Music streaming giant Spotify announced Monday that it had grown to a full 100 million paid subscribers. Spotify credited the growth in part to aggressive promotions and deals utilizing family plans which increasingly targeted value driven customers. The music-streaming titan also touted it's growing podcast business for it's contribution to total active user growth, which increased to 217 million, or 26% over the previous quarter.

Promos including student discounts and Spotify Free also contributed to growth in paid accounts, as many free users made the leap in to the full-featured streaming. Though Apple Music continues to grow at a faster pace than Spotify, it has currently only enlisted half the subscribers. CEO Daniel Ek seems unconcerned with other services, stating that "Competition is really not a big factor for us, ... It's more about growth."

Spotify

While growth is strong, Spotify has received some recent criticism for not sharing enough revenue with artists. It was recently reported that Spotify is working on appealing a ruling by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board which would increase payouts to songwriters by 44%. Ek's response to the denunciation has been somewhat dismissive, stating "I think we are in the process of creating a more fair and equal music industry than it's ever been in the past."

Try living on $0.0038 a stream and then get back to me. https://t.co/bUVtICBfQ1 — David C Lowery (@davidclowery) April 4, 2019

Meanwhile, competition continues to grow among artists as 40,000 new tracks are reportedly added to Spotify every day.

Diversification may be the key to sustained expansion and mitigation of increased royalty costs. Revenue is projected to increase for podcast listenership as Spotify states "Over time, our ambition is to develop a more robust advertising solution for podcasts that will allow us to layer in the kind of targeting, measurement, and reporting capabilities we have for the core ad-supported business." Though Spotify's relevancy in podcasting is bolstered by it's recent acquisitions of Gimlet Media and Anchor, music continues to be the primary focus, and is responsible for nearly all of their revenue. In it's push to continue increasing paid subscribers, Spotify promos are expected to continue with it's free trial, Hulu bundle, student discounts.