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As we look toward 2025, ’tis the season to look back at your 2024 music listening habits with Spotify Wrapped, the annual breakdown of how you’ve been individually listening to music throughout the year.
While Spotify Wrapped is available for anyone with an account, sometimes, it can be hard to find. Don’t worry, though, Billboard‘s got your back. As usual, the 2024 Spotify Wrapped will be Spotify mobile app, which you can download at Spotify.com/Wrapped. Make sure you have the latest version, which you’ll need to access Wrapped. Just like last year, the platform is making Wrapped available via desktop and mobile, also at Spotify.com/Wrapped.
Once you’ve logged in, your personalized look back at 2024 should appear at the top of your home screen. After watching and learning about your listening habits throughout the year, you’ll be able to share your Wrapped results to social media to show off to your friends.
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This year’s edition rolled out on Wednesday morning (Dec. 4) and, no surprise, Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter were among the artists who dominated on the streaming service in 2024. Swift closed out her huge year as 2024’s most-streamed artist, generating over 26.6 billion streams globally — marking two straight years of her topping the tally — with The Weeknd coming in second among artists, followed by Bad Bunny, Drake and Billie Eilish.
To celebrate Swift’s two-fer, Spotify rolled out a special Wrapped badge on her profile as well as custom animations corresponding to her music, including sparkles to match Fearless (Taylor’s Version), seagulls for 1989 (Taylor’s Version) and more. Swift also had Spotify’s top-streamed album of the year with her 15-week Billboard 200-topper The Tortured Poets Department.
Second place on the albums list was Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft, followed by Carpenter’s, Short n’ Sweet, Karol G’s MAÑANA SERÁ BONITO and Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine. All five of the app’s top albums spent time at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. In addition, Carpenter’s “Espresso” snagged the most listens globally in 2024, racking up more than 1.6 billion streams. Just behind was Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather,” FloyyMenor and Cris Mj’s “Gata Only” and Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control.”
This year’s Spotify Wrapped rolled out Wednesday morning (Dec. 4), revealing that Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter and more dominated the streaming service in 2024.
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The “Fortnight” singer closes out a banner year as 2024’s most-streamed artist, generating more than 26.6 billion streams globally. In second place among artists was The Weeknd, followed in order by Bad Bunny, Drake and Billie Eilish.
To celebrate Swift’s achievement — which makes her Spotify’s most-streamed artist for two years in a row — the platform has implemented a special Wrapped badge on her profile as well as introduced custom animations corresponding with her music, including sparkles to match Fearless (Taylor’s Version), seagulls for 1989 (Taylor’s Version) and more.
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The 14-time Grammy winner also had Spotify’s top-streamed album of the year with 15-week Billboard 200-topper The Tortured Poets Department, which was also Apple Music’s biggest album of 2024. On Spotify, the second-place album was Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft, followed respectively by the “Please Please Please” singer’s Short n’ Sweet, Karol G’s MAÑANA SERÁ BONITO and Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine. All five of the app’s top albums spent time at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — and all five of them, it’s worth celebrating, were turned in by female artists.
As for most-streamed songs, Carpenter’s “Espresso” garnered the most listens globally in 2024, racking up more than 1.6 billion streams. Behind it came Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather,” FloyyMenor and Cris Mj’s “Gata Only” and Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control.”
Plus, Spotify shared its most-streamed podcast this year — The Joe Rogan Experience — and most-listened audio book, which was Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses.
Like in years past, Spotify Wrapped is also now allowing individual users to view their own top-listened artists and songs via shareable data cards. In 2024, they can access “Musical Evolution” features as well, showing how their distinct moods and tastes changed over that past 11 months with Spotify-generated descriptors and a personalized playlist.
Also new is a “Longest Listening Streak” feature that accompanies users’ favorite artists of the year. A returning favorite is the “Top Listeners” feature, revealing which percentage of listeners fans were in for their favorite artists — and the most loyal ones will receive special videos from stars such as Peso Pluma, ROSÉ, Billie Eilish, Usher, Sabrina Carpenter, Karol G and more.
Chappell Roan is celebrating a major milestone on Spotify.
On Friday (Nov. 29), the 26-year-old pop star shared on social media that her breakout hit “Good Luck, Babe!” has officially surpassed one billion streams on the platform.
