Spotify now has nearly half a billion monthly users, still not profitable

Spotify reported its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2022 today (January 31), telling shareholders that the company now has 489 million monthly active users. That’s up by 33 million in Q4 and 10 million more than initially expected. The number would have been higher by a few million had Spotify not pulled out of Russia.

Of that number, 205 million pay for the service (10 million more and year-over-year growth of 14%). That means just under 42% of all Spotify users are paid subscribers. That means subscription revenues are up 18% from last year.

So Spotify is profitable, right? Nope. A couple of problems.

• The percentage of North American listeners has dropped. Same thing in Europe and Latin America. The rest of the world is driving growth.
• Costs remain so high that the company lost €231million in just Q4. That’s on revenues of €3.17billion

If you want to dig into the numbers, go here for the full financial report.