Spotify user base migrates to mobile, grows to 52%

More than half of Spotify’s users are now listening to music on-the-go, with mobile overtaking desktop for the first time in the streaming service’s history

According to TechCrunch, Spotify reports that mobile now accounts for the majority of its market, with 42% using phones and 10% using tablets to listen to their favourite jams. Desktop software handles 45% while the web player handles only 3% of the user pie.

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Spotify also says that cross-platform users who listen on both desktop and mobile average 150 minutes per day of listening. This comes at the same time when song downloads fell by 12% in the US in 2014, while song streaming grew by a massive 54% over the same year.

The engagement stats prove that getting users on both mobile and desktop boosts platform lock-in engagement. It allows for users to create a playlist on desktop and listen on mobile and also to if they hear a song on Spotify radio, affords them the opportunity listen their whole album on desktop. This is a similar trend we’ve seen with ecommerce, where people tend to browse for products via their mobiles and buy using their desktops.

Spotify says that 55% of its users connect their accounts with Facebook. This helps Spotify make it easy for them to create a music social sub-graph of friends with similar tastes.

The Swedish service boasts around 50 million users around the world while 12 million are premium subscribers.