The business world has convened on New York City this week for a slew of panels, presentations and meetings as Adweek now comes to a close. Spotify has been one of the major players in the music space and early on in the week, the streaming giant made the bold proclamation that it intends have "close to 100 million" users by the end of the year.
Made by Spotify's chief revenue officer Jeff Levick, the bold statement via IB Times comes as Spotify just eclipsed the 75 million user mark a couple months ago. Among those 75 million users are 20 million premium subscribers, which drive most of the revenue for labels, distributors and then artists.
Streaming is the fastest growing segment of the music industry and many hope that gains across the field will help sustain the industry for the next few decades.
These numbers seem ambitious but the use of streaming among millennials - nearly 90 percent stream music on sources like YouTube, Pandora and Spotify - it seems attainable for the Swedish company. Spotify users listen to music for about 2 1/2 hours in a day on the service and the service has been able to gather data on when and where people are listening, making it even more attractive for advertisers and should propel more growth.
The news comes as its main new competitor into the market, Apple Music reportedly amassed 15 million users during its trial period - a number that reached or exceeded expectations from executives. If it is able to keep even half of those individuals from the free trial on for a monthly subscription, then they would have ramped up from 0 to 7.5 million in just a few short months - better than any other service.
Stay tuned to the actual numbers at the end of the year and how label negotiations progress.
