When Spotify launched its music streaming service in several European countries on October 7, 2008, few people would have thought that this obscure Stockholm-based startup would grow into the world’s most popular music platform over the next 10 years.

Before Spotify’s launch, music streaming was still in its infancy, accounting for just 1 percent of global music revenues in 2007, but eventually, the company’s early bet on streaming would pay off.

As the following chart illustrates, it took a while for Spotify to really take off. By the time of its fifth birthday in 2013, Spotify had roughly 30 million active users and 8 million premium subscribers. In the five years since, however, the service’s user/subscriber numbers have skyrocketed, reaching 180 million and 83 million, respectively, by the end of June 2018. Spotify went public in a private listing on the New York Stock Exchange in April 2018. The company is currently valued at $28.9 billion.

source: statista