{"id":488615,"date":"2019-07-31T14:18:54","date_gmt":"2019-07-31T20:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=865689"},"modified":"2019-07-31T14:18:54","modified_gmt":"2019-07-31T20:18:54","slug":"spotify-now-has-232-million-users-but-only-half-of-them-pay-for-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/spotify-now-has-232-million-users-but-only-half-of-them-pay-for-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotify Now Has 232 Million Users, But Only Half of Them Pay for Music"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On Wednesday, Spotify<\/a> reported its second-quarter earnings with both happy and unhappy news alike: The Swedish music-streaming giant now has around 232 million people around the world using its service each month, marking a 29 percent increase in audience from last year \u2014 but the number of paying subscribers within that user base is just 108 million, representing a smaller boost than expected from the previous quarter\u2019s 100 million.<\/p>\n

Interest from new streaming users in signing up for its promotional deals, such as its discounted student monthly rate, was \u201cbelow plan\u201d this quarter, and \u201cthat\u2019s on us,\u201d Spotify said in a note to investors, adding, \u201cThe good news is that the shortfall was execution-related, rather than softness in the business, and we expect to make up the lost ground before year-end.\u201d Spotify reported total quarterly revenue of \u20ac1.67 billion ($1.86 billion), which marks a 31 percent expected increase, and it posted a smaller-than-anticipated loss, cheering the Wall Street analysts who believe the company is finally heading toward profitability soon. CEO Daniel Ek said on a call with investors that Spotify believes that it is adding global subscribers at twice the rate of Apple Music<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The company pointedly highlighted that its podcasting business \u2014 in which it\u2019s aggressively investing<\/a> \u2014 have seen audience growth of more than 50 percent from last quarter. Spotify also told investors that it\u2019s currently working on renewing deals with its four major record label partners (Sony, Warner, Universal, and indie rights agency Merlin) and has two of them secured thus far \u2014 but while \u201cthis is the sixth round of label negotiations we\u2019ve worked through in our thirteen year history\u201d and that \u201cit has become part of the normal cadence of the business,\u201d this is the first round of discussions in which Spotify is actively building out provisions for a \u201ctwo-sided marketplace\u201d wherein the streaming service could charge artists and labels for its (currently free-of-charge) analytics services.<\/p>\n

Shares dipped 5 percent to $146<\/a> in early trading and were hovering around $151 at press time.<\/p>\n

Apple posted quarterly results this week as well. While the Cupertino giant doesn\u2019t break out revenue or monthly active users for Apple Music in particular in earnings reports, it announced record revenue of $11.5 billion for its Services unit, which includes Apple Music and other software. Senior vice president of internet software and services Eddy Cue said at the end of June that the music-streaming service had amassed 60 million subscribers, up from 50 million in April.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday, Spotify reported its second-quarter earnings with both happy and unhappy news alike: The Swedish music-streaming giant now has around 232 million people around the world using its service each month, marking a 29 percent increase in audience from last year \u2014 but the number of paying subscribers within that user base is just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-488615","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-27 08:00:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}