Spotify Earnings: The Music Streaming War Is Heating Up

So let's use video because I just think it's a great example. If you think about music and how you consume music, you actually consume catalog product a lot. I certainly do. And I think most consumers do. Songs that I've listened to once, I will listen to again and again, and again, at some point. With video, that's less the case. Once I watch seas... See more

He tells The Verge that Spotify will incorporate a hybrid business model with three distinct parts. One will involve the typical user subscription revenue, another is advertising dollars through its podcast ad marketplace and music streaming ads, and the third is a la carte options, like helping musicians and podcasters sell merch, tour tickets, or... See more

Your competitors are the most successful tech companies in the world, who have enormous war chests of cash, with an in-built hardware advantage, who can use audio as a loss leader for their existing products and services. I’m comfortable with this risk because this has been the case for years now, and Spotify through focus and execution has maintai... See more

Spotify doesn’t have that sort of grip on the podcast industry, and it faces competition from some of the largest tech giants in the world.

Spotify is rolling up the internet audio market, which their CEO, Daniel Ek, thinks will grow from $100 billion in revenue a year to somewhere near the video market, which is $1 trillion. People spend about the same amount of time consuming audio as video content. “Are our eyes,” he asks, “really worth 10 times more than our ears?”