“good luck babe hitting a billion streams on Spotify is cuckoo loco,” Roan wrote on Instagram, posting a pair of photos of herself rocking a Joan Jett T-shirt. “All I have to say is thank you.”
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Among those joining the celebration in the comments section were fellow musical artists Olivia Rodrigo, SZA and Brandi Carlile. “Yessss,” Rodrigo wrote. SZA chimed in with, “Yeeaaaa!!!! Never been more proud to contribute 500 streams.” Carlile simply remarked, “It kinda rules.”
“Good Luck, Babe!” is featured on Roan’s debut album, Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, which dropped in September 2023. The track, written in collaboration with Daniel Nigro and Justin Tranter, peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and earned Roan her first No. 1 on Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart in September.
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Roan reflected on the journey behind “Good Luck, Babe!” in an interview with Rolling Stone. “I just wanted to write a big anthemic pop song,” she said. “The song was a b—- to write,” the singer-songwriter added, explaining that it’s “about wishing good luck to someone who’s denying fate.”
This year has been a whirlwind for Roan. She’s garnered six Grammy nominations for 2025, including best new artist. Her Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess is nominated for both album of the year and best pop vocal album, while “Good Luck, Babe!” earned nods for song of the year, record of the year and best pop solo performance.
The Spotify news arrives just days after Franz Ferdinand gave their own take on “Good Luck, Babe!” during a BBC Radio 2 performance. “It’s just an amazing song by an incredible artist,” lead singer Alex Kapranos said. “Some artists have a moment, and it’s often divisive. But I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t love Chappell. This song is incredible, and we’re thrilled to play it.”
Check out Roan’s celebratory Instagram post about reaching one billion streams on Spotify here.
Universal Music Group (UMG) has responded to allegations by UMG artist Drake that it conspired with Spotify to artificially boost the popularity of Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” in a blockbuster legal filing on Monday (Nov. 25). “The suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue,” to […]
Drake has initiated legal action against Universal Music Group and Spotify over allegations that the two companies conspired to artificially inflate the popularity of Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.”
In a filing Monday (Nov. 25) in Manhattan court, Drake’s Frozen Moments LLC accused UMG of launching an illegal “scheme” involving bots, payola and other methods to pump up Lamar’s song — a track that savagely attacked Drake amid an ongoing feud between the two stars.
“UMG did not rely on chance, or even ordinary business practices,” attorneys for Drake’s company write. “It instead launched a campaign to manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves.”
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Drake’s attorneys accuse UMG of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the federal “RICO” statute often used in criminal cases against organized crime. They also allege deceptive business practices and false advertising under New York state law.
The court filings are a remarkable twist in the high-profile beef between the two stars, which saw Drake and Kendrick exchange stinging diss tracks over a period of months earlier this year. That such a dispute would spill into business litigation seemed almost unthinkable in the world of hip-hop.
It also represents a stunning rift between Drake and UMG, where the star has spent his entire career, first through signing a deal with Lil Wayne’s Young Money imprint, which was distributed by Republic Records, and then signing directly to Republic.
Lamar, meanwhile, has also spent his entire career associated with UMG, first through the TDE imprint, which was distributed by Interscope, and more recently through his own company pgLang, which he licenses through Interscope.
In technical terms, Monday’s filing is not yet a full lawsuit, but a so-called “pre-action” petition — a procedure under New York law that aims to secure information before filing a lawsuit. Spotify declined to comment. UMG did not immediately return a request for comment.
This is a developing story, and will be updated as more information becomes available.
Miley Cyrus has six new pieces of hardware in her collection, one for each of her biggest hits. And in a new episode of Spotify‘s Billions Club: The Series, the 31-year-old pop star opened up about each of her tracks that have crossed into 10-digit territory on the streaming service, including 2009’s “Party in the U.S.A.” — which she lovingly referred to as the “ultimate grocery aisle music” — 2013’s “We Can’t Stop,” 2018’s “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart” with Mark Ronson and 2020’s “Angels Like You.”
The celebration of her milestones comes as her first-ever Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single, “Wrecking Ball,” becomes her sixth track to reach a billion listens.
