The fourth quarter earnings have been announced by Spotify, and it seems, yet again they’ve finished the financial year on huge growth.
Spotify has concluded 2025 with record-breaking growth, reaching 751 million monthly active users (MAUs) and signaling a strategic shift toward becoming a comprehensive technology hub for all forms of media.
In its fourth-quarter earnings report, the company posted its highest-ever quarter for MAU net additions, alongside a 10% year-on-year increase in premium subscribers, who now number 290 million. Total revenue for the quarter rose to €4.5 billion, supported by an improved gross margin of 33.1%.
The “Year of Raising Ambition”
Founder and Executive Chairman Daniel Ek described the company’s evolution as a response to the next wave of technology, including AI, wearables, and new content interfaces.
“Today, what we’ve really built is a technology platform for audio—and increasingly, for all the ways creators connect with audiences,” Ek stated.
Following what the company dubbed the “Year of Accelerated Execution” in 2025, Co-CEO Alex Norström has framed 2026 as the “Year of Raising Ambition,” focusing on solving complex problems across music, podcasts, books, and live events.
AI and interactive innovation
Spotify continues to position itself as the “R&D department for the music industry,” leaning heavily into generative tools and seamless user experiences:
- Prompted Playlist: Similar to tools recently launched by YouTube and Apple, this feature allows Premium users to build playlists using their own descriptive words, giving them direct control over the recommendation algorithm.
- Page Match: A new feature that bridges the gap between physical and digital media. Users can scan a page of a printed book or e-book and immediately resume the story as an audiobook on Spotify.+1
- Audiobook expansion: The “Audiobooks in Premium” service has expanded to five new markets, including Sweden and Finland, complemented by a new “Audiobook Recaps” tool that provides personalized summaries to help listeners jump back into a story.
Strengthening the creator ecosystem
Beyond streaming, Spotify reported a record $11 billion payout to the music industry in 2025—the largest annual payment from any single retailer. Notably, independent artists and labels accounted for half of all royalties.
The platform is also deepening its ties to live culture and physical media. Through a new partnership with Bookshop.org, users in the UK and US will soon be able to purchase physical books directly through the Spotify app. Additionally, the company has extended its high-profile partnership with FC Barcelona through to 2030 and expanded its music video beta to users in the US and Canada.+1
As the platform moves into 2026, its leadership remains focused on capturing the “paradigm shift” of AI to benefit both the industry and its three-quarters of a billion users.
