• by Colin Kirkland , April 25, 2023

For the first time in its almost two-decade history, Spotify's user base has surpassed half a billion monthly active users. Claiming 515 million MAUs, the music-streaming platform shows a 5% quarterly increase and a 22% increase in this period compared to last year.

The breakdown, according to a Spotify presentation deck, shows 210 million premium subscribers and 317 million ad-supported subscribers for this quarter.

Spotify's premium-subscriber numbers, however, have dropped year-over-year, making up 46% of its user base in Q1 2019, then falling one percentage point each consecutive year at the same time, until dropping 2% (to 40%) this quarter.

Although more premium listeners are becoming part of Spotify's ad-supported majority, ad-supported revenues are not skyrocketing by any means. This quarter, Spotify's income from advertising fell 27% from the previous quarter, but still grew 17% year-over-year.

Similarly, the company's total revenue increased 14% year-over-year, but dropped 4% from the previous quarter due to “the current macroeconomic environment,” Spotify notes.

Still, regardless of low premium subscriber counts, in terms of overall user onboarding, Spotify had its best Q1 net growth and second-largest quarterly growth in its history, growing its MAUs by 26 million.