Spotify announces gains in both paid subscribers and free users in 2022

On Wednesday, Spotify released its financial results for the first quarter of 2022. While many streaming services are facing financial hardship, Spotify has defied the gloomy predictions and announced a nearly 24% increase in gross revenue on a yearly basis.

The company reported growth across all key metrics, with increases in both monthly active users and paid subscribers. Based on the statistics, Spotify Premium subscribers now add up to 182 million, 2 million more than the figure for the same period in 2021. It should be noted that this increase was sustained despite the withdrawal of the streaming platform from the Russian market, which directly lead to the estimated loss of 1.5 million subscribers.

The growth exceeded the company’s initial expectations and is largely attributed to outperformance in other key markets (notably Europe and Latin America). All in all, premium revenue rose by 23%, on a year-to-year basis.

For the number of active monthly listeners, a little bit of guesswork was undertaken. Because of a system outrage a couple of months ago, many non-premium users were forcibly logged out from the platform. As a result, some simply ended up creating new accounts instead of logging back to their old ones. Nevertheless, even when accounting for this accident, Spotify is confident that the number of active monthly listeners has still risen, albeit not to the levels previously anticipated.

Spotify also announced its forecasts for the next financial quarter and the end of the year. By 2023, the streaming platform is projected to have up to 187 million paid subscribers and a grand total of 428 million active monthly users.

These figures are impressive and showcase Spotify’s continuous dominance of the music streaming market. Spotify’s biggest direct competitor, Apple Music, does not routinely report the size of its user base. The last time it did, it had an estimated 60 million subscribers - a sizeable number no doubt, but quite a bit off of what Spotify has.