Last week we reported on TikTok’s announcement that it now has 150 million monthly active users (MAUs) in Europe.
It turns out the timing was significant: Friday (17 February) was the deadline for online services to reveal how many European users they had, under new rules set out by the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Reuters has a helpful roundup of the other platforms’ announcements. Meta said that Facebook now averages 255 million MAUs in the EU, while Instagram averages 250 million. Twitter’s figure is 100.9 million; Snapchat’s is 96.8 million; while YouTube has 401.7 million signed-in MAUs, but more than 500 million once signed-out visitors are counted.
Music services fall under these reporting requirements, although with a minimum threshold of 45 million MAUs, if they’re under that (like any platform) they can be vaguer.
Thus Spotify’s disclosure is merely that it had fewer than 45 million MAUs in the EU, without a specific figure. This is all about the EU’s plans to classify services with more than 45 million users as ‘very large online platforms’, which will face tougher rules on issues from illegal content and children’s safety to transparency.
Spotify coming under that limit may be a surprise, given that its latest financial results revealed 30% of its 489 million MAUs (so 146.7 million) are in Europe. However, the latter figure includes the Nordic region, the UK and other non-EU countries.
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