Spotify is hitting all the right notes as its subscriber count grows by 11%

Today, Spotify announced its quarter four earnings for 2024, and things are certainly looking up for the company, reporting its first full year of profitability, with users, subscribers, revenue, and income all seeing growth. Even Spotify’s founder and CEO Daniel Ek says he’s excited about what’s to come in 2025, and it’s easy to see why when a full year of profitability signals the service can finally stand on its own.

Clearly, Spotify’s investments in podcasts, audiobooks, and video content are paying off, having successfully diversified beyond simply streaming music. While plenty of users are still wondering when they’ll get high-res audio, it would appear Spotify is doing just fine without appealing to the audiophile crowd.

Spotify saw growth in subscribers and users in 2024

With total revenue up 16%

Spotify’s monthly active users grew to 675 million last year, a 12% rise year over year. Subscribers grew to 263 million, an 11% increase, and total revenue is up by 16%, coming out to €4.2 billion. Operating income also rose to €477 million, which is hardly surprising when Spotify spent the last year expanding into music videos, video podcasts, audiobooks, live events, the Daylist feature, AI audio, and plenty more. These things cost money, so more money out makes sense, and more money in could be explained as the outcome of expanding its content. Suffice it to say what Spotify is doing is currently working, which is why it plans to continue to grow the service’s sustainability through 2025.

Of course, today’s news is hot off the heels of a recent multi-year partnership between Spotify and Universal Music Group (UMG), where the companies will work on restructuring Spotify’s subscription service, which sure sounds a little foreboding when Spotify is already doing better than ever.

Sure, Spotify’s earnings report states that 10 billion dollars was paid to the music industry last year, with a total of 60 billion since the company’s founding. But there are still complaints that artists aren’t paid enough, not that Spotify hasn’t been fighting back. And what with the change last year not to pay anyone who doesn’t reach 1,000 streams in a year, this doesn’t sound like a great way to drive monetization to new artists. Sure, Spotify has issues with fake artists, and the limit may curb that, but the limit also disincentives new artists, which sure sounds like a great way to boost established artists, perhaps the ones under UMG’s label, as it helps “restructure” subscriptions.

With Spotify’s newly reported growth came a rise in the stock price, with shares surging to all-time highs, which is a drastic change from the record lows the company saw in 2022. Spotify is leaning into this surge, claiming it plans to accelerate its execution and efficiency, so unless Spotify changes course from what’s currently working, it’s likely to expect more of the same from the company over the next year, polished to a bright sheen.