Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Music
  3. News

Spotify has reached a big milestone in paid subscribers

Trevor Mogg
By

youtube paid music service march launch listening to
sebra/123RF
Spotify is continuing to persuade music fans to hand over cold, hard cash in exchange for access to a massive library of tracks.

The streaming giant on Thursday revealed it now has 50 million paying subscribers, an increase of 10 million in five months.

Recommended Videos

Spotify announced the news in a short and sweet tweet thanking its growing army of paying subscribers for their loyalty.

Related

Continuing to build up its user base at a steady rate, Spotify took six months to grow from 30 million to 40 million users, and nine months to increase from 20 million to 30 million.

Although a few music streaming outfits have fallen by the wayside in the face of stiffening competition, there are still plenty of big-hitters battling it out in the cut-throat market. While Spotify still leads the pack, others, Apple among them, are continuing to make a play for users.

The Cupertino company’s Apple Music streaming service, which launched in June 2015, reached 20 million paying subscribers toward the end of last year. Spotify and Apple both charge users $10 a month for access to their enormous libraries of music. They also offer identical deals for students ($5 a month) and families ($15 a month). However, whereas Spotify offers a free tier with ads and several limitations, Apple Music has no free offering.

With 100 million monthly active users overall, Spotify is continuing to work to convert nonpaying users to its paid plan in order to boost revenue. Talk of an IPO also continues, though the latest is that the company may hold off till 2018 to give it more time to improve its balance sheet and alter its business model to boost revenue.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Spotify Wrapped 2022: what it is and how to view it
Spotify Wrapped 2022.

For loads of music lovers, the beginning of December is a special time of year when Spotify drops its annual Spotify Wrapped list, a data-derived deep dive into -- for better or worse -- all the good, bad, and embarrassing music we've been cranking into our earholes for the past year. If you're a Spotify devotee, you've likely already gotten their teaser email about this year's list, which usually lands at the end of November or in the first week of December. But if you haven't, no worries, we've got all the details here.
Further reading

Spotify Wrapped 2022 is here: What's your 'listening personality'?
What is Spotify: music, pricing, and features explained
Apple Music vs. Spotify: Which music streamer is the best?
Instafest: How to make your own Spotify festival lineup

Read more
Spotify app update finally lets you separate your music and podcasts
spotify app home page music podcasts separate tabs reorganization

Spotify is giving the Home page of its app a major makeover by creating separate feeds for music and podcasts. The audio streaming company announced the changes on Tuesday, and the new feature is starting to roll out to Android users, with the iOS app set to receive it soon after.

The revamped Home page will have two separate tabs on the top left corner of the screen labeled "Music" and "Podcasts & Shows." Tapping on the Music tab will take you straight to the music you've been listening to and give you playlist and artist recommendations based on the genres you hear the most. The Podcast & Shows tab will immediately show you the latest episodes of your favorite podcasts, as well as give you suggestions for new ones.

Read more
Spotify has killed the Car Thing, its $90 in-car audio device that failed to find an audience
Spotify Car Thing

During a quarterly earnings call, Spotify announced that it is killing its Car Thing, a $90 touchscreen device designed to make accessing the streaming music service a lot easier for folks who don't have an Apple CarPlay or Android Auto-compatible entertainment system, according to a report from The Verge.

It's been a long, strange trip for Spotify's Car Thing, which initially emerged in 2019 as a device that was only offered to a very limited set of Spotify's customers, as a way of gathering data on people's in-car music listening (and possibly other) habits. The move prompted a lot of speculation over when and if the company would actually sell such a device, and if so, what it would cost.

Read more