Investor Day 2026 Remarks From Spotify Co-CEOs Alex Norstrm and Gustav Sderstrm

Opening remarks

ALEX

Good morning everyone, I'm Alex [Norstr m].

GUSTAV

And I'm Gustav [S derstr m].

ALEX

Whether you've been following our journey since the beginning or are taking a fresh look today, thank you for joining us. Today is our opportunity to share with you why we are so excited about value creation for Spotify.

Spotify is in the business of delivering creativity and culture to the world: helping artists, creators, and authors connect with audiences, and grow their careers. Gustav and I have been with Spotify since the early days. I've got the haircut to show for it.

Not sure if you are aware, but Spotify turns 20 this year. This marks our third Investor Day, and we've seen the company through many chapters. And we can say with confidence that the opportunity ahead has never been greater.

Let us tell you about where we are today:

GUSTAV

We are in 184 markets, with 761 million active users. Nearly 300 million are subscribers. This massive group of paying, passionate fans is not only double the size of any other music service, but also much more engaged than any other music service.

ALEX

That's why almost two-thirds of all Premium music streams happen on Spotify, far more than our subscriber base alone would suggest!

GUSTAV

The majority of these subscribers come back over 25 days a month, with over 100 million of them spending more than 28 days a month with us. That's 100 million people, with basically 100% DAU over MAU!

ALEX

That also means 3.5% of the world subscribes to Spotify. Giving us more than 96% of the world left to win over.

GUSTAV

There have been more than 10 billion playlists created, and our global user base now generates 3.4 trillion events and taste signals every day across all of our verticals and surfaces. Up 43% since just the top of the year.

ALEX

And Spotify is also one of the world's largest music communities, with nearly 500 million people subscribing to someone else's playlist, over 45 million people enjoying collaborative playlists each month, and almost 50 million people listening together in real-time using Jam.

GUSTAV

But Spotify is also more than music today. Over 500 million users have streamed a video podcast on Spotify, up nearly 50% year over year.

ALEX

And, in just a couple of years, we've already captured roughly 20% of the audiobooks market in the U.S.

Today, you're going to hear much more from members of our team about where we've been and where we're going. As most of you know, Spotify was born during the piracy era, when the music industry was in free fall. From day one, we set out to solve problems that others thought were unsolvable. This mindset has defined everything since.

So before we look ahead: Gustav, why don't you take everyone back a bit?

GUSTAV

So-let's go back to 2018, our first Investor Day. The big question that many were asking was, Okay, so Spotify was right about access versus downloads. But in a world of competitors with walled gardens and massive distribution advantages, how can you possibly win?

Our answer was counterpositioning, built on three ideas:

First, Freemium. We focused on maximizing reach while lowering the barrier to entry and building engagement. Second, ubiquity. Rather than building a walled garden, we chose to be everywhere-across devices and ecosystems. Third, personalization. We invested early in machine learning as the driver of retention. That's pretty obvious in the age of AI, but it wasn't back in 2013.

But of course, investors wanted to understand, How do you win in a category where everyone licenses the same catalog?

Our solution was that we would use Freemium to build global scale, and then we would win by out-innovating on the product itself. We didn't rely on one or two differentiated features. We built a platform that continuously turns user behavior into new products, experiences, and ways to create value. Spotify became the R&D department of the music industry, where new offerings are tested at scale and adopted across the ecosystem.

So when we met again for our next Investor Day in 2022, four years later, we had delivered on that strategy-and more. The new question many asked was, Spotify is now a great product, but will it ever truly be a great business with solid margins. And can you expand beyond music?

Our answer to this question was the Spotify Machine.

The idea was to take all the capabilities we built and extend them into new verticals creating a new business model. Combining music, podcasts, and audiobooks, together into one unified experience.

ALEX

So let's take a look at what we've delivered since 2022.

Let's start with users. We've added nearly 340 million people. The pace of this progress puts us well on the path to 1 billion users. We grew our subscriber base by over 110 million to reach 293 million subs. This makes Spotify one of the largest subscription businesses in the world.

In revenue, we hit a currency neutral CAGR of 18%, reaching 17 billion in 2025. That almost reaches the long-term target we set. And we achieved a 32% gross margin in 2025, up from 25% in 2022-beating our 30% goal. We shifted operating margin over 18 percentage points, from around negative 6% to a positive of almost 13% in 25. And importantly, this has flowed through to cash. Free cash flow went from close to zero in 2022 to nearly 3 billion euros in 2025.

We've got a scaled, profitable business with a large and growing audience, and multiple engines of growth. The Spotify you see today is very different from the one you saw four years ago.

So how did we achieve this, while continuing to grow users, subscribers, and revenue at a high rate? First, we renewed our contracts with rightsholders in the music industry. We did this twice to make our music busi

LINK:	https://newsroom.spotify.com/2026-05-21/alex-norstrom-gustav-soderstro...
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