Ever since its international expansion last year February, the largest audio streaming service –Spotify has been on a growth trend. The company is widely considered to be the world’s largest audio streaming service. Amazon Music and Apple Music don’t regularly release subscriber numbers, but the last public figures compiled by Music Ally saw Apple Music with 60 million subscribers and Amazon Music with 55 million.
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The growth of Spotify in Africa has mainly been attributed to the data access program with Airtel whereby Airtel is offering all Spotify customers complimentary connectivity to Spotify in Nigeria. This is similar to the MTN-Tidal deal in some African countries.
In the quarter ending March 31st, Spotify says its premium subscribers rose 15 percent on a year-on-year basis to 182 million, up from 180 million the previous quarter. Monthly active users rose 19 percent year-on-year to 422 million, up from 406 million at the end of last year. For context, in the previous quarter premium subscribers rose 16 percent year-on-year, while monthly active users were up 18 percent.
Spotify had previously expected to hit 183 million premium subscribers this quarter but slightly missed this target as a result of withdrawing from the Russian market. “Excluding the impact of our exit from Russia, subscriber growth exceeded expectations,” the company said in its press release.
Spotify announced it would be suspending its services in Russia at the end of March 2022, a few days before the end of the financial quarter. In a statement, the company cited “recently enacted legislation” as the reason for the suspension; an apparent reference to a Russian law passed in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine that punishes the spreading of “fake news” with up to 15 years in prison. Spotify announced the suspension near the end of the financial quarter and said that it expected services to be fully wound down by April. It reports that it’s already seen 1.5 million disconnects as a result of a wind-down and that it expects to see 600,000 more in April for a total of over 2 million.
