Spotify turned 5 years old last week, and with it they shared some stats about the music streaming platform in a birthday infographic. Most notably, over the last years the company has expanded to 32 countries, which seems impressive because just in 2011 we were covering stories like “Spotify expands to Denmark,” and debating whether the music industry would go along with it. Today they’ve hit most of the west with still some room for growth left in the BRIC countries, where it would be interesting to see how they a streaming service would monetize.
According to their March 2013 figures, Spotify has more than 6 million paying subscribers, and 24 million active monthly users, meaning that one fourth of their listeners are actually paying, and three fourths are listening and viewing ads.
Out of their library of 20 million songs, 20% have never been played, which is somewhat impressive when over the last five years they’ve streamed over 1 million years’ worth of music. That being said, there’s a lot of crazy stuff you can stumble onto within Spotify that might not be on a top 10 playlist, from whale songs to sermon recordings from black churches in the 1920s.
The most streamed song on Spotify was Thrift Shop by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, with 150 million streams. Daft Punk’s Get Lucky was the most streamed song in 24 hours with 1.5 million streams.
Spotify has helped put Stockholm’s startup scene on the map, and inspiring companies such as Epidemic Sound and Magine.
When I think of my early Spotify experience, the main thing that pops up in my head is Jonathan from Spotify, who hoped I was enjoying Spotify as much as he does.
Happy five years!
