Spotify Sees Monthly User Numbers Jump 22% in Q1

Spotify’s revenues climbed in its strongest-ever first quarter, driven by an uptick in paying subscribers.

The streaming audio platform’s 22% increase in monthly active users was fueled by “higher reactivations, improved retention and marketing efficiencies,” the company said in its earnings report Tuesday (April 25).

According to the report, Spotify had 515 million active users, ahead of the 500 million it had projected, marking its biggest-ever growth for the first quarter. The company said the growth was spread across all age groups in both developed and developing markets.

Paid subscribers were up 15% to 210 million, with revenues from its premium memberships reaching just under $3 billion, up 14% since last year.

Spotify did not reveal any plans to raise the price of its subscriptions, something platforms like Apple and Netflix have done recently, aggravating — as PYMNTS wrote Monday (April 24) — “the ‘keep or cut’ debate happening in most households.”

As noted in the April 2023 “Subscription Commerce Readiness Report,” a collaboration between PYMNTS and sticky.io, cost “was the most common driver for cancellations, with 56% of consumers canceling a subscription in the previous 12 months for this reason.”

In addition, the latest edition of PYMNTS’ “Subscription Commerce Conversion Index: Subscribers Seek Affordability And Convenience” found that 53% of consumers paying for a streaming subscription and 48% of those paying for membership would cancel that service if it interfered with their ability to pay more essential bills.

“The key determinant of what constitutes a valuable subscription is often tied to its ability to fulfill its original purpose as consumers consider their options,” the study said.

PYMNTS spoke last month with Spotify Vice President, Global Head of Commerce and Customer Service Sandra Alzetta about her company’s efforts to build out its payments options.

The platform has partnerships with Google and UPI. It uses them to help guide additional expansions of payment choices for its users, which it contends is a critical part of the customer’s overall experience.

Alzetta said Spotify accepts 130 different payment types worldwide, going market-by-market to better grasp local and regional payment preferences.

“Why are we doing this? We’re doing it because we know that if we get it right it will have a marked impact on the ability of our users to pay,” she said, “which means that all of the hard work done upfront by the marketing guys, the product guys and so on when the user comes to pay, they’ve got the payment method that they want to use, and we make sure that it works in the most effective, efficient and frictionless way possible.”