Spotify Is The First Music Streaming Service To Hit 205 Million Premium Subscribers

Swedish music streaming giant Spotify's premium subscribers base has hit 205 million, representing a 14 per cent increase year-on-year.

Swedish music streaming giant Spotify's premium subscribers base has hit 205 million, representing a 14 per cent increase year-on-year (YoY). With this, Spotify has outpaced rivals like Amazon Music and Apple Music to become the world's first music streaming company to achieve this premium user base.

"Q4 ‘22 $SPOT delivered great platform growth. We ended 2022 strongly despite a challenging year. Expect us to move faster with more intensity of effort, driving even greater efficiency in 2023," Daniel Ek, CEO, of Spotify announced in a tweet.

Spotify's monthly active users (MAUs) reached 489 million, a 20 per cent increase (YoY), according to the company's Q4 2022 earnings report.

On the earnings front, Spotify posted an operating loss of around $250 million for the quarter.

The MAU net additions reached a quarterly record-high of 33 million in Q4, 10 million above guidance. Subscriber growth also materially outperformed, exceeding guidance by 3 million net additions.

"Looking back on 2022 in its entirety, we are pleased with our overall results. Each year presents certain challenges and opportunities and, over the past 12 months, we largely delivered on our internal goals and we are excited about the momentum we are building heading into 2023," said Spotify.

Meanwhile, after Meta, Twitter, Amazon and Google, Spotify recently announced it was planning to lay off employees. The company last week announced to slash 6 per cent of its workforce, or about 600 staffers, globally, and Ek announced that he was too ambitious in investing ahead of their revenue growth.

The number of employees that would be impacted by the job cuts at Spotify is not clear, said a report by news agency Bloomberg.

Earlier in November last year, the Swedish music streaming giant announced expanding its newly launched audiobooks service outside the US, in a bid to give competition to Audible.