merely put: Spotify’s premium person base continues to swell, however so do monetary losses. In its just-released This fall 2022 report, Spotify stated it now has 205 million paying (paying) subscribers. That’s up from 180 million premium subscribers in the identical interval final 12 months — a rise of 14 p.c — and 195 million within the third quarter.
Monthly lively customers (together with premium and ad-supported customers) reached 489 million, a rise of seven% quarter-over-quarter in comparison with 456 million month-to-month lively customers within the earlier quarter. Spotify famous continued power in multi-user premium plans.
Despite the good points, monetary losses continued to mount. Spotify posted a web lack of 270 million euros ($293 million) on income of three.17 billion euros ($3.44 billion) within the fourth quarter. That compares with a web lack of simply 34 million euros ($37 million) within the fourth quarter of 2021.
Spotify stated the rise in personnel prices was because of headcount progress and elevated promoting prices. The affect of current acquisitions akin to Heardle, Chartable, and Podsights are additionally factored into the equation.
Earlier this month, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek confirmed that the corporate would lower about 6% of its workforce, or about 600 workers. Like different tech leaders, Spotify has expanded its workforce too shortly in the course of the pandemic. Ek takes full accountability for the error, noting that he was too formidable in investing forward of income progress.
Spotify’s spectacular person good points look like outweighing mounting losses, at the very least to buyers. Shares of Spotify jumped greater than 10% on the information and are at the moment buying and selling at $110.15 as of this writing. That’s nicely beneath Spotify’s all-time excessive of almost $365 per share set in February 2021, however it’s a step again in the precise path.
Looking forward to the primary quarter of 2023, Spotify expects to achieve 207 million premium customers, 500 million month-to-month lively customers and income of three.1 billion euros, with an working lack of 194 million euros.
Credit: Suvan Chowdhury, Victoria Akvarel
