Spotify hits 290m subscribers, posts second year of profit

The streaming platform added nine million net Premium subscribers in Q4, exceeding guidance by one million, bringing total net additions for the year to 27 million. The company ended 2024 with 263 million paying subscribers. Spotify’s operating income for Q4 reached €701 million (about $816 million), contributing to a full-year operating income of €2.2 billion.

“Today, what we’ve really built is a technology platform for audio and increasingly, for all the ways creators connect with audiences,” Spotify founder and executive chairman Daniel Ek said. “The next wave of technology shifts – AI, new interfaces, wearables, new ways of interacting with content – these will reshape how people discover and experience audio and media,” he said. “The hard problems ahead – in music, in podcasts, in books, in video, in live, and in things we haven’t built yet – we’re going to keep building the technology to solve them.”

Spotify co-CEO Alex Norström described 2025 as a year of “accelerated execution” and outlined Spotify’s ambitions for 2026. “We closed out what we dubbed as the Year of Accelerated Execution with another solid quarter…We’re framing 2026 as the Year of Raising Ambition. We were founded to solve what felt like the impossible, and ambition has been the driving force behind our success from our earliest days,” he said.

Co-CEO Gustav Söderström added that the company continues to prioritise technological innovation. “We consider ourselves the R&D department for the music industry. Our job is to understand new technologies quickly and capture their potential…those who embrace this change and move fast will benefit the most,” he said.

Spotify also reported that its total global Monthly Active Users (MAUs) grew 11% year on year to 751 million in Q4, an increase of 38 million from the previous quarter. The company said growth was driven by Rest of World (37% of MAUs), Latin America (21%) and Europe (26%), as well as “strong holiday and Wrapped campaigns” and enhancements to the free mobile tier.

Premium revenue in Q4 reached €4.01 billion, up 14% year on year at constant currency, with average revenue per user rising 2%. Ad-supported revenue grew 4% to €518 million, led by music advertising and podcast sponsorships, though partly offset by lower pricing and inventory optimisation.

Spotify’s gross margin reached a record 33.1% in Q4, while operating income exceeded guidance by €81 million. The company ended the year with 7,323 full-time employees globally.

Looking ahead, Spotify expects to reach 759 million MAUs and 293 million Premium subscribers in Q1 2026, with projected operating income of €660 million and total revenue of €4.5 billion.