Spotify is still the King of Music Streaming

It should come as no surprise to learn that streaming is big business in the app market – after all, Netflix, Spotify and Apple Music to name but a few are an intrinsic part of the day. They’re embedded into our daily lives, from the morning commute to the evening chill. But who exactly is getting streaming right? Who’s the biggest name in the business? And what inspiration can you take from this as you get your brand new mobile app business off the ground?

Back in April, the Wall Street Journal announced that paid subscribers to Apple Music numbered 28 million, a notch or two above Spotify’s reported 26 million. This though, only shows a very small portion of the overall story. In fact, the following month Spotify officially announced that their worldwide paid subscriber figure had reached 100 million.

As if that wasn’t impressive enough, the music streaming giant’s total subscriber figures which include non-premium (free users) actually total 217million. Globally this figure significantly trumps Apple Music’s 50 million paid users. Spotify’s growth has been consistent too, showing a 30%+ increase in subscriptions year on year.

As many of you will know, owning a free (non-premium) subscription to Spotify results in digitally served audio and banner advertising through the Spotify platform. The streaming service also says it intends to push the popular ‘podcast’ audio shows and to empower the producers of this content to place advertising within their casts as a new revenue generator. It’s expected that this will be a catalyst for inspiring unique content creation across the platform.

The brand has posted prediction figures which show it expects to grow to in excess of 240 million global users by the end of Q3 2019 and pass the 115 million paid user marker. Despite this, the business overall has posted another loss this past financial year equating to around £155 million. This figure is down by about £10 million versus the previous year’s losses.

In a big promotion to promote take up of its ‘family account’ subscriptions, Spotify gave away Google home speakers for new family accounts created. While this was well received and has undoubtedly served the brand well in terms of racking up the paid subscriber numbers, there is still no sign of a Spotify first party hardware release. With Amazon and Google already well ahead in the smart home speaker stakes, could we see Spotify set its sights on production as its next milestone? Time will tell.