An impressive year for Spotify saw their growth rocket for users across the world with a massive uptake of paying subscribers.

Confidently introducing themselves as the “World’s #1 Audio Platform” Spotify have released their results for 2019’s Q4 and the year at large. The report shows a great year for growth and how their service has been expanding beyond music.

Spotify ended the year with 271 million Monthly Active Users (MAUs) around the world, a 31% year-on-year increase. Their paying subscribers nearly saw the same level of growth, raising 29% on 2018 and ending the decade with 124 million global Premium users.

With such significant growth, Spotify are well on track to hit the milestone of 300 million Monthly Active Users in 2020. If they continue last year’s growth of 31% they will surpass 350 million users before the end of the year.

In 2019 Spotify pushed podcasts heavily to expand their platform beyond music streaming. It’s paid off to increase value and user-retention with their listeners with 200% growth in how many hours of podcasts were listened to in 2019.

Spotify now have over 700,000 podcasts live to stream including a partnership with the Obama’s production company, Higher Ground. With podcasts clearly a hit with listeners Spotify are introducing podcast ads to monetise them and capitalise on a rapidly growing listener-base for podcasts.

If Spotify continue their trajectory, boosted by diversifying their content and betting big on podcasts, then they should see their significant growth easily continue in 2020. We look forward to seeing what they have up their sleeve for the year to come.

You can see their full fiscal report here.