Spotify Technology SA’s lighter-than-expected number of new paid subscribers drove shares as much as 5% lower in trading before the bell, overshadowing revenue, gross margins and user engagement successes in the second quarter.
[The company] said premium subscribers rose 30% from a year earlier to 108 million, but missed analysts’ expectation of 108.5 million… “The issue is that they missed on paid subs, which is probably the most important number for the company,” said analyst James Cordwell of Atlantic Equities.
[Spotify] faces competition from Apple Inc, which trails Spotify with more than 60 million subscribers as of June.
MacDailyNews Note: Spotify launched over 13 years ago on April 23, 2006.
Apple Music launched just four years ago on June 30, 2015.
Revenue rose to 1.67 billion euros for the three months ended June 30 from 1.27 billion euros a year earlier… Net loss attributable to the company narrowed to 76 million euros, or 0.42 euros per share from 394 million euros, or 2.20 euros per share, a year earlier.
MacDailyNews Take: Spotify is really good at one thing: Losing money.
Spotify offers 40% fewer tracks than Apple Music for the same price. Apple Music boasts a catalog of 50 million songs; Spotify has just 30 million. Don’t overpay for less! If you’re still subscribing to Spotify, it’s past time for you to cancel it and upgrade to Apple Music. (See also: How to move your Spotify playlists to Apple Music.)
No one is going to pay for this considering that the free service is “good enough” for most of their users. Anyone willing to pay will find the Apple Music deal is much better, for people in the Apple Ghetto anyway. Having just about all the music anyone can think of, working with Siri and HomePod and other Apple devices, it’s hard to beat.
It’s a shame because there needs to be more competition in all these digital services. Maybe they should look at dropping the free service, merging with one of the other services, or selling out to Netflix or someone looking to add value to their subscription.
There is a lot competition already. Deezer has more tracks and is better than Spotify imo. Also Amazon is there. Tidal is still around last time I checked. Google has their music offering. Also Youtube is used by many.