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While discussing the pop-rock heartbreak anthem with sister Brandi Cyrus, Miley revealed the straightforward inspiration behind “Wrecking Ball”: “My man wasn’t acting right.”
Released in 2013, the song is widely believed to be about the star’s ex-husband, Liam Hemsworth — as is “Flowers,” her second-ever Hot 100 chart-topper and the fastest of her tracks to reach a billion streams. It was also Spotify’s most-streamed song of 2023 and earned Miley her first and second Grammy Awards (record of the year and best pop solo performance) earlier this year.
Of the speculation into the subject matter of “Flowers,” Miley quipped, “The only rumor I can confirm to be true is that the gold dress I am wearing is museum-quality from Yves Saint Laurent that is in an exhibition in Paris right now.”
In another clip from the shoot shared exclusively with Billboard on Thursday (Nov. 21), the Hannah Montana alum reflected on how she’s inspired younger stars such as Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo. “You never think about in the future, someone replicating what you do,” she said in the snippet. “You’re just doing it because it’s honest in the moment … It’s really important they do it their own way, because that’s what my career has represented above all else.”
Miley’s Billions Club episode makes her just the latest artist to be honored by the series, with past installments focusing on Ariana Grande, Cardi B, Billie Eilish, Ed Sheeran and more.
Watch Miley’s Billions Club episode above.
Amazon Music is updating its “Unlimited” subscription tier to give subscribers in the U.S., UK and Canada access to audiobooks from Audible’s library of one million-plus titles, the company announced on Tuesday (Nov. 19).
With the new perk, Amazon Music Unlimited follows in the footsteps of Spotify, which revamped its subscription offerings earlier this year to include a bundle of songs and audiobooks together. Though Spotify angered songwriters and publishers by arguing it didn’t need to pay the full mechanical royalty rate since it offered multiple royalty-earning services in one, it appears that Amazon Music will work with publishers to determine new rates privately. According to a statement by the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), the trade organization is “optimistic” about Amazon’s new offering and is “engaged” with the company in a “respectful and productive way” to find a compensation model for publishers that “will not decrease revenue for songwriters.”
Subscribers to AMU’s individual plan and primary holders of family plans are entitled to one audiobook of any length per month, a perk that continues even after each billing cycle. For those whose appetite for audiobooks exceeds the one-per-month offer, additional titles can be acquired through Audible via monthly subscriptions or a la carte purchases.
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The additional perk comes without an increase in price — for the time being. Steve Boom, vp of audio, Twitch and games, said Amazon’s strategy is be “to add new things to the product” that add value and later “figure out what the right pricing strategy is in the long term.” In the U.S., AMU costs $9.99 for Prime members and $10.99 for non-Prime subscribers, both less than Spotify’s $11.99 monthly fee and, for non-Prime subscribers, equal to to Apple Music’s $10.99 price.
Spoken-word content has already proven a valuable complement to music. After AMU added podcasts in 2020, subscribers embraced having both music and spoken-word content in the same app, noted Boom. “The convenience of having both music and spoken word in the same app has proven really effective. It makes logical sense to bring audio books into it as well.”
Audiobooks will not be made available to Amazon Music Prime, the tier included with a basic Prime subscription, or Amazon Music Free, a free option with playlists, radio stations and podcasts.
The concept of “bundling” multiple services together has become a hot-button issue for songwriters and publishers. At the start of March, Spotify Premium subscriptions, including family and duo tiers, were quietly reclassified as bundled offerings, with both music and audiobooks included in the plans.
According to the stipulations of Phonorecords IV — the government-regulated guidelines that dictate the mechanical royalty rates for streaming from 2023-2027 — bundled services can qualify to pay out a lower royalty rate for publishing given that subscription dollars must be split between multiple services (in this case, books and songs). As a consequence, Billboard calculated that publishers and songwriters will earn an estimated $150 million less in U.S. mechanical royalties than previously expected in the 12 months following the change.
At the time, NMPA’s CEO/president David Israelite said he would “declare war” on Spotify — and he subsequently launched a multi-pronged effort to stop the streamer. This included sending Spotify a cease and desist for unlicensed lyrics, video and podcast content; filing a legislative proposal with both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate Judiciary Committees; and filing a Federal Trade Commission complaint. Around the same time, the Mechanical Licensing Collective (the MLC) sued Spotify for “improperly” classifying these tiers as bundles.
