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Spotify’s Price Hike is a Work In Progress

Spotify is spreading its influence, stats show!

The music streaming giant’s first-quarter results, released Tuesday morning, showed that the company has a strong position on that front.

It added 5 million premium subscribers during the quarter—more than twice as many as Wall Street had anticipated—and projected another 7 million joining during the second quarter.

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Factset chart

Still, revenue for the recent quarter fell slightly shy of analysts’ forecasts, showing the need for Spotify to improve the returns it can generate from a base of streaming users that’s now more than twice the size of those watching Netflix.

Enter price hikes. Wall Street has eagerly anticipated such for Spotify ever since arch-rival Apple bumped up its own prices on Apple Music last year. Amazon also raised prices on its own music streamer, but Spotify has yet to match those moves on its key U.S. service.

They are working on it. During the company’s earnings call Tuesday, CEO Daniel Ek said the company is ready to raise prices in core markets like the U.S., but it needs to complete negotiations with major record labels first.

“We would like to raise prices in 2023, but it’s really a discussion with our partners,” he said, adding that the company raised prices in 46 smaller markets last year. That gave the stock an additional boost following the results; Spotify shares were up nearly 7% by late Tuesday morning.

 

@thejournalbiz
Source:WSJ/Factset
Image: Spotify