MIDiA PREDICTS ROBUST SUBSCRIBER GROWTH

MIDiA Research has teased a report it will publish next week in advance of Spotify’s 4/3 direct listing with some stats that’ll likely have rights holders popping the bubbly.

The most eye-opening highlight—which MIDiA has presented in boldface for maximum impact—is that, if it continues its current operating strategy, Spotify should reach 93 million subscribers by the end of 2018. By comparison, Apple Music is likely to have hit around 56 million subscribers by Q4 2018.

In other words, by the end of the year, the combined subscriber tally of the two biggest streameries will be around 150m, according to the forecast.

One concern, according to MIDiA, is that Spotify’s inactive subscribers (i.e., subscribers plus ad-supported users minus monthly active users) grew from 1m in Q1 2016 to 4m in Q4 2017. But at the same time, the service progressively reduced its churn rate from 6.9% for Q1 2016 to 5.7% in Q4 2017, which MIDiA says, “reflects a solid improvement of organic retention across Spotify’s paid user base.”

The tease was accompanied by some nifty charts, pasted below.