“We are optimistic about the new Amazon bundle,” Israelite told Billboard in a statement. “Amazon has engaged with the music publishing and songwriting industry in a respectful and productive way, unlike Spotify. We expect this new Amazon bundle will not decrease revenue for songwriters. Unlike Spotify, Amazon is looking at music creators as business partners and seeking to have a deal in place before the first round of royalty payments. This is in stark contrast to Spotify who is trying to pervert the compulsory license and slash what they pay songwriters.”
The NMPA and Amazon Music have not yet reached a final agreement.
Spotify is on such a hot streak that the streaming company nearly reached a $100 billion market capitalization this week. After the company’s third-quarter earnings showed cost-cutting has led to record profitability, shares peaked at a new all-time high of $489.69 on Thursday (Nov. 14), briefly putting its market capitalization above $98 billion. However, the stock fell on Friday (Nov. 15) to a final closing price of $458.32, valuing the company at $92.04 billion. While the stock was still up 14.5%, that marked a bit of a letdown from its previous high.
During the height of the pandemic, Spotify benefitted from a rush into streaming stocks as consumers spent more time with audio and visual media. Investors were also attracted to its push into podcasts, which provided an opportunity to improve upon the margins of its core music service. But investors eventually grew tired of Spotify’s growth-over-profitability mantra, sending the company’s share price from $387 in February 2021 to under $70 in November 2021. But a focus on cost-cutting and expansion into audiobooks helped bring investors back; Spotify shares gained 138% in 2023 and have already increased 144% in 2024.
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After delivering solid results and showing investors a pathway to greater profitability, Guggenheim increased its price target for Spotify to $500 from $420 and raised its estimate for 2025 operating profit to 2.5 billion euros ($2.63 billion) from 2.1 billion euros ($2.21 billion). Analysts cited management’s confidence in usage growth and ability to raise prices and further improve margins. Morgan Stanley raised Spotify to $460 from $430, also citing the company’s ability to further raise prices and management’s “commitment to financial discipline and driving profitability.” At JPMorgan, analysts upped Spotify to $530 from $425 for the aforementioned reasons, in addition to the stock’s coming inclusion in the MSCI World Index on Nov. 25.
A bevy of analysts also increased their price targets for Live Nation following the company’s earnings report on Monday (Nov. 11), which showed that the promoter achieved a record adjusted operating income in the third quarter. Among them: Rosenblatt Securities ($146 from $123), Goldman Sachs ($148 from $132), Benchmark ($145 from $108), Evercore ISI ($150 from $110), Oppenheimer ($155 from $120) and Wolfe Research ($152 from $125). Live Nation shares finished the week at $129.00, up 4.9%, and reached a new intraday high of $130.83 on Friday.
Spotify’s big gain was the primary reason the Billboard Global Music Index grew 5.8% to 2,162.50 despite just six of its 20 stocks finishing the week in positive territory. The float-adjusted, unweighted index measures the aggregate market values of the 20 member companies; Spotify is the most valuable company on the index and is more than twice as valuable as the next company, Universal Music Group (UMG). The week’s other five gainers are among the index’s largest companies: Live Nation, CTS Eventim, JYP Entertainment, HYBE and SM Entertainment all have market capitalizations exceeding $1 billion.
Stock markets hit a post-election hangover this week that stalled the gains seen after Donald Trump won the presidential election on Nov. 5. In the United States, the Nasdaq fell 3.1% and the S&P 500 dropped 2.1%. The United Kingdom’s FTSE 100 lost just 0.1%. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index fell 5.6%. China’s Shanghai Composite Index lost 3.5%.
Despite the KOSPI’s decline, K-pop stocks — which have recovered ground in the second half of the year and now have a collective year-to-date deficit of 20.2% — were up across the board. JYP Entertainment gained 8.2%, HYBE improved 3.2%, SM Entertainment added 2.8% and YG Entertainment rose 2.7%.
