The Spotify platform announced today that it has added another 14 million users in the past three months, bringing it to 356 million monthly active users and 158 million distinct subscribers, according to the latest earnings report released today.
These numbers represent increases of 21 percent and 24 percent year on year, respectively, up from the numbers of 155 million premium subscribers and 345 million monthly active users in the last quarter.
The broadcast service continued to focus on podcasts as a way to convert free listeners into premium subscribers, and as a way to generate advertising revenue.
Spotify said ad-supported revenue has exceeded expectations thanks to broadcast efforts.
Yesterday, the platform announced the launch of podcast subscriptions, however, they are only being offered to specific partners at this time.
The platform has stated that podcast owners will not have to pay for the service for the first two years, which means that we are unlikely to see it generate any additional revenue for Spotify until 2023.
Earlier this month, it announced the Car Thing music player, which has only been launched in a limited way at the moment, and which the company is currently offering rather than selling.
The new numbers come on the heels of the platform's announcement that it will soon increase the prices of its family plan in the United States and Duo, Student and Family plan in the United Kingdom and some European countries.
Today's figures give a possible reason for the increases, as the average profit of the platform per subscriber has decreased, and Spotify says it earned an average of 4.12 euros (about $ 4.97) per premium subscriber.
Spotify said it has raised 14 million euros ($ 16.8 million) in operating income but expects to lose between 150 and 250 million euros ($ 180 million - $ 301 million) in 2021.