Spotify Hits 10m Paying Subscribers

Spotify has passed the 10m paying subscribers mark, with around a quarter of the streaming music provider's users worldwide coughing up cash each month for ad-free access to the catalog of tracks. The company charges $9.99 per month for those users who want to escape commercials as well as listen to Spotify music through their home media systems, like Sonos.

It's a long way from the early days of Spotify, where many doubted that a monthly subscription model would ever work for music. Spotify's US debut was much-delayed, meanwhile, amid cautious negotiations by the music labels.

Spotify says that it has streamed more than 12 billion hours of music since it went live in 2008, and that more than 5m user playlists are either created or edited each day.

The most streamed individual song is Avicii's Wake Me Up, which has been streamed more than 235m times, while the most streamed artist is Eminem. Spotify launched the ability to follow individual artists, with the most-followed being David Guetta, with more than 5m people tracking him.

The company also recently bought The Echo Nest, which it intends to use to better curate its music suggestions.

Although it now has the US and 55 other markets operational, things may not go quite so smoothly over the next year. Spotify and other streaming providers are facing a potential revolt from music publishers, with songwriters demanding a bigger cut of the royalty pie.