Spotify Now Has 356 Million Users
As part of its quarterly earnings report, Spotify this week said that it now has over 356 million monthly active users, up 24 percent year-over-year.
“I’m pleased with the continuing momentum we are seeing across many aspects of our business this quarter, including our subscriber growth,” Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek wrote in an open letter. “Several metrics, like subs, revenues, gross margin, and ARPU (average revenue per user) came in a little higher, while MAU (monthly average users) came in lower — but still well within our range.”
Spotify posted a net income of $23 million on revenues of $2.1 billion for the quarter ending March 31, 2021. Its subscriber base is split between 158 million premium subscribers and 208 million ad-supported subscribers. But the premium subscribers are far more lucrative, as they brought in $1.93 billion in revenues compared to $216 million for the ad-supported subscribers.
Of course, Spotify has what we’ll call an “Apple problem,” where the consumer electronics giant offers a competing service that isn’t hampered by the 30/15 percent vig that Apple inflicts on its developers. And so Spotify is raising the prices of its various offerings over the next month or so.