Do you use Spotify? If you do, you’re now part of a 40 million member-strong community.
As companies are wont to do, Spotify has just released new user numbers as they hit a new milestone. The streaming music leader now boasts over 40 million active users, 10 million of which are paying subscribers.
For reference, Spotify had about 24 million active users and 6 million paying subscribers a year ago. And a year before that, it was about 20 million to 5 million. It appears that Spotify’s consistent, if nothing else, with their paying subscriber to regular old free user ratio.
10 million Premium subscribers & more than 40 million active users across 56 markets! Thank you to you, #TeamSpotify! http://t.co/t6hWPMOz4B
— Spotify (@Spotify) May 21, 2014
The past year has seen a period of growth for the steaming music arena. Spotify faces competition from the likes of Rdio, Deezer, and even Pandora radio. Some of those services have made big steps to grab more of the market share, for instance the former going free (ad-supported) on the web earlier this year.
Spotify has also made some significant moves. In December of last year, they launched free mobile streaming (with some restrictions, of course). They also got rid of some of the streaming time limits that had been in place in their international markets.
In March, the company began to offer a student discount–a half-price period for college kids to boost premium signups. They’ve also beefed up their streaming offerings by adding longtime holdouts like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.
“We’ve had an amazing year, growing from 20 markets to 56 as people from around the world embrace streaming music. 10 million subscribers is an important milestone for both Spotify and the entire music industry. We’re widening our lead in the digital music space and will continue to focus on getting everyone in the world to listen to more music,” said Spotify CEO Daniel Ek.
These are some impressive user numbers, and they prove that Spotify is truly the king of the hill right now. But Spotify will need more than active user totals if and when they go public, which rumors point to as a possibility for this fall.
Image via Björn Olsson, Flickr