Who is today’s Spotify Consumer?

Today, Spotify reaches 42.4% of the total digital population, compared to reaching just 35% pre-pandemic.¹ Here, we dive deep into who makes up Spotify's audiences and how they've evolved since 2019.

We also take a close look at the interests of the average Spotify consumer and their buying habits.

Who is the Spotify Consumer?

The Spotify audience is largely made up of young adults, both male and female, who are likely to be living with their families. Consumers between the ages of 18-24 years old were 85% more likely than the average user to visit Spotify in January 2023. People living in households of 3 or more people, made up 63% of total visitors in January 2023.² This is partly attributed to the success of Spotify's discounted Family Plan which allows users in a multi-member household to pay a cheaper subscription fee. In releasing its Q4 earnings for 2022, Spotify announced it has nearly 500 million monthly active users, including ad-supported and paid subscriber tiers.³

UnWRAPPING the Spotify Consumer

The viral marketing campaign Spotify runs every December, called "Wrapped" offers Spotify users a personalized view of their listening habits from the past year and an introspective shareable moment in the lead up to the holiday season and New Year. This past December (2022), there were 120 million visitors to Spotify, the annual peak in visitation to the platform.⁴

Social media saw over 1000 pieces of content shared that contained the words "Spotify Wrapped" in December 2022. These posts generated over 2.7 million likes across all social platforms.⁵

How else are Spotify listeners spending their time?

Spotify listeners also invest their time in reading books and streaming video content. Spotify users were 46% more likely to purchase a book offline in the past six months than the average consumer. Additionally, they were 114% more likely to shop at Barnes and Nobles in the month of December 2022. The average Spotify consumer was also 91% more likely to stream more than 50 pieces of video content per day in December 2022.⁶

Spotlight on Music and Sport

Spotify continues to build its ecosystem and expand its audience through sponsorships. A strong example is how it effectively bridges the fans of music and sports.

In 2022, Spotify partnered with FC Barcelona, releasing over 60 pieces of sponsored content with FC Barcelona on Instagram throughout 2022, accumulating about 32 million actions. Sponsored posts with FC Barcelona received about 516k actions per post, 16 times more actions than Spotify receives on unsponsored content.⁷ It's one to watch throughout 2023 to see how they will continue to leverage this audience.

What to watch next for Spotify audiences

Spotify continues to build its ecosystem, including tools for creators to help them build communities across music, audiobooks, podcasts and other formats.

Bad Bunny was announced as the top Spotify artist of the year in 2022. In the first two months of 2023, social posts mentioning "Bad Bunny" and "Spotify" have continued trending with over 1 million actions despite Bad Bunny's hiatus on social media platforms at the end of 2022.⁸ Some other top streamed artists included Taylor Swift, Drake and The Weeknd. Taylor Swift takes the lead on social with over 433 million followers across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok. Drake and The Weeknd follow behind with 224.6 million and 90.5 million followers, respectively.⁹

For more on building audiences on audio streaming platforms or to learn about how they navigate other content, get in touch with our team here.

Sources:

1. Comscore MMX, Key Measures, Spotify, Total Audience, January 2023
2. Comscore MMX, Demographic Profile, Spotify, January 2023
3. Spotify Q4’22 Update
4. Comscore MMX, Media Trend, Spotify, Total Audience, December 2021-December 2022
5. Shareablee, Content Pulse, December 2022
6. Comscore Plan Metrix, Audience Profile, Spotify, Total Audience, Nov/Dec 2022
7. Shareablee, Partnership Explorer, 2022
8. Shareablee, Content Pulse, Jan/Feb 2023
9. Shareablee, Cross Platform Social Overview, 2022