The figure is no great surprise: the company’s Head Of Creator Services Troy Carter revealed last month that Spotify was hovering around the 39m mark, leading MBW to predict that the service would hit 50m subs within six months. Spotify has insisted on keeping its ad-supported tier to encourage people to sign up before being converted into paying subscribers, but this has incurred the wrath of key musicians and industry figures, with many claiming it doesn’t create enough value for the hard-working artists who make their music available to stream on-demand.
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More crucially, Spotify is growing significantly faster than Apple’s rival service.
Unlike Spotify however, Apple Music does not offer a free version of its app.
Apple added 6.5m subscribers by October, with Spotify adding 5m in the same time period. Apple Music gives all users a three-month free trial, but then users have to become paid subscribers to continue to listen.
But Spotify has managed to not only stay afloat, but thrive-despite the fact that Spotify has lacked the splashy exclusives that seem to drive Apple Music’s strategy.
In other words, Spotify has added 1.5m subscribers a month since January, while Apple Music’s monthly new subs average works out at just under 0.9m subscribers.
Spotify reaching 40 million subscribers couldn’t come at a better time. Apple Music, the company’s biggest competitor, now boasts 17 million monthly users.
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With the largest paid streaming user base in the world, an IPO from Spotify will likely be a big success for the company, especially with paid subscribers – the most profitable element of its business – so rapidly on the rise.
