Spotify doubles paid subscriber count in one year as it prepares to do battle with Apple Music

[Shawn Knight]

When Apple announced what will no doubt be Spotify’s biggest challenge to date, Apple Music, the reigning streaming music king was ready to counter with new numbers that are sure to impress.

In a recent blog post, Spotify revealed it now has more than 20 million paying subscribers and more than 75 million active users. The company highlighted how it took five and half years to reach the 10 million subscriber level and just one additional year to double that figure which works out to an average of one new subscriber every three seconds.

Additional subscribers are good news for everyone involved, especially artists, songwriters and rights holders. As of now, Spotify has paid out more than $3 billion in royalties which includes more than $300 million in the first three months of 2015.

Based on the revised subscriber numbers, Spotify anticipates paying $13.9 million per year to global superstars (those in the top 10) and $3.3 million per artist in the Spotify top 100. Heritage artists are expected to take home $2.6 million while indie / niche artists are forecasted to earn up to $1.2 million each.

In related news, The Wall Street Journal notes that Spotify has closed a huge round of funding from an assortment of global investors. The $526 million round of funding values the company at $8.53 billion and puts it in an even better position to compete with Apple Music.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/60946-spotify-doubles-paid-subscriber-count-one-year-prepares.html

 

[Guest]

Good for you Spotify! But why are you telling us this? It's just Apple music bro, and besides Apple sucks d!ck right? So put away your measuring tape and zip the hell up, before you catch a draft.

 

[Kibaruk]

Pretty sure the 3 months for less than a dollar should've had something to do with it.

 

[Teko03]

I'm a Rhapsody user and tried Spotify out for a few weeks after they offered 3 months for 99 cents --- even at 99 cents, worst investment ever. Spotify's music is collection is compressed and sounds awful even when setting to play highest quality offered. The difference between the two are night and day.

Spotify is fine for the casual listener, but for anyone with a decent car audio system (even stock premium systems) and who knows the different between MP3 bitrates would notice the poor quality.

 

[RebelFlag]

I'm a Rhapsody user and tried Spotify out for a few weeks after they offered 3 months for 99 cents --- even at 99 cents, worst investment ever. Spotify's music is collection is compressed and sounds awful even when setting to play highest quality offered. The difference between the two are night and day.

Spotify is fine for the casual listener, but for anyone with a decent car audio system (even stock premium systems) and who knows the different between MP3 bitrates would notice the poor quality.

I think you should check your settings. I have been a spotify subscriber from day one, and I was also a yearly pandora subscriber. One of the things that got me to drop pandora was the music quality/fidelity of spotify, which was much better than pandora in my experience. You need to check the settings on each device on which you use it, and make sure all of them are set to a bit-rate of 320kbps. Most mobile devices default to a low bit rate when installed to save bandwidth usage.

 

[Teko03]

I'm a Rhapsody user and tried Spotify out for a few weeks after they offered 3 months for 99 cents --- even at 99 cents, worst investment ever. Spotify's music is collection is compressed and sounds awful even when setting to play highest quality offered. The difference between the two are night and day.

Spotify is fine for the casual listener, but for anyone with a decent car audio system (even stock premium systems) and who knows the different between MP3 bitrates would notice the poor quality.

I think you should check your settings. I have been a spotify subscriber from day one, and I was also a yearly pandora subscriber. One of the things that got me to drop pandora was the music quality/fidelity of spotify, which was much better than pandora in my experience. You need to check the settings on each device on which you use it, and make sure all of them are set to a bit-rate of 320kbps. Most mobile devices default to a low bit rate when installed to save bandwidth usage.

I mentioned that I already set it to the highest possible quality. Rhapsody audio quality is WAY better.

 

[Kibaruk]

I'm pretty sure it's not the audio quality, but the lack of equalizer.