Quote

Spotify’s Monthly Active Users total grew 29% to 299m in the second quarter of 2020 as the company announced it now has 139m premium subscribers, a rise of 27%.

...

After a dip in listening hours early in the pandemic, global consumption hours, except in Latin America, recovered to pre-COVID levels by 6/30, the company reported. 

...

By the end of the year, Spotify expects to have 328m-348m MAUs, 146m-153m premium subs and more than €2.05b in revenue.

...

Ek discussed the arrival of video on the site, cautioning that it would never be a focus of the site and that it’s mainly a tool for podcasters. “It’s yet another capability we’re adding for creators to connect with fans—it’s another innovation. We are an audio-first platform. … Don’t look at it as YouTube or Snap—it’s an added capability. The share of video on Spotify is low now but it will be growing.”

Source

 

So by the end of June, they had 299M total monthly active users, of which 139M were premium and 160M were freemium. They're getting close to having more paid than free users.  Also good to note that streaming (on Spotify at least) is now back to pre-COVID levels after the initial dip.

No more "streaming is declining" excuses   

1 minute ago, Sept said:

No more "streaming is declining" excuses   

Don't know which fanbase you're specifically targeting, but it wasn't an excuse before since it was true.

The way Spotify ate YouTube in the music branch.

It killed the video, songs are more popular now on Spotify than yT and now they will come for podcasts as well.

To think this was started by torrent guys.

3 minutes ago, Pop Art said:

Don't know which fanbase you're specifically targeting, but it wasn't an excuse before since it was true.

Not true

 

Quote

Subscription services were the big beneficiaries in the early weeks of the pandemic as people spent an extraordinary amount of time at home. Music video streams were slightly lower in the first three weeks, but recovered quickly and were 12.9% above the pre-COVID-19 baseline by early May. After a seven-week downturn, audio streaming also has recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels.

 

Still, on-demand audio streaming during pandemic period (March - July) was still up 13.8% from last year

Where does Apple Music stand? 

1 minute ago, Sept said:

Not true

 

 

Still, on-demand audio streaming during pandemic period (March - July) was still up 13.8% from last year

From your very quote, audio streaming had "a seven-week downturn". So yes, it was true for a period. Thankfully though, it has recovered and is thus no longer a valid reason to explain low streams any more.

1 minute ago, Pop Art said:

From your very quote, audio streaming had "a seven-week downturn". So yes, it was true for a period. Thankfully though, it has recovered and is thus no longer a valid reason to explain low streams any more.

Downturn means week on week. But streaming was still stronger than last year so there's no valid excuse when comparing to hits/albums from previous years

I’m surprised so many people use Freemium, it’s so annoying listening to all those adds and having 0 control over what you can listen to 

1 minute ago, Sept said:

Downturn means week on week. But streaming was still stronger than last year so there's no valid excuse when comparing to hits/albums from previous years

But it was still lower than normal is my point, meaning any lower than expected streams could arguably fall back on that "excuse" for that period of time. My whole point is that it's unfair to diminish low streams as just some stan excuse when it was very real across the board (to some degree or other) just some weeks ago.

Why are oghs derailing every thread?

 

 

Good. Somebody needs to dethrone Shape of You asap!

6 minutes ago, Smithy said:

I’m surprised so many people use Freemium, it’s so annoying listening to all those adds and having 0 control over what you can listen to 

It is great for podcasts.

18 minutes ago, Pure Adrenaline said:

The way Spotify ate YouTube in the music branch.

It killed the video, songs are more popular now on Spotify than yT and now they will come for podcasts as well.

To think this was started by torrent guys.

ugh that's why videos have been **** recently

4 minutes ago, Pop Art said:

But it was still lower than normal is my point, meaning any lower than expected streams could arguably fall back on that "excuse" for that period of time. My whole point is that it's unfair to diminish low streams as just some stan excuse when it was very real across the board (to some degree or other) just some weeks ago.

It's not lower than normal, it's lower than the pre-Covid levels aka Jan - March when streaming got a +20% growth vs last year. So even in the lowest week of the pandemic, streaming was still pretty much equal with 2019 as the whole pandemic period still got a +13% growth. It's not declining, just growing at a slower level than Jan-March 

Would they not wait until it had 300M users?

11 minutes ago, Smithy said:

I’m surprised so many people use Freemium, it’s so annoying listening to all those adds and having 0 control over what you can listen to 

There's a modified version of the Spotify app that basically has all the premium features unlocked and you just login with your free account. 

4 minutes ago, Oxygen said:

Would they not wait until it had 300M users?

nnnn

 

”Revival Hits 1.95B on Spotify” teas!

 

8 minutes ago, Rev8 said:

ugh that's why videos have been **** recently

And youtubes algorithm prefer long video now which qould translate to even less views.

 

You have bigger chance releasing 15/20 minute video now than the normal 3/4 for songs.

This is why massive hits have less significant views than supposed to.

Prime example is Dula's don't start now. It should have easily hit 700m by now if it was 2016/2017 

8 minutes ago, Sept said:

It's not lower than normal, it's lower than the pre-Covid levels aka Jan - March when streaming got a +20% growth vs last year. So even in the lowest week of the pandemic, streaming was still pretty much equal with 2019 as the whole pandemic period still got a +13% growth. It's not declining, just growing at a slower level than Jan-March 

We'll just have to agree to disagree then, because to me, if streaming numbers are going down week by week, that's a drop, even if those dropped numbers may be higher than at some other point in history.

 

4 minutes ago, Oxygen said:

Would they not wait until it had 300M users?

I thought that too initially but it looks like they're just reporting the end of Q2 figures and it just happens to be sooo close but not yet at 300M.  Maybe it would have been better to just not report Q2 numbers widely and wait a few more weeks (or days ) for it to hit 300M.

12 minutes ago, Oxygen said:

Would they not wait until it had 300M users?

right I came here exactly thinking that sdgasg

7 minutes ago, Pop Art said:

I thought that too initially but it looks like they're just reporting the end of Q2 figures and it just happens to be sooo close but not yet at 300M.  Maybe it would have been better to just not report Q2 numbers widely and wait a few more weeks (or days ) for it to hit 300M.

Yeah thats what I suspected too.

 

Watch the numbers be 299.49M so they can't round up  

I know that’s a large number but I expected more for some reason