Earlier this week, Spotify has revealed that the company has reached a milestone of 50 million paid subscribers. The announcement came from the company's official twitter account. It is really impressive, considering the fact that it was only back in September when Spotify topped 40 million paid users.
For some time, the service is enjoying a steady growth rate. It hit 30 million subscribers in March 2016. It gained 10 million paid subscribers in the period between March 2016 and September 2016 bringing the total to 40 Million subscribers. Now, according to the announcement, the service has gained another 10 million between September 2016 and March 2017. Interestingly the music streaming service has kept a steady rate of growth (10 million users every 6 month) despite increased competition from these rival services.
Although a few music streaming outfits have fallen by the wayside in the face of stiffening competition, there are still plenty of big-hitters battling it out in the cut-throat market. To compare, Apple Music had a reported 20 million paying subscribers as of December 2016, which is a decent growth considering Spotify's head-start.
Spotify and Apple both charge users $10 a month for access to their enormous libraries of music. They also offer identical deals for students ($5 a month) and families ($15 a month). However, whereas Spotify offers a free tier with ads and several limitations, Apple Music has no free offering.
When including free users, Spotify's total number of subscriber is now at well over 100 million. However, it is unclear if the growth in paid users is due to people switching over from the free tier, or from brand-new sign-ups. It is likely Spotify will continue to be number one for the near future, but it's rivals could close the gap depending on how the recent trend of service exclusives and original content plays out.