Spotify has stuck doggedly to its official stats of 24m active users and 6m paying subscribers since March 2013, but today it finally updated those numbers. The streaming music service now has 40m users, with 10m of them paying for it.
That means Spotify has doubled its number of paying subscribers since December 2012, when it had 5m, adding around 290,000 subscribers a month on average since then.
The announcement also reinforces Spotify’s position as the most popular subscription streaming music service in the world, ahead of Deezer (which had 5m subscribers last time it published stats) and Rhapsody (1.7m split between Rhapsody in the US and Napster elsewhere in the world).
“We’ve had an amazing year, growing from 20 markets to 56 as people from around the world embrace streaming music,” said Spotify CEO Daniel Ek in a statement this afternoon.
“10 million subscribers is an important milestone for both Spotify and the entire music industry. We’re widening our lead in the digital music space and will continue to focus on getting everyone in the world to listen to more music.”
There were more new stats too: Spotify users are creating 5m new playlists every day, with the total now standing at 1.5bn. Avicii’s Wake Me Up is the service’s most-streamed song with 235m plays, while David Guetta has the most followers on Spotify out of any artist: 5m.
Spotify’s growth has been impressive, but the company faces challenges on several fronts in 2014: criticism from some quarters of the artist community over its payouts; competition looming from Apple and YouTube; and the thorny problem – by no means confined to Spotify – of turning a profit from streaming music.
The company is also thought to be plotting an IPO, with rumours earlier this year suggesting that it could come as soon as this autumn. Last time Spotify raised money – a $250m round in November 2013 – the company was reportedly valued at $4bn.
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