Music service Spotify has announced that it now has over 100 million users, of which 30 million are paying subscribers.
In March, the company reported it had 30 million paying users. A year ago, the total number of users currently 75 million, with 20 million paying users.
The music service’s free version is used mainly to attract users. However, selling ads is becoming increasingly important within the company.
“We have a largely paid business and a large free business, they offer two very viable meaningful revenue streams and we are doubling down on both.”
said Jeff Levick, Spotify’s chief revenue officer when speaking to the Wall Street Journal.
With this 100 million Spotify is a lot bigger than rival Apple Music, but the number of paying customers is rising faster in Apple. That would now be around 15 million. Apple Music calculated 11 million paid subscribers in February, and in April, that figure went up to 13 million.
Spotify was launched in Europe in October 2008 and expanded to the U.S. in July 2011, thus remains the world’s most popular music streaming service. However, Apple Music is rapidly closing the gap. Both services cost $9.99 per month for individuals and $14.99 per month for families, while only Spotify offers a free ad-supported tier.
