
Spotify
Ad sales and monetisation · Hosting platforms · Networks and production companies
Address: Regeringsgatan 19, 111 53 Stockholm, Sweden
Spotify is a Swedish music streaming service provider founded in April 2006 by the businessmen Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. As of March 2026, it was one of the largest providers of music streaming services, with over 761 million monthly active users comprising 293 million paying subscribers. Spotify is listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the form of American depositary receipts. Wikipedia
Website: spotify.com
Symbol: NYSE:SPOT
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About Spotify
Since its launch in 2008, Spotify has revolutionized music listening. Our move into podcasting brought innovation and a new generation of listeners to the medium. In 2022, we took the next leap, entering the fast-growing audiobook market—continuing to shape the future of audio. Today, more listeners than ever can discover, manage and enjoy over 100 million tracks, 7 million podcast titles, and 500,000 audiobooks in select markets on Spotify. We are the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service with 761 million users, including 293 million subscribers across 184 markets.
Latest news
- Jun 15: With a new definition of a podcast "play" being "at least 30 seconds of content consumed", we wondered what would happen if the definition of a "download" also changed to "at least 30 seconds of content downloaded". Below in the "Tech Stuff", we ask one of the world's biggest podcast hosts whether they could recalculate their stats to see how much of a difference it makes.
- Jun 12: Spotify has adopted the Alliance for Podcast Measurement definition of a "play" in their metrics, announced yesterday as part of a wider set of new data and charts within the Creators dashboard. Spotify first introduced a "play" in May 2025, but didn't explain how they were calculated; as of today, a "play" is now defined as 30 seconds of content played once per user per session (audio or video). Spotify claim their data "helped inform" AMP's definition; the technical details of that have yet to be published.
- Jun 10: Those who host their podcasts on Substack will be able to distribute video to Apple Podcasts "in a few weeks", according to a webinar with Substack Product Manager Zach Taylor (spotted by webinar-watcher Chris Stone). The platform also delivers video automatically to YouTube; it doesn't support Spotify video.
- Jun 9: Dish from Waitrose is the world's most successful branded podcast, according to a release today. The show has had more than a billion downloads, views and listens since launching in 2022; and is the only branded podcast featured in both Apple and Spotify's top 100 charts. The show is sponsored by Waitrose, a UK supermarket.
- May 29: "Advertisers run multiple attribution systems because media players won't align on how to measure ad response. We can't even agree on a shared definition of a podcast." So says the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting (AMP) - launched to create "the first podcasting measurement framework". Brought together by Oxford Road, the group, including voting members from Spotify, United Talent Agency, SiriusXM, DraftKings, Libsyn and others, have been working in secret since last summer, driven by what it calls industrywide confusion: both a lack of standardized metrics and disagreement about where podcasts end and social videos (as well as other forms of video) begin. The group suggests that "a billion dollars of demand is sitting on the sidelines"; it plans to introduce a new unified framework for use across audio and video at Oxford Road’s upcoming CAO Summit on July 22nd-23rd at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes CA, USA.
Data credits: Google Maps, Podnews newsletter, Wikipedia