On the live front, Sphere Entertainment Co. fell 8.6% after its latest earnings showed a slowdown in revenue at its Sphere division, with Macquarie lowering the company’s price target to $45 from $47. And at MSG Entertainment (MSGE), shares dropped 6.8% to $40.00 after Bernstein reduced its MSGE price target to $44 from $45 earlier in the week.
Over at radio, Cumulus Media fell 19.3% to $0.71 after it reportedly conducted layoffs at stations in Central Pennsylvania, Indianapolis, Detroit and San Francisco as part of broader job cuts ahead of the holiday season — all on the heels of recent layoffs at competitor iHeartRadio. Elsewhere music streamer LiveOne dropped 12.4% to $0.78 this week.
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With all apologies to Charli XCX, the 2024 concert season should have been dubbed “VIP summer” for the amount of upselling done by U.S. amphitheaters.
At Live Nation amphitheaters, revenue from VIP clubs was up 19% and VIP ticket premium revenue for major festivals was up more than 20% in the third quarter. Earlier this year, VIP/premium offerings represented 9% of Live Nation’s overall amphitheater business but “should be 30% to 35%,” CEO Michael Rapino told investors in February.
Amphitheaters where Live Nation controls the food and beverage experiences have the potential to deliver more fan spending. Converting an area of grass into a VIP club provides 20% to 30% returns on investment, Rapino explained. At Northwell at Jones Beach Theater, for example, Live Nation took the 15,000-seat venue from no premium offerings to three premium tiers. Of the 40 U.S. amphitheaters in its portfolio, the company could “Jonesify” half of them, Rapino said during an investor call on Wednesday (Nov. 13).
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Diving headfirst into VIP pricing is sure to help Live Nation’s bottom line. The company believes premium offerings can add $200 million in adjusted operating income per year, according to its investor presentation. This year, VIP net per-fan spending will have grown at 20% annually since 2019, well ahead of overall net fan spending growth of 8% annually.
From exclusive lounges to fan meet-and-greets with artists, the concert business has been better than other music industry segments at filtering customers according to their willingness to pay. VIP status became standard practice at music festivals to separate the people who can afford a $400 ticket to camp in a grass field and those who can afford deluxe accommodations, food and beverage, and transportation. The year-old Sphere in Las Vegas takes customer segmentation to a new level: Tickets are relatively expensive for a single concert without considering travel and accommodation — which Live Nation bundles with Sphere tickets through Vibee, a destination experience company it founded in 2023.
It may be ahead of other music companies, but Live Nation is merely following practices familiar to companies such as airlines, which charge more for early boarding, and theme parks, where paying a premium allows you to spend less time standing in line for rides. Insurance companies offer multiple tiers of services that include add-ons such as “accident forgiveness.” Everywhere you look, there’s an expensive option that’s out of reach for most consumers but well worth the value to others.
The wave of upselling now extends to VIP tiers in music streaming. Last week, Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) announced it has 10 million Super VIP subscribers accounting for 8.4% of its 119 million subscribers. Super VIP, launched in the first quarter of 2022, provides such perks as better sound quality, priority access to music content and live event tickets. With a cost five times the normal subscription tier, Super VIP subscriptions helped TME’s average revenue per user increase 5% from the prior-year period. That success with VIP pricing is likely a harbinger of things to come. A single tier may not deliver the kind of profitability investors now demand.
“I think Spotify and the labels, long ago, realized this ‘one price for everybody’ thing gets these companies off the ground, but ultimately it’s not sustainable,” says pricing strategy consultant Rafi Mohammed, who espouses a strategy he calls “good-better-best” and encourages companies to create more valuable tiers of products and services for subsets of customers who are willing to pay extra. “If you’re a company and you’re not doing it, you’re making a mistake,” he says. “There are always going to be higher-end people who are willing to pay more for a more enhanced experience.”
With the current music streaming model relatively unchanged for two decades, music companies are increasingly engaging in the kind of customer segmentation taught in business schools. Companies that want to deliver strong, sustained growth are looking at ways to provide more valuable — and more expensive — experiences to those customers willing to pay for them.
