Spotify Q1 Results: User Growth Slows, Streamer Swings to Profit as It Hits 239 Million Premium Subscribers

Relatively still fresh on his Emmy and Golden Globe-winning performance for his supporting turn in the Apple TV+ series, “Black Bird,” acclaimed actor Paul Walter Hauser (“I, Tonya,” “Richard Jewell”) is looking to chart his next on-screen appearances for 2025.  Having just booked a role in “The Naked Gun” reboot starring Liam Neeson, Hauser has landed a role in Marvel’s “The Fantastic Four.” No character details are available, but Hauser will be joining a big ensemble that includes Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mr.

The cast for the Marvel Cinematic Universe‘s Fantastic Four is coming together.

told People that he’s “excited to go back to work” after the Paramount Network series was on a long hiatus. “It’s been a year and a half,” Hauser told the outlet.

Spotify has announced record profits of over €1billion (£860m), following staff being laid off, subscription prices rising and costs being cut across the board.The growth of the company comes as streaming continues to dominate the music industry, and the platform has gone on to offer its subscribers access to podcasts and audiobooks too.Currently, the Swedish company has around 615million users across the globe, and has invested a huge amount of money in growing the brand since its initial launch back in 2006. However, reports of the profit come following a year of the brand cutting costs and laying off staff.Late last year, Spotify announced that it was cutting down 17 per cent of its workforce in order to save costs.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Anthony Wood, founder and CEO of Roku, had a pay package worth just over $20.2 million in 2023, while Roku’s media boss, Charlie Collier, received $6.8 million in salary. Wood’s compensation last year included salary of $1.2 million, stock awards worth $7.57 million and stock option awards ​valued at $11.43 million.

Angelina Jolie is responding to Brad Pitt‘s latest request in their faceoff over the sale of Miraval, a winery that they shared joint ownership of in France while together.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast, had a compensation package worth $35.47 million in 2023, as he saw his pay rise 11% from the year prior. Roberts, who oversees the cable giant and NBCUniversal, last year had a salary of $2.5 million, stock awards worth $15 million, stock options worth $9.2 million and a $8.55 million cash incentive bonus. In 2022, his compensation totaled about $32.1 million.

Shares of Snapchat parent Snap popped 26% in late trading after the social media network said revenue jumped more than expected last quarter to $1.95 billion, up 21% from 2023. The number, and the outlook for the current quarter were nicely above Wall Street forecasts, as were daily active users, which hit 422 million.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Ari Emanuel, in his capacity as CEO of TKO Group Holdings — the parent company of UFC and WWE — had a compensation package last year that hit nearly $65 million. TKO granted Emanuel, who also is CEO of Endeavor, a base salary of $911,538, plus a $24 million cash bonus and stock awards worth $40 million in 2023, per a regulatory filing by TKO. All told, the exec’s pay package totaled $64.91 million.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor TikTok could be banned in the U.S. as soon as January 2025. Here’s what the new law means for users of the popular short-form video app.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Taylor Swift can’t quit breaking her own records. After Spotify revealed Friday that “The Tortured Poets Department” had become the first album in the DSP’s history to amass 200 million streams in a single day, the service updated that news early Saturday, to report that first-day streams actually surpassed 300 million, when all was said and done and counted.

Steven J. Horowitz Senior Music Writer Taylor Swift has made Spotify history with her new release “The Tortured Poets Department,” becoming the first album to exceed 200 million streams in a single day, Variety can exclusively reveal. The feat comes less than 24 hours after its release, signaling that the numbers could stretch even higher once the final figures are tallied.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Netflix made a surprise announcement in reporting its (very good) first-quarter 2024 results this week: The streaming TV powerhouse will stop reporting quarterly subscriber figures starting in 2025. In response, Netflix shares have taken a hit: The stock is down 8.7% Friday on the news, as investors fret that the lack of visibility into the streamer’s customer numbers signals a looming slowdown in the company’s growth.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor A media consultant sued Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, alleging he is owed “at least several million dollars” for work he did related to the company’s $370 million acquisition in 2022 of Redbox, the DVD kiosk and streaming company. Keith Knee, described in his legal complaint as an advisory and consulting services professional in the media industry, filed suit against Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment on Friday, April 19, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Netflix will no longer report subscriber numbers — which has been a key metric for streaming services for years — beginning with the first quarter of 2025. The company made the announcement in releasing its first-quarter 2024 earnings Thursday. Netflix handily topped expectations for subscribers net adds, gaining 9.33 million in the period, to reach nearly 270 million globally.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos earned a bit less in 2023 than the year before — but he still had pay package worth $49.8 million. That was down from $50.3 million for Sarandos in 2022, according to Netflix’s proxy statement filed Thursday.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor TikTok says it’s going to block accounts from appearing in its algorithmically generated For You feed if they repeatedly post content that runs afoul of its updated eligibility standards. As part of a larger update to its community guidelines, TikTok is updating its For You eligibility standards.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Viaplay‘s streaming service — specializing in award-winning Scandinavian series and films — is now available as an add-on subscription on Amazon‘s Prime Video Channels in the United States. Starting Wednesday, Prime members in the U.S.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Max Cutler sold Parcast Studios, his scripted-audio entertainment start-up, to Spotify in 2019 under a deal in which Spotify ultimately paid nearly $90 million. Cutler went on to become Spotify’s VP, head of talk creator content and partnerships — inking exclusive licensing deals with podcasters including Alex Cooper, Emma Chamberlain and Markiplier, and managing the company’s partnership with “The Joe Rogan Experience” — before exiting last year. Now Cutler is back in the game with the launch of Pave Studios.

Spotify is reportedly planning on introducing a feature to allow users to slow down, speed up and remix songs on the platform.The developments have been detailed in a new report by the Wall Street Journal, who say that the streaming service is looking to experiment with tools that will allow users to manipulate existing songs on the platform.The report suggests that users will be able to edit and mash together tracks to create modified versions of songs that can them be added to “virtual collections” on Spotify, but which will then not be available to share on external platforms.The Wall Street Journal suggests that “discussions about the tools are early and licensing agreements have yet to be worked out,” but that they hope the additions will “appeal to young users, while generating new revenue for artists.”At the start of this month, the streaming platform officially demonetised all songs with less than 1000 streams, having first announced the policy last year in the ‘Modernising Our Royalty System’ report.According to Spotify data, there are around 100 million songs on the service, yet only around 37.5 million meet the new requirements to generate revenue.Spotify said that 99.5 per cent of all streams on the platform “are of tracks that have above 1,000 streams.” They went on to claim that demonetising the tracks won’t result in a “change to the size of the music royalty pool being paid out to rights holders”.It argued that instead it will “use the tens of millions of dollars annually to increase the payments to all eligible tracks, rather than spreading it out into $0.03 payments.”Spotify also went on to say it requires a minimum number of unique listeners now if royalties are to apply – a measure brought in to