Spotify, the Swedish streaming platform, reached a historic milestone as it confirmed in its fourth quarter earnings report for 2022 that it had 205 million paid subscribers as of December 31st, 2022. This marks a 14% growth from the previous year’s paid subscribers count. Although the earnings report showed a loss of €231 million for the fourth quarter, which is consistent with past quarter losses, it is still lower than the predicted €300 million.

Unfortunately, the announcement of the impressive subscriber numbers was shadowed by the news of the layoffs of 6% of its workforce, resulting in a total of 600 employees being affected. Despite this setback, Spotify remains the leader in the industry with closest competitors, Apple Music and Amazon Music, reporting paid subscribers numbers of 60 million and 55 million in 2019 and 2020, respectively.

A recent report from the UK in November 2022 revealed that streaming services, including Spotify, are unlikely to achieve sufficient profits to improve artist payouts. The report also highlighted that 60% of streams were for the top 0.4% of artists.

Click HERE to read Spotify’s report