The Swedish audio streaming service Spotify has grown exponentially in the last 17 years since it was founded in 2006. From its full 2008 launch, the platform has been a trailblazer in the audio content streaming market, and a look at the statistics shows that it’s not planning to slow down any time soon.
Do you want to learn more about Spotify and its impact, and the trends that it’s driving?
These Spotify statistics offer a window for businesses and music lovers alike to learn more about the service and what’s going on inside it. Let’s take a closer look!
Importance of Spotify Statistics for Artists and Listeners
Spotify listening stats can provide artists and listeners with many useful insights. For example, Spotify statistics for artists give them an insight into who their listeners are, where they are, and what they like. Based on this data, they can plan their commercial activities, like tours and album releases.
For Spotify listeners, Spotify stats help curate their recommendations and next playlists as they work to improve the AI and ML behind Spotify’s algorithms.
Spotify User Statistics
First, let’s take a look at the user stats for Spotify!
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Number of Active Users on Spotify
In Q4 of 2022, Spotify reported an increase of over 80 million monthly active users in just one year! This brought the overall number of free (ad-supported) and paid monthly users to 489 million. And it’s estimated that as of Q1 of 2023, the service has over 517 million active users.
Demographic Breakdown of Spotify Users
Spotify has more male than female users – around 58% of its audience is men. Interestingly, 75% of both genders in the US in 2022 considered Spotify’s premium service an essential source of entertainment.
The largest age group of Spotify users (31.51%) is 18-24, although 25-34-year-olds aren’t far behind (31.41%). So, millenials and Generation Z account for over 62% of Spotify’s overall user base.
One other thing to note is that almost 30% of American Gen Z women spend 30 hours per week streaming music on Spotify. Men of that age tend to spend slightly less time on Spotify – 24% of them said to spend 24 hours streaming music on the app weekly.
Spotify stats on podcasts for Q1-2 of 2022 tell us that teenagers under 17 were the fastest-growing audience for Spotify podcasts, having discovered 11% more podcast content compared to the previous year.
Growth Rate of Spotify Users
In Q1 of 2015, Spotify had 68 million active monthly users. By Q4 of 2019, the numbers grew by 203 million to reach 271 million. And during the Covid-19 pandemic (Q1 of 2020-Q2 of 2021), Spotify subscribers grew from 271 million to 365 million, signifying a staggering growth rate of 94 million users (free and paid), or 34.6% in just 18 months!
For the free subscribers, Spotify saw an increase of 59 million and 23% YoY growth from Q4 of 2021 to Q4 of 2022.
And in terms of premium subscribers, Spotify had 205 million of them as of Q4 2022. To compare, in Q1 of 2021, it had 158 million premium subscribers, signifying a 46 million and 13.9% YoY growth!
Geographic Distribution of Spotify Users
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Spotify is available in most European countries, the Americas, APAC, and Africa. But some features are only available to specific markets. For example, the audio book option was only available to the US until November 2022, when Spotify expanded audiobook feature to other markets.
As of 2023, Spotify is available in 184 markets worldwide. Most paying Spotify subscribers are in Europe and North America. In Q3 of 2022, both regions accounted for 67% of total paying subscribers.
As of Q4 of 2022, the EU alone represented 39% of all Spotify premium users and 30% of free users, making it Spotify’s largest market. North America’s share of Spotify premium users was 28%, and LATAM accounted for 21%.
The US is estimated to have 97.5 million free and paid Spotify users in 2023. A little over half of them (49.5 million) are estimated to be paid users.
Spotify Revenue Statistics
Now let’s take a look at Spotify’s financials over the last couple of years!
Spotify Revenue Breakdown
Here is a breakdown of Spotify’s revenue in 2021 and 2022:
| Total Spotify Revenue, EUR | Spotify Subscription Revenue, EUR | Spotify Ad-supported Revenue, EUR | |
| 2021 | 9.67 billion | 8.46 billion | 1.2 billion |
| 2022 | 11.73 billion | 10.25 billion | 1.4 billion |
2022 was the first time Spotify made over €10 billion!
However, Spotify operated at a loss in 2022, reporting a loss of €695 million in 2022. This figure continues the trend of Spotify operating at a loss since 2009.
Spotify’s average revenue per premium user was €4.52 in 2022.
These revenue figures are the highest reported to date for both segments. They highlight how far Spotify has come since 2012 when it had made €374 million from premium subscribers and $55.5 million from ad-supported ones.
Revenue Growth Rate of Spotify
As we mentioned earlier, Spotify’s revenue has grown substantially in the last five years. Although the revenue of Q1 of 2022 suffered a small dip compared to Q4 of 2021, the entire year saw the company’s revenue grow from €2.66 billion in Q1 to €3.16 billion in Q4. But in Q1 of 2023, the company’s revenue dipped again, reaching only €3.04 billion.
