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Swedish audio streaming giant Spotify has released its earnings report for Q2 2023, pointing to a strong quarter for the company.
According to the report, Spotify’s monthly active users (MAUs) jumped 27% to 551 million, recording a net addition of 36 million, which beat the company’s guidance by 21 million, pulling in an all-time high. All Spotify regions outperformed expectations and recorded higher MAU net additions compared to the same period last year.
The report also states that Spotify subscribers hit 220 million after growing 17% year-over-year (YoY). The net addition of 10 million surpassed the company’s guidance by 3 million, making the quarter Spotify’s highest-ever Q2 for subscriber growth. Furthermore, Spotify reported an 11% YoY growth to €3.2 billion, exactly on par with guidance.
Spotify also recorded an adjusted operating loss of €112 million, lower than the €129 period the company’s guidance expected. Gross profit increased 9% from Q2 2022 to 766 million but remained unchanged from Q1 2023. According to the company, “Spotify had a very strong quarter. We beat guidance and welcomed more users and subscribers than expected, with growth continuing to come from markets all over the world.”
Spotify is forecasting another 4 million Premium subscribers for Q3 this year. It also expects to add 21 million MAUs in total. Currently, Spotify’s anticipated revenue for Q3 is €3.3 billion, slightly higher than the reported figure for Q2.
On Monday, Spotify increased its Premium subscription price in the US from $9.99 to $10.99. The increase comes following intense pressure on music streaming services from players in the music industry. Unlike Apple Music, Deezer, and other competitors that have increased prices at different points in the past, this is Spotify’s first increase since it launched in the US in 2011.
In an official blog post announcing the change, Spotify explained that the increase is necessary so the company can continue to innovate as the market landscape changes. According to Spotify, the change will “help us to continue to deliver value to fans and artists on our platform.”
Last month, Spotify revealed plans to reduce its staff headcount by 2%, affecting about 200 employees. The company said affected staff will get severance packages with access to outplacement support and healthcare coverage.
In January, the company announced a layoff plan, noting that it was necessary because of the general economic downturn. Spotify had also laid off 38 staff from the Parcast and Gimlet Media podcast studios, absorbing both into its Spotify Studios. The company did this despite highlighting in an official publication that it has more than 100 million Podcast listeners and is the most-used audio podcast platform in most of the world. Spotify also announced it has grown its podcast content from 200,000 to over 5 million shows. The publication states that Spotify is the number 1 podcast publisher in the US.
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In addition to the series of layoffs, Spotify was forced to cancel 11 original podcasts from its in-house studios including ‘How to Save a Planet’, ‘Crime Show’, and ‘Medical Murders’.
Music streaming platform Spotify Technology SA (NYSE: SPOT) has announced plans to cut its workforce by 2% leaving up to 200 employees without jobs.
According to the announcement, Spotify is carrying out this exercise as part of an effort to diversify how the company handles partnerships with podcasters globally. This retrenchment exercise is peculiar to the podcast division of the company and is coming after a general round of layoffs in January.
Spotify vice president Sahar Elhabashi announced the sad news in a memo to all staff. He believes that the move would help the organization channel the appropriate support to the creator community.
Per the published statement, after consulting with its HR team on optimizing the organization, the firm note it “made the difficult but necessary decision to make a strategic realignment of our group and reduce our global podcast vertical and other functions by approximately 200 people, or 2% of Spotify’s workforce”.
Affected individuals will receive a severance package including extended healthcare coverage and immediate access to outplacement support. As of 2020, the digital music streaming giant had a huge workforce of 8,359 people with 4,332 of them in the United States, based on a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.
However, in October 2022, the company decided that the services of 38 employees from its Gimlet Media and Parcast podcast studio were no longer required, hence, a headcount reduction. Again in January 2023, Spotify hinted at another layoff round but this time around, Spotify had a workforce of around 9,800.
In the current move, the layoff was attributed to a sustained economic slowdown. A statement by Paul Vogel, the Chief Financial Officer of Spotify suggested that the Stockholm-based company is “clearly aware of the increasing uncertainty regarding the global economy”.
In addition to the series of layoffs, Spotify was forced to cancel 11 original podcasts from its in-house studios including ‘How to Save a Planet’, ‘Crime Show’, and ‘Medical Murders’.
Moving forward, Parcast and Gimlet will be combined into a new Spotify Studios operation.
Spotify’s market expansion drive over the year has been outstanding. The company attempted to diversify and increase its earnings from music streaming via aggressive expansion to other revenue-generating formats like podcasts.
Also, it is worth noting that Spotify has made so much effort into expanding its podcast unit including signing sponsorship deals with many top entities like Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, her husband Prince Harry, and Joe Rogan, the online personality.
At one time, the firm inked a podcast deal with renowned TV personality Kim Kardashian and this caused its shares to jump reasonably. The music streaming firm has spent over $1 billion in strategic business acquisitions of numerous audio broadcasting platforms.
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The integration of Spotify with NFT projects including Moonbirds has helped its stock rally more than 80 percent YTD.
The Moonbirds (MOONBIRD), an Ethereum ERC-721 NFT token with a total supply of 10k units, has announced a strategic partnership with Spotify Technology S.A (NYSE: SPOT) to enable the NFT holders to unlock certain music creations on the online platform. According to the announcement, Moonbirds holders in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, another few selected geographic regions can access Moonbirds playlist dubbed Sounds of a Digital Renaissance on the Spotify platform.
However, only Android Moonbirds users will access the pilot program, according to the announcement.
