Stockholm / Berlin (Reuters) – The ongoing corona crisis is unsettling the world’s largest music streaming provider Spotify.
The Swedish company announced on Wednesday that it is difficult to make predictions. For the current quarter, Spotify expects a maximum growth to 364 million users and for the full year a maximum of 427 million users. Sales from January to March should be a maximum of 2.19 billion dollars. This is less than analysts expected. The subdued outlook was badly received on Wall Street. The Spotify share fell by five percent before the market.
So far, Spotify has benefited from increasing digitization and the higher demand for music streaming offers during the Corona crisis. In the fourth quarter, the number of premium subscribers, who pay monthly fees and thus account for the majority of sales, rose by 24 percent to 155 million. That was beyond my own expectations. The streaming provider, which was originally strong in Europe in particular, has now also managed to gain new listeners in India, the USA and, most recently, South Korea. This is why Spotify leads the market safely ahead of Apple Music and Amazon Music.
The revenues climbed between October and December by 17 percent to 2.17 billion euros and were thus slightly above the expectations of analysts. The total number of monthly active users increased by 27 percent to 345 million. Recently, things also went a little better in the advertising business, which had long been burdened by the corona pandemic and the resulting pausing advertising campaigns. Customers who do not have a premium account can access Spotify, but have to watch or listen to advertisements.
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