Music streaming platform, Spotify, said it now has a record-breaking 602 million users, out of which 236 million are paid subscribers with access to the audiobooks service.
Spotify CEO, Daniel Ek, disclosed this on Tuesday as the company released its Q4 2023 earnings. In a short video posted on X shortly before the company’s earnings call, Ek said the company had a great quarter not just of the 600 million milestone but also made a lot of progress with audiobooks.
- “I have two things to share. The first thing is that we broke a lot of records during this quarter. The most notable one is that we have now surpassed 600 million users. As part of that, we also had a fantastic Wrapped, this was a record Wrapped and we passed the last year’s Wrapped in just 31 hours, which is just remarkable.
- “Number two is that we are making a lot of progress on audiobooks. The growth of the industry has more than doubled from what it used to be which is exactly what we hoped to be able to do. And it is also amazing to see that what we are bringing to the book industry is an entirely new audience,” Ek said
28 million users in Q4
During its Q4 2023 earnings call with investors, the company reported that it added 28 million users in the quarter, which marks the second biggest quarterly gain in the company’s history. The company said that the subscriber growth was led by the Rest of the World and Latin America, which represents 35% of total paid users.
The Sweden-based company earned €3.7 billion ($3.97 billion) in revenues with a year-on-year growth of 16%. It registered an operating loss of €75 million, which is better than the loss of €231 million last year for the same period. However, Spotify made €32 million in profits in Q3 2023. The company’s ad revenues have jumped to an all-time high of €501 million with 12% year-on-year growth.
The company also offered a glimpse into how audiobooks are being consumed by Spotify customers, including by sharing insights that indicate the books are reaching a different set of listeners than on Audible or other platforms.
Digital platforms gaining momentum
Last week, Google’s video and music streaming platform, YouTube also announced that it had crossed 100 million paid users across YouTube Music and YouTube Premium.
Google first launched YouTube Music in 2015 and at that time, YouTube offered a $9.99 per month Red subscription for ad-free viewing that also allowed users to access Play Music. In 2018, the Red subscription was rebranded to YouTube Premium.