Record labels are itching for a high-priced streaming subscription tier that would produce greater royalties. Spotify’s VIP tier — for lack of a better term — seems all but inevitable at this point. In September, Universal Music Group (UMG) COO (then CFO) Boyd Muir said the company was in “advanced talks” with the streamer for a high-priced tier that offers a better user experience than standard subscription plans. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek lifted the veil on a pending VIP plan in July, saying it would “probably” be priced at $17 or $18 per month and provide subscribers with “a lot more control, a lot higher quality across the board, and some other things that I’m not ready to talk about yet.”
UMG has said that internal market research shows 23% of subscribers would be willing to pay more for a VIP experience. But Will Page, Spotify’s former chief economist, isn’t sure Spotify is ready for a VIP tier. “It needs to walk before it can run towards a VIP platform,” he says.
Since the days of pre-Spotify subscription services such as Rhapsody, the basis $9.99 (in the U.S.) price was raised only recently but hasn’t kept pace with inflation. Spotify launched in the U.S. in 2011 and didn’t raise the individual premium price to $10.99 until 2023. Had the price kept pace with inflation, that $9.99 tier would have cost $13.50 by the time the price hike took effect. While video-on-demand streaming platforms such as Netflix have consistently raised prices over the years, music platforms like Spotify refrained, keeping their prices unchanged for fear higher prices would stunt their growth. “I would love to see the industry earn its stripes in showing pricing power before it goes to base two, which is market screening power,” says Page.
In the meantime, the music business has other ways to cater to VIPs, including a new slate of “superfan” platforms and vinyl records. Vinyl mimics a VIP strategy by upselling fans to an expensive physical item over low-value online streaming. And just as film studios use a so-called “windowing” strategy by releasing movies to theaters before streaming platforms, artists and labels are increasingly selling vinyl LPs ahead of their streaming street dates — a strategy that’s been largely absent in music since 2016. To Page, artists and labels are missing a big opportunity by not using vinyl to create a VIP release window.
“In America alone, vinyl is going to be a billion-dollar business,” says Page, “and the people who can sell it are the types of artists who would appeal to a VIP strategy.”
Spotify, the world’s biggest music streaming platform, isn’t showing signs of slowing down. In the third quarter, revenue hit 3.99 billion euros ($4.32 billion) and subscribers grew by 6 million, the company announced Tuesday (Nov. 12).
The Swedish music streaming company has helped revolutionize how people listen to music but until recently, it didn’t have financial results to match its market power. Reacting to investors’ demands for both growth and profitability, last year Spotify tightened its belt and laid off about a quarter of its workforce, and this year’s quarterly financial results have shown marked improvements in margin and profitability without sacrificing all-important subscriber growth.
Although revenue was slightly below Spotify’s previous guidance of 4 billion euros ($4.4 billion), operating profit was a record high of 454 million euros ($500 million), exceeding guidance by 12%. After routinely posting operating losses in previous years, Spotify’s operating profit increased 70% from the second quarter and was up more than 14-fold from the prior-year quarter.
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Likewise, gross margin — revenue less cost of sales — reached 1.24 billion euros ($1.37 billion) and improved to 31.1% of revenue, up from 29.2%, 27.6% and 26.7% in the preceding three quarters. The margin improvement was attributed to gains from premium subscriptions as well as audiobooks and ad-supported gains.
Recent price increases in the U.S. and many other markets didn’t slow subscriber growth. Spotify finished the third quarter with 252 million subscribers, an increase of 6 million from the prior quarter and 11.5% higher than the prior-year period. Subscription revenue reached 3.51 billion euros ($3.86 billion), up 20.8% year-over-year. Premium average revenue per user increased 9% (at constant currency) to 4.71 euros ($5.18).
Advertising, a key ingredient to both Spotify’s freemium music model and podcasting business, continued to lag behind subscriptions. Advertising revenue of 472 million euros ($520 million) was up 5.6% from the second quarter and up 3.5% from the prior-year quarter. Music advertising was helped by growth in impressions sold and hampered by pricing weakness. Podcast advertising also suffered from pricing weakness and benefitted from growth in impressions sold.
The results sent Spotify’s share price price soaring in after-hours trading. Following the earnings release after markets closed, Spotify shares jumped over 9% to $459. Before trading closed, the stock hit an all-time high of $419.72 and posted its best-ever closing price of $419.48, up 2.3%. The stock closed above $400 for the first time on Friday (Nov. 8) and has gained 123% in 2024.