Spotify has released its earning reports for the first quarter of 2021 in a letter to shareholders, where it announced that it has now amassed 158 million premium subscribers and 356 million monthly active users. This represents a year-over-year increase of 21% and 24% respectively. Since the last quarter of 2020, the music streaming service has gained 3 million new premium subscribers and 11 million monthly active users.
The letter notes that the company’s ‘Ad-Supported revenue outperformed [their] forecast’, with this being led by the growth in Spotify’s podcasting catalogue. The letter goes on to say that the ‘exclusive licensing of the Joe Rogan Experience’ has aided Spotify’s growth in ad-supported revenue.
In addition to this, there has been a ‘strong increase’ in the number of podcast consumption hours, though the number of monthly active users listening to podcasts has remained consistent with the previous quarter.
Despite the growth in Spotify’s user-base and success with its podcasting endeavours, the company has seen a decline in the average revenue generated per premium user. For the first quarter of 2021, this metric stands at €4.12, a 7% decrease from the same period last year.
To address this, the letter states that prices have been raised ‘across a variety of [Spotify’s] Premium offerings in over 30 markets’, with preliminary data showing little change in the company’s gross intake or cancellation rates. For listeners in the UK, the price of Spotify Premium for Students has been increased from £4.99 to £5.99 per month; Spotify Premium Family has been increased from £14.99 to £16.99, and Spotify Premium Duo has been increased from £12.99 to £13.99 per month. However, the price of a single Premium subscription remains unchanged at the time of publication.
The release of Spotify’s first quarterly earnings for 2021 follows the news of Facebook introducing a Spotify miniplayer feature to their iOS and Android apps, as well as Spotify announcing an additional high quality streaming subscription called Spotify HiFi earlier this year.
very informative.