Spotify Quietly Updates Paid Subscribers Count to 60 Million

7/31/2017 by Andy Gensler

Courtesy of Spotify

Spotify has unceremoniously revealed its paid subscriber base has increased from 50 million, a milestone which it passed in March, to now 60 million. The news came quietly via the streaming service's About page, where a bullet point simply read “Over 60 million (as of July 2017).”

The non-announcement stands in marked contrast to this past March, when the streaming service hit 50 million and took to Twitter to say, "Thank you to our 50 million subscribers #Spotify50," with a slew of celebrities adding their congratulations on social media.

This increase marks the service’s fastest 10 million subscriber gain yet, taking roughly five months to reach the 60 million plateau as compared to five-and-a-half months to go from 40 million to 50 million; and six months to go from 30 million to 40 million.

A Spotify spokesperson declined to comment on the subscription gain, though a source at the company verified the increase.

Spotify’s most recent yearly financials showed its losses doubling to $581 million on revenues of $3 billion in 2016, up from $2 billion the year before.

In recent weeks, however, Spotify has kept a relatively low profile, especially in regards to news of songs with lower licensing rates appearing on its playlists, often by artists using pseudonyms.

Perhaps with Spotify's long-awaited IPO or direct listing still in the works, the service is keeping its cards close to its chest so as to not alienate investors -- thought these latest subscriber numbers would seem something that would hearten its financial backers.

Boding well for Spotify’s continued growth was Nielsen’s 2017 mid-year report, released earlier this month, which showed combined on-demand audio and video streams growing 36.4 percent in the first half of 2017 -- rising to 284.7 billion (up from 208.7 billion at mid-year 2016). Of the 2017 sum, on-demand audio streams grew to 184.3 billion, up 62.4 percent year-over-year.