The world’s most popular music streaming service Spotify now has over 35 million subscribers. This means that the Swedish company has recruited about 2 million paying customers in each of the past three months, putting it on its fastest ever growth rate despite Apple Music turning up the heat.
According to “rock solid label sources” that have spoken to Music Business Worldwide, Spotify currently has approximately 37 million subscribers. This has been encouraged by cut-price deals such as the current ‘Love your summer’ promotion, where US-based users can enjoy three months on the premium tier for just $0.99 if they have never previously subscribed or $9.99 if they have lapsed.
While MBW has been told that, judging from previous Spotify promotional trends, the service will lose 1-1.5m paying users once their deals expire, this would still leave 35m-36m subscribers. In March, Spotify was reported to have over 30m users paying to stream ad-free from its library. All of this means that, right now, Spotify has a premium conversion rate between 35-37% – easily its best ever.
Last month, Apple reported that its own streaming service Apple Music had recruited over 15m subscribers – a respectable figure considering that it arrived seven years later than Spotify.