Data point in the global music industry. This series is supported by Cinq Music Group, a technology-driven record label, distribution, and rights management company.
In Q1 2023, Spotify had a total of 210 million paying subscribers worldwide. This information was disclosed in the company's Q1 earnings results, which also revealed that Spotify added 5 million net premium subscribers during the quarter.
Recently, it was revealed that as of February 2023, Spotify had 44.4 million paying subscribers in the United States, the world's largest music market. This data was shared by David Israelite, CEO and President of the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), during the association's annual meeting in New York.
Israelite mentioned that this was the first time the NMPA was able to determine the number of subscribers each platform had in the United States. He highlighted that Spotify's main competitor, Apple Music, had 32.6 million subscribers in the US during February, making it the second-largest subscription music service in the market. Apple Music has historically been secretive about its subscriber numbers, with the last official figure being 60 million global subscribers in June 2019, according to Apple.
Amazon Music was revealed to be the third-largest subscription music streaming service in the US with 29.3 million subscribers, according to Israelite. Amazon Music had previously disclosed that it had over 55 million customers globally, including both paying subscribers and trial users, in January 2020.
In addition to Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music, other notable subscription music services in the US market mentioned by Israelite were YouTube with 8.5 million subscribers and Pandora with 2.4 million subscribers.
During the NMPA's annual meeting, Israelite also made a significant announcement regarding Apple Music and Amazon Music. He stated that despite raising their subscription prices, both services experienced subscriber growth instead of losing subscribers. This suggests that music is still undervalued in terms of pricing by digital music services, according to Israelite.
This news comes at a time when there are increasing calls for Spotify to raise its subscription prices. Spotify has not followed Apple Music and Amazon Music in raising the price of its $9.99 Premium tier in the US. However, there are reports that Spotify is preparing to launch a more expensive subscription tier in the US, which will offer HiFi audio quality and expanded access to audiobooks.
