Music to its ears: Spotify reaches more than 600 million users and almost $4 billion in revenue

It's that time of year when companies reveal their performance metrics, including their revenue and user base. Spotify recently shared its fourth quarter 2023 performance, announcing that its company delivered strong fourth quarter results, meeting or exceeding all of its key performance indicators (KPIs).

Over the last three months of 2023, the streaming platform saw a 23% year-over-year increase in its monthly active users (MAUs), reaching 602 million, a million more than expectations. Premium subscriptions also increased 15% year-over-year to 236 million, beating forecasts by 1 million.

Spotify is also showing continued growth in total revenue, with a 16% year-over-year increase to approximately $3.98 billion. While operating profit posted an $80 million loss, the company celebrated hitting a record level of advertising revenue, totaling $539 million.

Image credit – Spotify

Additionally, more people participated in the 9th annual Spotify Wrapped campaign, with participation up more than 40% from last year across 170 markets. And in November, Spotify expanded its Premium offering in the United States by offering more than 200,000 audiobook titles.

However, to achieve its objectives, last December, the Swedish company announced that it was cutting 17% of its workforce, or around 1,500 jobs out of a global workforce of 9,000 people. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek mentioned during a conference call with analysts that the music streaming giant will continue to find ways to cut costs, which could lead to further job cuts in 2024. Ek said :

In the first quarter of 2024, Spotify aims to reach 239 million Premium subscribers (an increase of 3 million from the previous quarter) and a total of 618 million monthly active users (an increase of 16 million). The company expects total first-quarter revenue of $3.8 billion, with a gross margin of 26.4%.