That's a nice title: Music Streaming Leader.

However, Spotify has long made it important that it is not just about music.

"We are well on the way to becoming a broad-based platform for all audio content," said Europe boss Michael Krause.

"Important building blocks" towards this goal in 2021 were, for example, the possibility for podcasters to offer their own paid offers, or the simple integration of audio content from other websites.

Krause is also satisfied with the development of the number of users.

The Swedish service had 381 million monthly active listeners and 172 million subscribers at last.

Benjamin Fischer

Editor in business.

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The actual lead over the pursuers is of course difficult to assess.

Because unlike Spotify, Apple and Amazon have been stingy with data for some time.

Figures for Apple's service were last revealed in June 2019: more than 60 million subscribers.

Combined offers such as Apple One, which bundles all of the group's services, also make comparison difficult.

This also applies in part to Amazon with its Prime program.

Basically, the group declared at the beginning of 2020 that the music service had around 55 million users - including those of the free offer.

In contrast to the Spotify variant, only a fraction of the music catalog is available here.

The great appeal of podcasts

Youtube can now boast more than 50 million paying users. These are distributed among subscribers to the music-only subscription and the somewhat more expensive YouTube premium subscription. As is well known, the Google service, which is not limited to music, is particularly powerful in the advertising business. It stood for around 7 billion dollars in sales in the third quarter of 2021. For comparison: Spotify's total sales in 2020 amounted to 7.9 billion euros.

For a long time, more than 90 percent of this income came from subscription fees. The value has now fallen to around 88 percent - and the trend is set to continue. "Our advertising revenues increased by 75 percent in the third quarter of 2021 and have now risen to over a billion euros for the year as a whole," Krause calculates in an interview with the FAZ. “This is also a result of our efforts in the podcast area.” The exclusive programs in particular have an enormous reach, which makes them very attractive for advertising partners. In addition, the “no commercial breaks” promise only applies to music, subscribers also hear podcast advertising, and it is set to become even more important. "The global market for radio advertising is extremely large, which is often underestimated, although it is still a billion-dollar market," says Krause.Winning more and more radio customers for streaming is one of the big issues. "We saw in 2021 that many large consumer goods brands are now investing heavily in podcast advertising."