You’ll have hopefully seen our alert yesterday about Spotify’s latest milestones: 10m paying subscribers and 40m active users. CEO Daniel Ek gave a sprinkling of interviews alongside the announcement, including Billboard. “Not only have we proved that the more people play, the more likely they are to pay, but we’ve really become truly global now,” he said. “Our two biggest markets now are the US and UK… This isn’t just a Nordic phenomenon anymore.” Ek confirmed that Spotify will launch in Brazil in the last week of May, and said mobile is driving the company’s growth: “About 80% of all people who sign up to Spotify, sign up on mobile first.” Ek has become notably more bullish over the last couple of years in his interviews. Witness: “Last year, there was a lot of talk about competing services being close to us. Now, no one is even close to where we are on the subscriber side.” And to the inevitable question about Apple’s still-rumoured acquisition of Beats: “I’ve always assumed Apple would offer a streaming service at some point – but we’re focusing on building the best possible product and feel pretty good about that. Users know the difference between something that really is the best product and not something that’s just bundled in…”
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