Comparison of Spotify Revenue with Other Music Streaming Services
Let’s now compare Spotify’s revenue with other music streaming players. Spoiler alert – there is a winner!
Spotify vs. Apple Music
As of 2022, Apple Music had 84.7 million paid subscribers, to Spotify’s 205 million. Apple Music’s revenue that year was $8.3 billion, or €7.5 billion, compared to Spotify’s €11.73 billion.
Spotify vs. YouTube Music
In Q3 of 2021-Q2 of 2022, YouTube Music generated $6 billion revenue. In comparison, Spotify earned over €10 billion in the specified period.
Spotify Statistics for the Music Industry
Trends in Music Consumption
General Trends
Streaming and personalisation are arguably the biggest trends in music consumption that aren’t going anywhere any time soon. Music streaming now accounts for over 60% of the music industry’s revenue. And personalised playlists have become increasingly popular on Spotify. These playlists use ML and AI to curate music recommendations based on the user’s history and preferences.
Podcasts
We mentioned Spotify podcasts earlier and how popular they’ve become amongst Spotify’s younger audience. Indeed, in addition to music consumption, Spotify is now a popular tool for spoken-word content like podcasts and audiobooks.
As of 2022, Spotify had 32.5 million monthly podcast listeners. And it can be surmised that Spotify is driving the trend of podcasts as extra features of audio platforms, given that Apple Music also had over 25 million monthly podcast listeners in 2022.
Emerging Genres
The popularity of newly emerging genres, such as lo-fi hip-hop and K-pop, is another trend worth looking at. Spotify was the second-most popular app for accessing K-pop music content in 2022, after YouTube.
A big reason for emerging genres’ increasing popularity is the accessibility of music through streaming services like Spotify. The services allow artists to experiment with combining different music styles, leading to the rise of new music genres.
Digital Rights Management and Artists’ Compensation
With piracy on the rise, Digital Rights Management (DRM) is an important trend to pay attention to, as it helps protect artists’ rights. Spotify uses DRM to prevent unauthorized access and ensure that its content isn’t illegally distributed or downloaded. This technology also helps prevent piracy and ensures that artists are fairly compensated for their work.
Insights into Listener Behavior
Devices
Firstly, we’d like to highlight the popularity of smart speakers used by Spotify users to stream music. For example, 86% of smart speaker owners in the UK use them to listen to Spotify or other audio platforms.
However, mobile phones remain the most popular medium for streaming music. 74% of the UK consumers used them to listen to audio content, as of 2022
Social Sharing & Influence
Social media has also been an influence on Spotify. Sharing is an important aspect of listening to music on Spotify. Its integrated social sharing features allow users to share their favourite audio content on social media. This led to the rise of social media influencers in the music industry introducing new music to their followers and supporting artists’ income.
In addition, Spotify rolled out TikTok-style feeds for discovering music, capitalizing on the popularity of short videos on social media on apps like Instagram and TikTok, in March 2023.
Top Artists and Songs
Spotify top artists in 2022 by number of followers were:
- Ed Sheeran
- Ariana Grande
- Billie Eilish
However, only Ed Sheeran was in the top 5 artists with the most monthly listeners, with The Weeknd taking the lead, with over 98 million monthly listeners.
The most played song on Spotify in 2022 was Harry Styles’ “As It Was.” Ed Sheeran’s track “Shivers” took the 17th spot and The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” was 27th.
Top Takeaways: Key Statistics and Insights from the World of Spotify
The Future of Spotify
Like many other digital players, Spotify suffered a wave of layoffs in 2023, including its head of podcasts. And despite being a trendsetter in the audio streaming space, it’s operating at a loss. So, how can a digital company operating at a loss have a sustainable future?
Spotify’s last few strategies, such as investing in podcasts, cost the company a lot of money. But it’s an agile and innovative company that’s adaptable to the changing circ*mstances and user behavior, and it’s successfully leveraging AI and ML.
Spotify aims to have a billion users by 2027. It’ll have to sustain the YoY growth rate of 19% to achieve that. This could prove challenging, not least due to the company’s departure from the Russian market, which led to Spotify losing 1.5 million paid subscribers. And to sustain its growth in the long term and pay off its shareholders, the company will eventually have to become profitable.
What’s Next for Spotify?
Unless you’re the sort of person who loves vinyl records and CDs, chances are that you’ve streamed music online at least once. Spotify has a reach of over 450 million free and paid users worldwide, and the subscriber numbers are growing each quarter. Europe is the biggest market for the Swedish audio streaming giant.
Spotify has been expanding into other audio content besides music, such as podcasts and audio books. And the user stats for Spotify tell us that its innovations have been welcomed by the users, which means that the streaming segment of the music industry will be growing even more in the foreseeable future. But for Spotify to succeed in the long term, it’ll have to adjust its strategy to become profitable, lest it loses its investors.
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