Spotify's premium user growth slowed in the third quarter with the music streaming leader now boasting 87 million paid subscribers, a 5 percent increase of four million over the last period. That rate of 1.3 million new subscribers per month was down from the 2.6 million per month it averaged in the prior three-month period when it added 8 million premium users.
Ad-supported monthly active users now total 109 million, an increase of 8 percent on the quarter and 20 percent year over year. The company points to updates to its interface for driving retention, but also cautions that the metrics may include some "fake" users, bots or manipulative accounts that its ongoing quality assurance campaign have yet to purge.
Overall, total monthly active users rose to 191 million in Q3, up 6 percent from the previous quarter and 28 percent year over year.