Sales increase significantly: Spotify gains more users - and makes losses

As far as the number of users is concerned, Spotify can look back on successful months.

Sales increase significantly: Spotify gains more users - and makes losses

As far as the number of users is concerned, Spotify can look back on successful months. The streaming giant can look forward to growth in active listeners and subscribers. While sales are also higher than expected, the bottom line is that there are losses in the hundreds of millions.

The music streaming service Spotify can win more users despite the uncertain economic situation - but accepts the red numbers. In the second quarter there was a loss of 125 million euros after being in the black from 131 million euros a year earlier. One factor was a 40 percent increase in marketing costs of 391 million euros.

Sales increased year-on-year by 23 percent to 2.86 billion euros, as Spotify announced. Analysts had expected 2.8 billion euros. A driver of the increase is the interest in podcasts and a record number of listeners in this segment, Spotify explained.

The total number of users active at least once a month increased from 422 to 433 million within three months. There was an increase in subscription customers from 6 million to 188 million. Spotify also easily digested the exit from the Russian market because of the war of aggression in Ukraine. The service had only 5 million total users and 1 million subscribers in Russia.

For the current quarter, the music streaming market leader expects an increase to 194 million subscription customers and 450 million users in total. At the same time, the service expects a higher operating loss than in the previous quarter.

When the quarterly figures were presented, Spotify also announced the end of its foray into the hardware business with the "Car Thing" device, a type of music player for cars. The exit entails a one-off charge of 31 million euros. Spotify shares temporarily rose by around 7 percent in pre-market US trading.