Spotify Lost $26.5 Million In 2009. What Does That Say About It’s Future?
(Updated) 
Music Ally and others have jumped on figures published by Spotify that show a ’09 loss of $26.5 million. TechCrunch Europe declared that the numbers show that U.S. expansion is now “imperative”. But year old figures for a startup don’t begin to tell Spotify’s story or provide a prediction of it’s future.
Not only did Spotify get substantial funding earlier this year, but according to the latest official Spotify numbers from October, the music service now has 10 million or more registered users. That’s a big audience to deliver ads to as the economy turns. More importantly, as of June, Spotify said it has over 500,000 subscribers across Europe. Both numbers show huge growth.
Converting 500K out of 10M from free to paid is only marginally impressive. But the real future of Spotify stems from its addictive nature. The more people use it and build playlists, the more they get hooked. As invesotr Sean Parker said recently, “we’ve got you by the balls.”
All these streaming services would be 100% justified in cranking their ad rates SKY high, and frankly I think they should do it. Increased revenue for them; better deals (hopefully) for musicians whose content is being streamed.
Out of those 10M ‘registered users’, how many are ‘regular users’? You KNOW Spotify has those metrics. Would love to hear them.
Whose money have they lost?
So with 500,000 paying users (and growing, I suppose) the gross revenues should now be in the regions of 6-7 million per month and moving towards 10 million per month. I would say that the future for Spotify looks bright. Or am I missing something here?
This is bullshit. Spotify has multiples subsidiaries around Europe, including in Sweden (which is profitable by about 1million euros), in Luxembourg and even in Cyprus !
as we say in french, they are “drowning the fish” 🙂
source (fr) : http://www.zdnet.fr/blogs/digital-jukebox/enquete-sur-la-nebuleuse-des-holdings-de-spotify-39756375.htm