Spotify Adds 6 Million Premium Subscribers in Third Quarter
Spotify added 6 million net new paying subscribers in the third quarter of 2026, taking its total to 306 million. The figures were reported on 22 October 2026, and the company said the gain was 1 million more than it had guided to, according to Billboard.
"Net new" means new sign-ups minus cancellations. The quarter ran to 30 September. A year earlier, in its November 2025 report, Spotify had 281 million subscribers, per the company's newsroom.
Money came in faster than users did. Total revenue rose 14% in constant currency, a way of measuring growth that strips out swings in exchange rates, to 4.97 billion euros ($5.63 billion). Revenue from paying users rose 15% to 4.5 billion euros ($5.08 billion). Ad-supported revenue, earned from free-tier listeners who hear adverts, rose 9% to 482 million euros ($546 million).
The free service still has a large crowd. Monthly active users, the people who used Spotify at least once in a month, rose 11% to 788 million worldwide. Premium average revenue per user, the average amount each paying customer brings in, rose 7.5% to 4.95 euros.
Profit also moved up. Operating income, the money left after running costs, rose 12% in constant currency to 672 million euros ($761 million). Gross margin, the share of revenue left after the direct cost of delivering the service, widened by 136 basis points, or 1.36 percentage points, to 33%. Operating expenses, the wider costs of running the business, rose about 26% to 967 million euros ($1.1 billion).
Co-CEO Alex Norström put the quarter in plain terms. "This was a quarter where we did what we said," he said, in a statement reported by Billboard.
Spotify also set out its expectations for the final three months of the year. It expects 30 million net new monthly users, bringing the total to 818 million, and 10 million net new premium subscribers, for a total of 316 million. It forecasts fourth-quarter revenue of 5.2 billion euros and operating income of 820 million euros ($929 million), at a gross margin of 33.8%.
For listeners, the headline numbers mostly describe a bigger pool of people paying for or streaming music. For artists and rights holders, they matter because a share of each subscription and ad dollar flows out as royalties, the payments owed to songwriters, performers and labels when their recordings are streamed. The totals show the size of the money moving through the service rather than what any one artist receives.
