Matti Robinson
29 Apr 2019 8:09
Streaming music pioneer Spotify has grown with a stable and fairly rapid pace for years now, and there seems to be no stopping it. Not even Apple Music, with its massive investments, has even come close to pass Spotify's global leadership.
Alongside the newest fiscal figures from Spotify, the company has revealed that they've surpassed the 100 million paid subscriber milestone. In December Spotify announced that they first went past 200 million total subscribers.
At this point there are more than 117 million users that are using the ad-supported tier.
Last quarter Spotify managed to also first time pull them up to a nice operating profit, but that wasn't meant to last. In the latest quarter they posted a 142 million euros ($158 million) loss. Even though it was backtracking by quite a bit, it still was an improvement to year ago.
While Apple hasn't given us official subscriber numbers for Apple Music in a while, they still have ways to catch up with Spotify globally. In the U.S., however, Apple Music has managed to overpass Spotify, thanks to its extensive investments and continuously running TV ads.
The companies are not only duking it out in the free market, but also in the bureaucracies of European Commission.