Spotify ended 2025 on a massive high note. On Tuesday, the company announced that it reached 751 million monthly active users during the final three months of the year. This is a huge milestone for the streaming giant. It marks an 11 percent increase from the same time last year and shows a significant jump from the 713 million users they reported in the third quarter.
It isn’t just the free version of the app that is growing; people are also opening their wallets. The number of Premium subscribers climbed to 290 million, a 10 percent increase year-over-year. When we look at where these paying customers live, Europe still holds the top spot with 36 percent of the total. North America comes in second, accounting for 25 percent of the company’s paid subscribers.
Spotify credits much of this success to its focus on new technology, especially artificial intelligence. Gustav Söderström, the company’s Co-CEO, says they view Spotify as the research and development arm for the entire music world. He believes the music industry is going through a major shift and that the companies moving the fastest to embrace AI will see the biggest rewards.
However, the company is trying to be smart about how it uses this tech. Late last year, Spotify promised to clean up its library by removing low-quality AI “slop.” They claim they want to focus on “artist-first” AI tools that actually help creators, though they haven’t explained exactly how these new products will work.
Beyond the tech, Spotify’s viral marketing continues to pay off. The “Spotify Wrapped” campaign in December was more popular than ever. Over 300 million people engaged with their personalized year-end summaries, and users shared those stats 630 million times across dozens of different languages. By combining these social features with a push for new technology, Spotify has managed to keep its momentum going in a very crowded market.
