Spotify passes 20 million paying users

Spotify now has 20 million paying users, out of a total of 75 million active users. A year ago, Spotify had just 10 million paying users; the number of paying users is now increasing faster and faster.

At the beginning of this year, Spotify still had 15 million paying users. Over the past year, the streaming service has added a new subscriber every three seconds on average, the Swedish company claims. The rapid increase in subscribers is good news for Spotify: record companies make little money from the free version of Spotify and are critical of its existence.

The company says it has paid out more than $3 billion in royalties since its inception. $300 million of that was paid out in the first three months of this year. The company expects to be able to pay out even more in the coming year, due to the increased number of subscribers.