Spotify reach 150 million active users as music streaming booms
Spotify have reached their latest music streaming milestone, revealing 150 million active listeners around the world use Spotify regularly.
Spotify have reportedly reached 150 million users worldwide, a massive milestone made up of an almost level number of free and Premium subscribers. The news was reported by Digital Music News from “details leaked” to them, and has not been officially confirmed by Spotify though it is likely true.
Spotify are the biggest player in music streaming with roughly double the figures of Pandora music, and double the paid subscribers of rival Apple Music. This figure just confirms that and also reveals how much better the ratio of free to paid users is. Spotify’s last figures for paid subscriptions showed 60 million Premium users with roughly 2 million extra each month. That was at the beginning of August so they are no doubt heading towards 65 million, just 10 million from having 50% of all users on Premium.
This is a considerable improvement from a few years ago when Spotify was criticised for its free tier that people felt didn’t value music fairly. To put it into perspective, at the end of 2015 Spotify were approaching 100 million overall users with less than 25 million of those users subscribed to a premium account. This means that nearly all of the additions in the past 2 years have been paying customers, a great sign for Spotify and the music industry alike.
The sources that revealed the news to Digital Music News say that they have no idea when an official announcement will be made, nor if it will be announced at all. They reckon that Spotify are less likely to be vocal about the achievement than they are with their Premium subscriber milestones as it reveals the amount of free users. Though even with 80-90 million free users, 60+ million paying subscribers is a phenomenal number.