Spotify’s OS for Audio Strategy Clicks With 713 Million Users

In the attention economy, audio has an advantage.

That’s the hope of Spotify, at least, which announced during its third-quarter 2025 earnings report Tuesday (Nov. 4) that its platform crossed the 700 million monthly active user (MAU) threshold, growing 11% year over year to 713 million.

The company’s subscribers climbed 12% year over year to 281 million. The services world may be obsessed with artificial intelligence at the moment, but Spotify’s user expansion underlines a more stable truth. Music, especially when personalized, is universal and sticky.

“We’re shipping faster than ever,” Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek said in a press release. “And we have the tools we need—pricing, product innovation, operational leverage and eventually the ads turnaround—to deliver both revenue growth and profit expansion. It all comes back to user fundamentals and that’s where we are: 700 million users who keep coming back, engagement at all-time highs.”

Ek, who founded the Swedish company 19 years ago, will transition to company chairman, and Alex Norström and Gustav Söderström, Spotify’s current co-presidents, are set to become co-CEOs Jan. 1.

The company’s revenue for the quarter jumped 7% year over year to 4.3 billion euros (about $4.9 billion). Ad-supported MAUs, often seen as the top of the funnel, rose to 446 million, up 11%, according to an earnings presentation. This growth is not confined to emerging markets. North America and Europe, traditionally considered mature territories for Spotify, saw quarter-over-quarter gains in free and premium tiers.

Yet for Spotify, financials have become only part of the narrative. The company is attempting something more ambitious than scaling a subscription business. It is trying to redesign the very concept of an audio platform, one that fuses music, podcasts, audiobooks, AI, social discovery and creator monetization into a single ecosystem.

The strategy is to win not just through content breadth, but through a differentiated user experience shaped by continuous product releases, algorithmic personalization and optionality for creators.

Read also: Spotify Rolls Out New Filters, Disclosure Rules for AI Content

Growth, Product Velocity, and the Quest for Durable Profitability

If Spotify’s early years were about building the world’s biggest licensed music library, the current phase is about layering experiences that turn passive listening into interactive media. The platform’s Q3 results portray a company increasingly comfortable in its identity, not just as a streaming service, but as the operating system for global listening.

Product releases for the quarter covered everything from audio mixing for playlists to new personalization surfaces for artist recommendations. But the company’s push can be grouped into three themes: deepening the free-tier experience; tightening the recommendation engine’s feedback loops; and expanding what listening means inside the app.

One of the most standout launches, Spotify in ChatGPT, came in October. This integration allows ChatGPT users to receive personalized song or podcast recommendations directly through the AI platform, marking a bold move into the agentic AI space.

“With integrations across more than 2,000 devices already, we’re making it even easier for listeners to discover their next favorite track, playlist or podcast,” the earnings presentation said.

It’s a direct bid to entrench the platform into the conversational interfaces that may define next-generation search and engagement patterns.

New Attention Frontiers

Executives said during an earnings call that their goal is to profitably expand beyond current content costs, which continue to hinge on music royalties that can reach up to 70% of revenue in some territories.

Audiobooks could be one answer.

“We have brought audiobooks to 14 global markets and have more than tripled our catalog in English-language markets to over 500,000 titles,” Norström said during the call. “More than half of our eligible premium users have played an audiobook, and the number of people listening to an audiobook rose 36% year over year, with listening hours up even more.”

Meanwhile, Sandra Alzetta, vice president and global head of commerce and customer service at Spotify, told PYMNTS in September about the company’s approach to payments.

“We do a lot of painted door tests, which are helpful,” she said. “If we put a payment method up and we’re seeing a lot of clicks on it, then that’s telling us something.”

“Our philosophy is very much to start with user choice,” she added. “We want to make sure that our users are able to pay in the way that feels natural to them and that best meets their needs.”