being offered at $0.99 for three months or some similar promotion.

Apple’s 50 million paid users is the real deal here.

The $0.99 promotion may influence the paid subscription numbers but there’s a reason they offer it. That promotion got me to try out their service and by the end of it I couldn’t live without Spotify so I signed up for a monthly subscription. I convinced a ton of my friends to check it out and they loved it as well. I don’t know one person in my circle of friends on Apple Music now.

 

[decypher44]

And here I am, completely satisfied with Amazon Music Unlimited. $7.99/mo, Unlimited downloads, works on my Echo, iPhone, Roku (which sounds amazing with my home theater setup), Mac, PC.... I have a wide range of musical taste and I’ve not yet had issue with finding what I want. Again, for $7.99.

 

[arkitect]

The $0.99 promotion may influence the paid subscription numbers but there’s a reason they offer it. That promotion got me to try out their service and by the end of it I couldn’t live without Spotify so I signed up for a monthly subscription. I convinced a ton of my friends to check it out and they loved it as well. I don’t know one person in my circle of friends on Apple Music now.

That was my experience. I signed up for one of the first of those promotions a couple years ago… liked what I heard… and have been a monthly subscriber ever since.

 

[Heineken]

The $0.99 promotion may influence the paid subscription numbers but there’s a reason they offer it. That promotion got me to try out their service and by the end of it I couldn’t live without Spotify so I signed up for a monthly subscription. I convinced a ton of my friends to check it out and they loved it as well. I don’t know one person in my circle of friends on Apple Music now.

I personally know more than one person hunting these promotions, but never signing up for real. My assumption is that such people outnumber people like you. In any case this paid subscription number is questionable since they don’t brake it down in detail.

 

[Enclavean]

Paid subscription numbers are basically worthless for Spotify when they are being offered at $0.99 for three months or some similar promotion.

Apple’s 50 million paid users is the real deal here.

You do know those are only for the first 3 months right? And that Apple offers the first 3 months completely free? If Spotify’s paid subscribers are worthless at $0.99 then what are Apple’s at $0?

 

[H.E. Pennypacker]

96 million users and still no offline playback support for Apple Watch. Spotify really cares about us ios users.

 

[bigjnyc]

Spotify is so much better than AM, its not even close... from interface to curation, to playlist sharing and subscribing... It's just worlds better..... I am usually a big fan of integration and having everything neatly within the same ecosystem but just couldn't pick AM over spotify.