Spotify Announces 113 Million Paid Users

Music streaming giant Spotify on Monday that it grew its user base to 113 million premium, or paid, subscribers and 248 million total active monthly users as of the end of September. That compared with 108 million premium and 232 million total active monthly users as of the end of June, 100 million premium and 217 million monthly users as of the end of March and 96 million and 75 million, respectively, as of the end of 2018.

"We continue to feel very good about our competitive position in the market. Relative to Apple, the publicly available data shows that we are adding roughly twice as many subscribers per month as they are. Additionally, we believe that our monthly engagement is roughly two times as high and our churn is at half the rate. Elsewhere, our estimates imply that we continue to add more users on an absolute basis than Amazon. Our data also suggests that Amazon’s user base skews significantly more to ‘ad-supported’ than ‘premium,’ and that average engagement on our platform is approximately three times [theirs]."

The company also announced transition plans for a new CFO. "After playing a pivotal role in Spotify’s listing and helping to establish Spotify as a public company, Barry McCarthy will retire from Spotify on January 15, 2020, stepping down as the company’s CFO," the company said. He will be replaced by Paul Vogel, who is currently Spotify’s vp financial planning and analysis, treasury and investor relations. 

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