Spotify has reached the figure of 188 million subscribers to its premium option during the second quarter of the year, with a total monthly active users of 433 millionas announced by the platform in its quarterly accounts.
After music, Spotify has successfully developed the addition of podcasts and begins to expand content with audiobooks
This growth in premium subscribers and users represents an annual increase of 14 and 19% respectively in said sections. Those same figures were 182 and 422 million users, respectively, at the end of the first quarter of 2022. According to Spotify, it has been its highest growth to dateand it comes in a quarter in which the platform has made a firm commitment to podcasts, a field of content that has had ups and downs in the initiative to bring its users something more than musical content.
Among those ups and downs stand out very relevant podcasts who have chosen to abandon the Spotify platform for the benefit of other rivals. This is the case of the podcasts starring former US President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, who have chosen to continue offering their content through Audible.
While its podcast content continues to grow and quite successfully, Spotify does not limit its offer to this type of content, starting to explore audiobooks as your next big bet. This is evidenced by its acquisition of the Findaway audiobook platform last year and the statements of Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, who refers to this content as “a huge opportunity” for the company.
While it is expected that at some point it will begin to be available Spotify HiFi, a high quality audio subscription that was announced in February 2021 and that it would offer streaming with a quality equivalent to that of a CD and that it would greatly improve the maximum quality that Spotify is currently capable of offering. This would serve to compete with similar offers available to rivals Amazon and Apple on their respective music streaming platforms.
Relative to these rivals, compared to Spotify’s 443 million monthly active users, Apple has 60 million and Amazon 55 million.
