Streaming giant Spotify has released its third quarter results, with revenue up 31 percent from a year ago to €1,352 million, or approximately $1.53 billion. Its premium revenue in Q3 was up 31 percent as well, to €1,210 million, or approximately $1.37 billion. Ad-supported revenue grew 30 percent in the quarter to €142 million, or approximately $160.9 million, compared to Q3 in 2017. This gave Spotify its first quarterly profit ever, but CNET reports this was due to a one-time tax benefit related to the company’s investment and partnership with Chinese streaming service Tencent Music Entertainment Group.
Spotify’s monthly active users grew 28 percent to 191 million by the end of the third quarter. Ad-supported monthly active users totaled 109 million, a 20 percent increase from Q3 2017. The company noted that “We continue to work to identify and remove users that we consider to be ‘fake’ from our reported metrics. This includes, but is not limited to, bots and other users who aim to manipulate stream counts for purposes of royalty calculations. Such users are removed from our metrics in a timely fashion once they are discovered. However, some such users may remain in our reported metrics because of the limitations of our ability to identify their accounts.” Premium subscribers totaled 87 million at the end of Q3, up 40 percent from the third quarter of 2017.
The company’s operating loss was €6 million in the quarter, which is just under $7 million in U.S. dollars.
