Spotify becomes first music streaming service to cross 200M paid subscribers

Spotify did post an operating loss of €231 million (around $250 million) in this quarter. But that’s not a huge departure from the company’s past performance, given it has tended to prioritize growth over turning a profit on a quarterly basis. The figure is under its previous guidance of a €300 million (around $325 million) loss this quarter. Average revenue per premium subscriber now sits at €4.55 (around $4.93), a year-over-year increase of 3 percent, but slightly down compared to €4.63 (around $5.01) last quarter.

Today’s earnings release arrived without any more news about Spotify HiFi, a new subscription tier promising lossless CD-quality audio streaming that was announced at a big Spotify launch event almost two years ago. At this point there are suspicions that Spotify has had to rethink the feature in light of competitors Apple Music and Amazon Music now offering lossless streaming at no additional cost to subscribers.

Spotify is widely considered to be the largest music streaming service in the world, although comparative subscriber numbers aren’t easily available for competitors Apple Music and Amazon Music. The latest figures compiled by Music Ally suggest that Apple Music had around 60 million paying subscribers as of 2019, and Amazon Music had 55 million in 2020.