Spotify Statistics: Users, Artists, Revenue And More!

Spotify launched in 2008 and has since become the global leader in music streaming.

It took just 2 years for them to hit over 1 million subscribers.

From there, they have grown from strength to strength in terms of revenue and subscriber growth.

But Spotify has struggled to get profitable.

Even after a massive $29.5 billion IPO in April 2018, Spotify has only had 6 quarters in its history where it has made a profit.

Does this matter in the long run?

Probably not. But as competition from big tech companies from Apple Music and Google Play Music, Spotify certainly has its work cut out for them.

Here are the latest Spotify statistics that paint a picture of how the company has succeeded so far and what’s likely to happen in the future.

Key Spotify Statistics

Despite not being very profitable, Spotify has maintained strong subscriber and revenue growth.

Here are the key Spotify Statistics you need to know:

Think of Spotify as the Netflix of online music streaming. They were the first to enter the market and have built a loyal following despite being up against huge competition like Apple, Google and Amazon.

That’s impressive!

Spotify User Statistics

Users are the backbone of Spotify.

I mean, they aren’t going to get far without a solid user base, right?

Spotify has consistently increased its user base over the last 10 years by being very user-focused and developing an excellent, intuitive application.

Here are the latest Spotify statistics on their users.

Spotify Monthly Active Users

In February 2024, Spotify has over 574 million monthly active users.

This is a huge increase of over 85 million new users since the end of 2022.

There is no doubt that Spotify knows how to acquire new users and maintain loyalty on the platform.

Here is the full breakdown of Spotify users by year since 2015:

Spotify has managed to more than double its monthly active users over the last 5 years, growing by more than 200 million.

In 2021 alone, Spotify added about 61 million new subscribers.

If you break it down by quarter, here’s what it looks like:

Spotify has only had 1 decline in monthly active users in a quarter (Q1, 2018) since its beginning. This is a massive accomplishment for a completely online tech company operating against such big competition.

They have a superior platform and their users love it.

Distribution Of Spotify Monthly Active Users By Region

Who uses Spotify most?

Short answer – Europe.

34% of Spotify’s monthly active users live in Europe. That means that Spotify has 147.22 million users in the EU regions alone.

Here’s the breakdown of regions that contribute the most users to Spotify:

North America (Canada + the United States) makes up about 24% of all Spotify users.

That means that Europe and North America account for about 58% of all of Spotify’s monthly active users. That equates to a total of 251.14 million users in this region alone.

Latin America closely follows and accounts for about 22% of all Spotify monthly users.

The US is the country with the most users, with 65 million active users alone, which makes up about 15% of all Spotify’s MAUs.

Spotify Paying Subscribers

But just because someone is an active user doesn’t mean they are a paying subscriber.

Spotify has 2 plans:

Paying subscribers account for about half of Spotify’s monthly active users. This is the number of paying subscribers by year that Spotify has had since 2015:

As Spotify’s user base has grown, so have its paying subscribers. The consistent growth is an excellent sign for the platform.

As of 2024, Spotify has over 236 million monthly paying subscribers.

In 2021 alone, Spotify grew by more than 25 million paying subscribers.

This is a solid achievement for Spotify because it shows they can consistently convert free users into paying subscribers.

Spotify has also managed to more than 2.5x their paying subscriber base over the last 5 years. Everything looks great, right?

Not so fast.

The average premium revenue per user (APRU) has steadily decreased over the last few years.

In 2015 the APRU for Spotify was 6.84 euros. In 2021 it was down to just 4.28 euros.

The APRU essentially means the average amount that Spotify earns per user it has on the platform. The higher the APRU is, the more Spotify makes.

Spotify told shareholders that the APRU has dropped off due to product mix.

Product mix basically means the discounted bundle deals that Spotify offers, including-

Spotify expects its APRU to stabilise over the next couple of years, and you can already see the decline from 2020 to 2021 was just 2 cents.

Distribution Of Spotify Paying Subscribers By Region

Europe and North America have the most paying subscribers.

The latest Spotify statistics from the company’s annual report show that 69% of Spotify premium subscribers are located in Europe and North America.

