Spotify having a stellar 2023 so far

SPOT reported earnings last week and the results were impressive: MAUS increased +26% yr/yr to 574m and more importantly, premium subscribers jumped 16% yr/yr to 226 million. The company is thus half way through its long-term goal of 1B MAUs. I have been a paying user since 2015 and would never give Spotify up, especially now with AI improving curation. I expect churn to decline in the coming years if their platform tweaks continue. Assuming 10m new paid subscribers a quarter, the company is less than two years away from 300m premium users. For a not so apples-to-apples reference, Netflix currently has 247m global paid subscribers. Netflix entered streaming in 2006 and SPOT was founded in 2007. Scale takes time, and always tougher as a pure-play public company that lacks other business segments (ahem, AAPL/AMZN) to hide behind every quarter when earnings results are released.