Overall, things look go for Spotify on the surface. They dove headfirst into podcasting a while back, and Spotify podcast listeners have doubled over the past year. They have over 700,000 podcasts, and 16% over Spotify users are listening to them.

THE NUMBERS ON SPOTIFY:
Over 700,000 podcasts
16% of users listen to podcasts
124 million subcribers
Podcast listening increased 200% year-on-year
271 million monthly active listeners
* data via The Verge

They're gunning for Apple of course, who tore into Spotify's user base back when they launched Apple Music. It's still too early to tell the damage they wrought, but as of the end of the year Apple had 56 million users and was humming along.

* chart via The Verge

Spotify is using podcasts as a way to fight back, saying that podcast listeners convert to paying customers:

“We have a growing body of evidence showing that there are significant benefits to engagement, retention, and conversion of users from Ad-Supported to Premium stemming from consumption of Podcast content. We have seen benefits to retention on the order of several hundred basis points, which is a material change on a retention curve, for users that engage with spoken word content relative to those that haven’t, and early data indicates that these users are more likely to convert to Premium over time.”