At one time, it was believed that with its faster growth, Apple Music could gradually catch up with Spotify to become the world leader in streaming. But clearly, the latter does not intend to be overtaken so easily.
The company recently presented its results for the final quarter of 2019. During this quarter, Spotify recorded its largest increase in monthly active users.
The number of paying users increased by 29%, year-over-year, and is now at 125 million. This is twice as much as60 millionsof paying users of Apple Music, currently number 2 on the market.
And in total, when we also count the users of the free ad-funded offer, the streaming platform has 271 million active users per month.
Good growth attributed to podcasts
While there are many reasons why music consumers might want to use Spotify instead of Apple Music, Spotify's strong growth in the fourth quarter is believed to be mostly attributed to podcasts.
“We have growing evidence showing that there are significant benefits to engagement, retention and conversion of Ad-Supported to Premium users resulting from consumption of Podcast content”, indicates the company.
Indeed, while most of its competitors focus on music, Spotify has chosen to invest in this format, whether through acquisitions or by developing new features. Spotify's goal is to position itself as an equivalent of YouTube for audio content, giving as much importance as music on its platform.
Currently, more than 700,000 podcasts are already accessible from the platform. And 16% of users listen to this type of content.
