Spotify are on the way to securing the throne of music streaming as they near 100 million active users and 30 million Premium subscribers.

Spotify may already be the leading music streaming service around the world but these user figures mark the landmark figures in stone. Whilst the fast-approaching 100m users is the most impressive, and an unrivalled achievement, the number of Premium users is the biggest accomplishment.

Spotify may be the biggest music streaming service in the world but that doesn’t come without backlash, with some high-profile artists saying the freemium model doesn’t pay out for artists. This has been contested frequently as an issue with label contracts rather than streaming payouts, something that we at RouteNote can attest thanks to the success of many of the independent artists on streaming services with us. You can read Spotify CEO and founder Daniel Ek touch on the issue in a recent Q&A here.

This is why Premium is so important though. Whilst freemium is a sustainable model it shows that, given the choice, many people will still pay for music and support artists. Even with the option to listen for free with ad-monetisation roughly a third of users are paying into the service, and that’s why the 30 million mark is so important for Spotify.

Spotify’s last report on numbers was in June of last year when they revealed they had 75m active users, 20m of which were paying subscribers. By the end of 2015 Spotify reported more than 5m new subscribers as well as their expectation to reach 100m users by the end of the year. They may not have reached 100m but their confidence suggests they were close, something now confirmed by the latest reports confirmed by the Financial Times.

Spotify’s primary competitor is the new(ish) face on the market Apple Music, Apple’s music streaming service. Apple Music this week announced 11m subscribers, an incredibly impressive amount not even a year since it’s launch. At the end of 2014 the IFPI reported 41 million total subscribers on music streaming services, meaning Apple Music and Spotify alone now make up the same numbers as the entire music streaming industry just over a year ago.

In this week’s Q&A Daniel Ek spoke on music streaming’s massive growth, saying: “The music industry is growing again. The music economy is changing as it moves from an ownership model to an access model. It’s our responsibility to make sure that artists and songwriters and producers and everyone else in music understands that we are in this together with them, and that we are committed to their success. We love music, we love all the amazing people who make it, and we want to succeed together.”

Be a part of the success – sign up to RouteNote for free and get your music onto music stores and all of the top music streaming services. Music streaming is constantly rising and so can your music.