Spotify posts losses despite impressive growth

Spotify posts losses despite impressive growth
Spotify - taking the rough with the smooth

Spotify has reported that it made an operating loss of £26.5 million in 2010.

But the company's full-year revenue came in at £63.2 million, up by an impressive £50 million compared to 2009.

The hike in revenue has likely been a result of Spotify's ramped up advertising and growing subscriber numbers.

Update: Spotify has sent us the following statement to clarify the outcome of its financial report: "Since its launch in late 2008, Spotify has grown faster and become more popular than any other music subscription service of its kind, globally. Looking at financial results of individual markets in which Spotify operates is clearly not representative of the business as a whole."In 2010, we continued to grow our European user base, adding hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers, now representing a ratio of paid subscribers to active free users of over 15%, which is phenomenal for any "freemium" business. Product development remained a priority in 2010, with ongoing investment in innovation to offer our users the best music service possible and the biggest upgrade to Spotify since launch, including social features and the ability to combine local files with our own library of millions of tracks. "We continued to invest in international growth, laying the foundations for new market launches, most recently launching in the US in July of this year."

On the up 'n' up

At last count, Spotify reported that it had over 2 million paying subscribers now on its books, with the music service's US launch set to bolster its figures even further.

It's looking good for the future in Europe too, with Spotify saying: "The company and the group have successfully renegotiated and renewed licensing agreements with all major European record label groups.

"The group has ambitious growth plans and has signed license agreements with a number of US record label groups for the US market."

However, the music streaming service faces new and varied competition from the likes of Deezer, Boinc, Google Music, Amazon Cloud Locker and Apple's iTunes Match.

From Reuters

News Editor (UK)

Former UK News Editor for TechRadar, it was a perpetual challenge among the TechRadar staff to send Kate (Twitter, Google+) a link to something interesting on the internet that she hasn't already seen. As TechRadar's News Editor (UK), she was constantly on the hunt for top news and intriguing stories to feed your gadget lust. Kate now enjoys life as a renowned music critic – her words can be found in the i Paper, Guardian, GQ, Metro, Evening Standard and Time Out, and she's also the author of 'Amy Winehouse', a biography of the soul star.