Here’s what the breakdown of paying subscribers per region looks like:

Latin America accounts for 20% of paying subscribers on the platform and the rest of the world accounts for just 11%.

Spotify User Demographics Statistics

How old are the users on Spotify?

29% of all Spotify users fall into the 25 to 34 age range. This is closely followed by 26% of users in the 18 to 24-year-old age.

That means almost 54% of Spotify users are between the ages of 18 to 34.

Surprisingly, baby boomers between the ages of 55 to 70 make up the next biggest age demographic. Baby Boomers account for 19% of all Spotify users.

What about gender?

Spotify demographics show that men make up 56% of the platform’s user base, while women account for 44%.

Spotify User Behaviour Statistics

Spotify is considered a “heavy” platform for streaming.

That really means that the average user spends a significant amount of time streaming music from the app each day.

And that makes sense because of how music (and podcasts) are consumed in the average person’s daily life.

North American Spotify users spend the most time on the platform steaming an average of 140 minutes of content on the Spotify app daily. Here is the full breakdown by region:

Interestingly, the Middle East and Africa came in second, streaming an average of 124 minutes daily. Latin America featured a close third place with 117 minutes per day spent on the Spotify app.

Although Europe has the most users and paying subscribers, they spend the least amount of time per day on the Spotify app.

This shows that the best customer is not always the one who uses the platform the most. Surprising, right?

Spotify Content Statistics

Music is not the only content that Spotify offers.

Podcasts have quickly become a big part of the Spotify platform with millions of podcast titles now available. These are the latest Spotify stats about content.

Spotify’s Podcasts

Spotify is one of the most popular podcast platforms available. There are currently more than 4 million podcast titles on the platform today.

What’s more?

Spotify is the second biggest podcast platform in the world with a 23.8% podcast market share. YouTube has the biggest market share of podcast listeners with 24.2%.

Spotify has a massive global reach with its podcast with over 389 million monthly active listeners in 187 different countries.

They have also managed double their active listeners since 2019.

How?

Short answer – by investing a ton of money.

Spotify invested $1 billion into its podcast network in 2021 and is expected to bring on more exclusive titles with further investments in the future.

But the platform also announced that it made only about $215 million from its podcast network in 2021.

Although the loss was expected, Spotify’s podcast revenue has been growing at about 300% year over year and they have only monetised 14% of the listening audience.

This means that Spotify podcasts as a network are very likely to be very profitable in the future with a huge list of exclusive podcasts you can’t get anywhere else.

What are the most popular podcasts on Spotify?

Here are the top 10 podcasts on Spotify right now:

The Joe Rogan Experience is an exclusive podcast to Spotify and Joe Rogan was paid an estimated $200 million to host the podcast on Spotify.

The exclusivity rights were valid until the end of 2023. However, Joe Rogan has reniew his deal with the platform. The new multiyear deal will allow his show to be distributed to Youtube, Apple and other podcasting platforms.

Spotify’s Tracks

How many tracks are available on Spotify?

Spotify has about 80 million individual tracks on the platform. There were about 22 million new songs added to the platform in 2021.

As of February 2024, the top 10 most popular tracks on Spotify are as follows:

The top tracks on Spotify are constantly changing due to new music releases throughout the industry.

There are more than 300 different music genres on Spotify. But some genres dominate the platform far more than others.

The table below shows the most popular genres of music on Spotify:

Hip-Hop is by far the most popular genre on Spotify.

Indeed, 38% of the music played on Spotify are hip-hop songs. Pop comes in second place with 27% and Latin music gets in third with 18%.

Spotify’s Playlists

A big part of the Spotify platform is playlists.

Users can make their own playlists and share them with:

Spotify also creates its own playlists that you can follow.

The top 20 playlists on Spotify are currently all created and curated by the platform itself.

But the songs featured in the playlists frequently change.

About 70% of all songs in the top 20 playlists are considered “new” music, which means they are less than 1.5 years old.

The truth is that Spotify has all of the data and stats, so it knows which music to add to playlists to ensure they stay popular and keep their subscribers engaged.

These are the top 20 most followed playlists on Spotify right now:

A big part of what makes Spotify’s playlists so successful is personalisation.

