Spotify’s subscribers rise to 182M despite Joe Rogan controversy

From The Verge: Spotify’s latest earnings release suggests that the audio streaming service’s subscriber numbers haven’t seen much, if any, impact from the controversies that surrounded its Joe Rogan podcast just a few short months ago.

In the quarter ending March 31st, Spotify says its premium subscribers rose 15 percent on a year-on-year basis to 182 million, up from 180 million the previous quarter. Monthly active users rose 19 percent year on year to 422 million, up from 406 million at the end of last year. For context, in the previous quarter, premium subscribers rose 16 percent year on year, while monthly active users were up 18 percent.

Spotify had previously expected to hit 183 million premium subscribers this quarter but slightly missed this target as a result of withdrawing from the Russian market. “Excluding the impact of our exit from Russia, subscriber growth exceeded expectations,” the company said in its press release.

Spotify is widely considered to be the world’s largest audio streaming service. Competitors like Amazon Music and Apple Music don’t regularly release subscriber numbers, but the last public figures compiled by Music Ally saw Apple Music with 60 million subscribers and Amazon Music with 55 million.

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