Spotify passes 100 M listeners; 30 M paid subscribers!
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A lot of people listen to Spotify. The music streaming service said its user base of active listeners has passed 100 million. The majority of those are "free" users who listen to streams with commercial breaks, but the company also claims the largest paid subscriber base in the music industry, with 30 million paid subscribers.
Although it might be the biggest, Spotify faces stiff competition. Less than a year after launch, Apple Music now has 15 million paid subscribers to go with a newly redesigned app.
Meanwhile, the Amazon Music service, which is free to all Amazon Prime subscribers, could technically have more than both services combined, at an estimated 46 million subscribers, although Amazon doesn't officially release those numbers. Google Music doesn't officially provide paid subscriber numbers either.
In the "free" music space, Pandora is Spotify's main rival, but growth in its 80-odd million user base has been flat recently.
That's really impressive for Apple Music. Less than a year and they already have half the paid subscribers Spotify does, but Apple is a far more established brand to be fair.
This is great for Spotify, but I don't think you can technically boast about paid subscribers if a sizable chunk of your subscribers are paying $1 for three months, because there's no guarantee that they'll continue paying the full price once the promotion expires.
