Spotify's segment revenue 2012-2024

In the most recent reported fiscal year, Spotify generated approximately 13.82 billion euros in premium revenue and 1.85 billion euros in ad-supported revenue. Both figures were the highest reported to date, with premium revenue having grown by more than ten billion euros since 2017. Contributing to Spotify’s success was its strong global subscriber base – as of the third quarter of 2024, the music streaming platform had 252 million premium subscribers worldwide. Spotify has gained significant popularity across multiple markets, particularly in the United States, where over 26 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds reported using the service in 2018.

Spotify’s competition

Spotify’s closest competitor is Apple Music. That said, Apple’s worldwide subscribers are almost half that of Spotify’s, despite both services being popular for different reasons. Theoretically, Pandora Radio could have presented Spotify with a fair amount of competition, but this was not to be. Pandora’s radio station format failed to match Spotify’s playlist set-up in terms of popularity, and Pandora struggled to convert its users into paid subscribers, something which Spotify has always been good at.

Pandora Radio received heavy investment from Sirius XM in 2017 and was officially acquired by the company in early 2019, so it will be interesting to see what happens in the future as Sirius gets to work on Pandora’s audience and attempts to generate cash from its arguably wide (but unpaid) user base. For now though, it seems that Spotify’s position remains safe.