Music streaming behemoth Spotify said it reached 600 million monthly users in 2023 and anticipated a profitable first quarter of 2024.
“Spotify had a very strong quarter, rounding out a great year of truly remarkable growth across the company,” said Daniel Ek, the Chief Executive Officer of Spotify, Tuesday, in the wake of the company publishing its fourth-quarter earnings.
At the end of 2023, the mega-music platform had 602 million monthly active users, an increase of 23 per cent from the previous year. It also witnessed a 15 per cent rise in paying subscribers, accounting for most of the company’s revenue, totaling 236 million.
For the fiscal year, Spotify reported revenues of 13.2 billion euros ($14.2 billion), up from 11.7 billion euros the year before. Despite the gains, the company still recorded an operating loss of 446 million euros in 2023, an improvement over the operating loss of 659 million euros in 2022.
Throughout its existence, the music giant has never achieved a full-year net profit and hasn’t consistently made quarterly profits, in spite of effectively monopolizing the online music market. Last December, Spotify announced it would trim its workforce by roughly 17 per cent to curtail expenses, following earlier reductions disclosed in January and June of 2023.
In July, the Swedish company, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, declared it was raising its premium subscription prices in several markets globally, mimicking similar strategies by competing music services like Apple and Amazon.
Seeking to churn growth, Spotify has intensely invested in expansions into new markets and, in more recent years, exclusive content such as podcasts. It recently renewed a deal with Joe Rogan for his chart-topping podcast in a “multi-year partnership” agreement.
Looking ahead, the world’s biggest music streaming platform projects reaching 618 million monthly users and making an operating profit of 180 million euros in the first quarter of 2024.
