Spotify added a record number of active users last quarter

Spotify added 36 million monthly active users in the past quarter. This is 21 million more than expected. The platform has never added so many active users in a quarter. The net loss also grew, to 302 million euros.

It company now has 551 million monthly active users, which is 27 percent more than a year earlier. The majority of these, 343 million subscribers, have a free account. The new users were mainly free users. The number of free users increased by more, 8 percent, than the number of subscribers, which increased by 5 percent.

Although Spotify makes money from free users through ads, Premium subscribers make the company much more money. Free users earned Spotify 404 million euros in the last quarter, while Premium subscribers earned the company 2.77 billion euros. The company’s total turnover was 3.18 billion euros, 4 percent more than the previous quarter and 11 percent more than a year earlier. The net loss was 302 million euros. This is 34 percent more than last quarter and more than double the loss of the same quarter a year ago.

According to the company, this larger loss is due to the discontinuation of various podcast shows, the ‘streamlining’ of the company’s real estate and severance payments. Regardless of those costs, the loss was actually better than expected, the company writes. Spotify is therefore talking about a strong second quarter. The quarterly figures follow a day after Spotify’s announcement to increase the prices of Premium subscriptions by up to three euros, depending on the subscription.