
Spotify
Ad sales and monetisation · Hosting platforms · Networks and production companies
Address: Regeringsgatan 19, 111 53 Stockholm, Sweden
Spotify is a Swedish freemium music streaming service provider founded in April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. As of March 2026, it was one of the largest providers of music streaming services, with over 777 million monthly active users comprising 300 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
Owns
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
- Aug 19: Spotify Creative Lab has shown an example of how they helped UK television channel ITV promote a new spy thriller. The company worked with Goalhanger, with host-read content and a special episode of The Rest is Classified. As a well-produced sizzle reel, this is hard to beat - nice work.
- Aug 18: After we published a video of a podcast ad that was unskippable in Spotify yesterday, Spotify contacted us to say: "Spotify does not make podcast ads unskippable. A bug caused the 15-second skip to not be visible in the example, and it was fixed. The 15-second skip works for both Free and Premium users. Skip Ahead is a separate feature we are testing with a subset of Premium subscribers." They've not commented on what their terms for creators could allow them to do.
- Aug 17: Exclusive: A few weeks ago, Podnews broke the story that Spotify is testing a "Skip ahead" ad-skipping tool for some customers. Perhaps making the most of its dominant market position, today we note that Spotify is selling its own unskippable podcast ads; and we discover that its terms and conditions gives Spotify the legal right to automatically skip everyone else's.
- Aug 14: Spotify Spain published a list of songs people played during the solar eclipse, in comparison with the number of plays they usually get. "Here Comes The Sun" by The Beatles was played 27% more than usual; Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" got 92% more plays than normal, Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" got 227% more, and the biggest song, with 969% more plays than normal? Eclipse by Pink Floyd, the last track on The Dark Side of the Moon.
- Aug 12: Spotify has announced its first EQUAL Ambassador for podcasts, Morgan Absher, to help amplify and celebrate women podcast creators. Podnews covered the story last week; our sister publication Podcast Business Journal has a full interview.
Data credits: Google Maps, Podnews newsletter, Wikipedia