The biggest music-streaming service in the Western world is still attracting new users, still adding more subscriptions and still unprofitable, the Rolling Stone reported. Since Spotify’s debut on Wall Street earlier this year, updates to its key numbers have been highly anticipated — because the market performance of the company, as the leader in the streaming industry, could either accelerate or cripple the music business’s tentative regrowth. In its Q2 report to shareholders, Spotify revealed numbers that are both reassuring and not. Spotify posted net losses of $461.4 million, which is more than twice the $220 million that it lost in the same period in 2017. Its operating loss, $105.7 million, was also 14 percent higher than in the same period in 2017 — mostly because of a cash expense related to its New York Stock Exchange debut and higher-than-anticipated accrued social costs. While it has been operating at a loss since its 2008 launch, executives expect the service to eventually become profitable once enough people sign up for its subscription tier to offset the high royalties payouts it makes to music rights-holders. By the looks of the latest numbers, that turning point doesn’t seem to be coming anytime soon.