Reportedly, the Moonbirds developers see the partnership with Spotify as an opportunity to onboard Web2 to Web3 through the NFT industry. As a result, the NFT holders have a chance to unlock more utility while still holding their assets on the blockchain.
Notably, the Sounds of a Digital Renaissance was curated by Twitter user @dannylee, with the help of SongBirds, @TheSongBirds.
“This playlist will fuel the creative minds of our community and our artists, with multi-genre hits from artists such as Tame Impala, Diplo, and more,” Moonbirds noted.
The Moonbirds team promised to keep building more utility for its NFT holders to enable value creation. Moreover, there are thousands of NFT projects in the entire blockchain industry all competing for the same markets.
According to market data provided by CoinGecko, the MOONBIRD NFTs had a floor price of 2.08000 ETH, worth approximately $3,673.92 on Friday, May 12. Additionally, the Moonbirds NFT project had a market capitalization of approximately 20,800 ETH, worth approximately $36,739,241, and a daily traded volume of about 80.47 ETH.
With about 10k unique digital assets, the Moonbirds project reported a total of 6,449 owners. Currently, the MOONBIRD NFTs are available for trading on OpenSea and LooksRare.
However, OpenSea had the majority of Moonbirds NFT volume in the past 24 hours.
Earlier this year, the KINGSHIP NFT project, a subgroup of Board Apes signed to Universal Music Group (UMG), announced a strategic partnership with Spotify in a pilot program to help unlock certain playlists.
“All you need is a KINGSHIP Key Card NFT to unlock this playlist on Spotify. For now, this pilot is only available to Android users in the US, UK, DE, AU, and NZ,” the KINGSHIP noted.
Similarly, the partnership with Kingship was only made available to Android users since Apple introduced some internal policies restricting the functionalities of NFTs.
The integration of Spotify with NFT projects including Moonbirds has helped its stock market rally more than 80 percent YTD. According to the latest stock market data, Spotify stock is trading at around $142.68, down 2.98 percent today.
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Spotify shares are down over 61 percent in the past year, hereby raising concerns over the company’s future business model.
Spotify Technology SA (NYSE: SPOT), a Swedish audio streaming and media service company, has announced its Q3 earnings results. Following the announcement, the company’s stock market dropped by approximately 7 perecnt to trade around $90.56 in the after-hours. During the third quarter, the company reported revenue of 3.04 billion euros versus the €3.02 billion expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
The dip is likely attributed to the fact that Spotify reported a loss per share of 99 euro cents versus an estimated loss of 85 euro cents per share, according to a study by analysts by Refinitiv.
Spotify noted that its Q3 margins were less than expected, blaming “some softness in advertising,” currency fluctuations, and retroactive royalty payments to songwriters and music publishers.
“This is an early indicator of the concerns businesses are having about the economy,” Spotify CEO Daniel Ek noted. “We’re not concerned about the long term, but it’s definitely impacting us in the short term, and it contributed to the gross margin hit that we had this quarter, too.”
Spotify shares are down over 61 percent in the past year, hereby raising concerns over the company’s future business model.
Despite reporting quarterly earnings that were not pleasing to investors, the company reported an increase in total monthly active users. According to the Q3 earnings report, Spotify’s total MAUs grew by 20 percent year over year to 456 million, up from 433 million last quarter.
The company said that better-than-expected intake in India as a result of a multimedia marketing campaign driving activations and reactivations impacted the MAUs. Additionally, the company attributed its MAUs increase to strength across Latin America, led by Brazil.
Reportedly, the company’s Premium Subscribers grew by 13 percent year over year to 195 million, up from 188 million in the last quarter.
In the third quarter, Spotify announced a partnership with FC Barcelona. The partnership is meant to showcase 14 artists from 8 markets across the on-stadium inventory in three La Liga matches in August and September.
The company anticipates reporting 479 million total MAUs in the fourth quarter and 202 million total premium subscribers. Additionally, the company expects to report a total revenue of €3.2 billion in the fourth quarter, although the figures are subject to uncertainty.
According to market data provided by MarketWatch, Spotify has a market capitalization of approximately $17.98 billion. Having been rated 31 times in the recent past, SPOT shares received an average rating of Over.
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In November, the Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB) community burned almost 2 billion SHIB tokens.
What Happened: At the time of publication Friday, Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) rival Shiba Inu had a market cap of more than $23 billion with a circulating supply of over 549 trillion tokens.
The rate at which new SHIB tokens are issued remains a key point of concern for holders who are particularly interested in seeing the memecoins’ price appreciate.
Some members of the community have taken it upon themselves to “burn” SHIB tokens and essentially remove some existing tokens out of circulation forever.
One such initiative was Bigger Entertainment’s Spotify Technology SA (NYSE:SPOT) playlist that burns 20 SHIB for every song streamed. The “SHIB BURNER” playlist has a total of 397 songs, which amounts to around 23 hours of music.
Bigger Entertainment artists have reportedly allowed the company use 20% of the royalties to buy and burn SHIB and hence take it out of circulation.
According to the company’s website, a total of 597 billion SHIB tokens have been burned to date.
Another company that centered its business model around burning Shiba Inu tokens was the Shiba Coffee Company that spends 10% of its profits to acquire and burn SHIB tokens.
Overall, data from ShibBurn shows that a total of 1,912,665,892 SHIB tokens was sent to the burn wallet in the month of November.
SHIB Price Action: Shiba Inu was trading at $0.00004225, gaining 1.95% in the last 24 hours, Friday at publication.
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