Spotify surpasses 500M monthly active users
As of March 31st, Spotify reported that its streaming service has attracted over 515 million monthly active users, an increase of 22% compared to last year, or 5% compared to the previous quarter. These user growth figures exceeded the company's guidance by 15 million, with CEO Daniel Ek stating that it was the second largest quarter of user growth in Spotify's history. In terms of paid subscribers, the number has reached 210 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 15%.
Spotify reached this milestone during a quarter of streamlining and cost cutting, where the company had announced a reduction of nearly 600 staff, accounting for 6% of its global workforce, in late January, according a The Verge report. Additionally, Spotify has also closed down a couple of its side projects, including the Spotify Live audio app and the Heardle music game, resembling the popular game Wordle. During the company's latest earnings call, CEO Daniel Ek mentioned that Spotify's primary focus for 2023 is to improve its "speed and efficiency."
.@Spotify's strongest Q1 since going public in 2018 and the second largest quarter of MAU growth in our history. Thank you to our teams worldwide for all you accomplished. More here: https://t.co/rkCQ3HWu43 pic.twitter.com/NC8FWGG4sR
— Daniel Ek (@eldsjal) April 25, 2023
In the first quarter of 2023, Spotify reported a net loss of €225 million (around $248 million) in its earnings release. This marks a significant contrast to the €131 million (around $145 million) net income in the same period last year, but an improvement from the €270 million (around $298 million) loss reported in the previous quarter. However, it's not uncommon for a company that values growth over quarterly profits to experience losses like this. Moreover, the average revenue per user declined by 1%, reaching €4.32 (around $4.77), mainly due to the discounted and lower prices offered by Spotify to attract customers in new markets.
Despite the earnings release for the first quarter of 2023, there was no mention of the launch date for Spotify's higher-quality HiFi tier. Over two years ago, the company announced this new service, which would offer CD-quality lossless audio for users. While HiFi is believed to be technically ready, it's speculated that Spotify's original plan to charge an extra fee for HiFi was impacted by rivals Apple and Amazon, who offer lossless streams at no additional cost to users. According to Spotify's co-president, the lossless feature is still in the works and will be launched "at some point," as mentioned in a recent episode of Decoder, but it remains unclear when that might be.
How do competitors stack up against Spotify?
While official figures for competitors like Apple and Amazon have not been released for years, Spotify is widely acknowledged to have the most paid subscribers among all music streaming services, according to Music Ally. In terms of monthly active users, Tencent Music Entertainment's apps reported 567 million monthly active users as of the end of 2022, while YouTube claimed over two billion users for music consumption as of 2020. However, these numbers may not be directly comparable to Spotify, as Tencent Music's user base is divided among three different streaming services (QQ Music, Kugou, and Kuwo), and YouTube primarily functions as a user-generated video streaming service that also features music.
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Uhh, this has already been possible – I am not sure how but remember my brother telling me about it. I’m not a whatsapp user so not sure of the specifics, but something about sending the image as a file and somehow bypassing the default compression settings that are applied to inbound photos.
He has also used this to share movies to whatsapp groups, and files 1Gb+.
Like I said, I never used whatsapp, but I know 100% this isn’t a “brand new feature”, my brother literally showed me him doing it, like… 5 months ago?
Martin, what happened to those: 12 Comments (https://www.ghacks.net/chatgpt-gets-schooled-by-princeton-university/#comments). Is there a specific justifiable reason why they were deleted?
Hmm, it looks like the gHacks website database is faulty, and not populating threads with their relevant cosponsoring posts.
The page on ghacks this is on represents the best of why it has become so worthless, fill of click-bait junk that it’s about to be deleted from my ‘daily reads’.
It’s really like “Press Release as re-written by some d*ck for clicks…poorly.” And the subjects are laughable. Can’t wait for “How to search for files on Windows”.
> The page on ghacks this is on represents the best of why it has become so worthless, fill of click-bait junk…
Sadly, I have to agree.
Only Martin and Ashwin are worth subscribing to.
Especially Emre Çitak and Shaun are the worst ones.
If ghacks.net intended “Clickbait”, it would mark the end of Ghacks Technology News.
Ghacks doesn’t need crappy clickbaits. Clearly separate articles from newer authors (perhaps AIs and external sales person or external advertising man) as just “Advertisements”!
We, the subscribers of Ghacks, urge Martin to make a decision.
because nevermore wants to “monetize” on every aspect of human life…
“Threads” is like the Walmart of Social Media.
How hard can it be to clone a twitter version of that as well? They’re slow.
Yes, why not mention how large the HD files can be?
Why, not mention what version of WhatsApp is needed?
These omissions make the article feel so bare. If not complete.
Sorry posted on the wrong page.
such a long article for such a simple matter. Worthless article ! waste of time
I already do this by attaching them via the ‘Document’ option.
I don’t know what’s going on here at Ghacks but it’s obvious that something is broken, comments are being mixed whatever the article, I am unable to find some of my later posts neither. :S
Quoting the article,
“As users gain popularity, the value of their tokens may increase, allowing investors to reap rewards.”
Besides, beyond the thrill and privacy risks or not, the point is to know how you gain popularity, be it on social sites as everywhere in life. Is it by being authentic, by remaining faithful to ourselves or is it to have this particular skill which is to understand what a majority likes, just like politicians, those who’d deny to the maximum extent compatible with their ideological partnership, in order to grab as many of the voters they can?
I see the very concept of this Friend.tech as unhealthy, propagating what is already an increasing flaw : the quest for fame. I won’t be the only one to count himself out, definitely.
@John G. is right : my comment was posted on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/23/what-is-friend-tech/] and it appears there but as well here at [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/08/how-to-follow-everyone-on-threads/]
This has been lasting for several days. Fix it or at least provide some explanations if you don’t mind.
> Google Chrome is following in Safari’s footsteps by introducing a new feature that allows users to move the Chrome address bar to the bottom of the screen, enhancing user accessibility and interaction.
Firefox did this long before Safari.
Basically they’ll do anything except fair royalties.