Most of the top playlists are personalised for each user, which means the platform will:

This helps users discover more music and find other tracks they love.

Spotify playlists have created a solid competitive advantage over key competitors like Apple Music, YouTube Music and Amazon Music.

Spotify Artists Statistics

Spotify has about 11 million artists and creators on the platform.

All artists are added to the platform with deals through labels. The label does the negotiations and collects the artist’s royalties.

This has allowed Spotify to continually grow its artist list while managing all of them effectively.

Spotify’s Most Popular Artists

Drake is the most popular artist on Spotify of all time with:

Here are the full list of the 20 most popular artists on Spotify and how many total song streams they have:

Taylor Swift is the second most streamed artist with 70,84 billion song streams on Spotify and Bad Bunny comes in third with 67,93 billion streams.

Spotify Artist Payout

How much does Spotify pay to artists?

Spotify paid over $7 billion to its artists throughout 2021.

Spotify pays MORE than its competitors, with an average pay per stream of about $0.003 to $0.005 depending on the artist.

In comparison, Apple Music for example, pays about $0.01 per song stream.

But part of the reason Spotify pays more than competitors is because of the volume.

The platform has more users and gets more streams overall, so artists will likely make more money on Spotify than on competing platforms.

The amount that artists earn also changes significantly based on the month.

Spotify pays about a 70/30 split. That means artists get about 70% of all money earned by Spotify through music and the platform keeps 30%.

In 2021, Spotify broke the record for the biggest yearly payout from any retail business in history. It’s clear that Spotify cares about its artists and creators.

But remember:

Spotify does the deals with labels, not with individual artists.

Major record labels earned a massive $4 billion in 2021 from Spotify, soaking up a considerable portion of the royalty payments.

Specifically looking at the artists…

Over 1,000 artists earned more than $1 million in Spotify royalty payments in 2021. Just over 50,000 artists generate above $10,000.

The truth is that record labels still make most of the money.

Spotify Revenue & Finances Statistics

Despite being the world’s most popular online music streaming, Spotify is still struggling to be profitable.

Here are all the Spotify statistics you need to know about the platform’s revenue and finances.

Spotify Revenue

Spotify has two main revenue streams:

Both revenue streams have been growing consistently year over year. Below is the full breakdown of how much revenue Spotify has generated each year since 2012:

Spotify has had significant growth since 2016, growing by more than €1 billion each year. From 2020 to 2021, their revenue grew by a massive €1.79 billion.

But Spotify makes a lot more money out of its premium subscribers than advertising.

In 2021, Spotify generated €9.67 billion in revenue:

That means approximately 87% of Spotify’s revenue in 2021 was generated from premium subscribers. Just 13% was generated from the ads revenue model.

Spotify Financial Situation

In terms of revenue, Spotify is in a really strong position.

But the truth is that revenue is only part of a company’s financial position. Profit is ultimately what matters most at the end of the day.

How much does Spotify actually make, then?

Spotify reported a net loss of 39 million euros at the end of 2021. This was primarily because Spotify has huge costs in music licensing, distribution and for artists.

Here’s the breakdown of Spotify’s net profit/loss since 2009:

The company also invested a significant €912 million euros into research and development throughout the year.

And over the last 3 years, they have been pushing podcasts, sponsoring exclusive podcasts on the platform to attract a diverse range of users.

All of this investment comes at a high price and has so far eaten up any profit Spotify has managed to get.

Another major expense for Spotify is staff wages.

Spotify now has over 6,600 employees globally and is rapidly expanding its workforce to keep up with consumer demand.

But all of this has allowed Spotify to continue to grow as a company.

And because they have invested in the right areas of the company, executives are confident that Spotify will be very profitable in the future.

It will undoubtedly remain one of the most successful music streaming services for years to come.

Wrapping It Up

That’s the wrap on the latest Spotify statistics.

Spotify has grown to be a huge streaming platform with millions of monthly active users.

They have created a platform and application that attracts a diverse range of people with different demographics.

This has helped pave the way to a multi-billion dollar company.

But the difficulty for the future will be maintaining their growth while eventually bringing the company into profitability.

With their solid user base and exclusive investments, they will likely be able to accomplish this sooner rather than later.

But only time will tell!

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