In response to the launch of Apple Music, Spotify has published its new public numbers, which revealed that it now accounts for 75 million active users, and more than quarter of them pay for its premium subscription service. Although the proportion of the paying subscribers remained the same, the service saw a rise from the previous figures of 60 million active users (January 2015).

One year ago, 40 million active users enjoyed Spotify, and 25% of them paid for music. Now these figures almost doubled. It should be noted that Spotify exists six and a half years, and it managed to double the number of subscribers in just one year – an average of one new subscriber every three seconds!

Spotify also revealed that it paid $3bn of royalties to music industry copyright owners, including $300 million in the first quarter of the current year. The company also made some projections: for example, an indie artist could expect to generate as much as $1.2m a year in Spotify payouts, while a heritage musician could generate $2.6m. As for global superstars, they could earn up to $13.9m.

These are quite interesting figures, particularly for the “niche/indie” artists, who have publicly complained about much smaller payouts. In response, the streaming service claims that musicians will now be earning more from Spotify’s 20m subscribers. However, the company cites figures paid to labels and music publishers, while musicians and songwriters receive much less in the end.

Despite the increase of Spotify’s conversion rate from free to paid, the service still faces growing scrutiny of its free version from such artists as Taylor Swift. The latter removed all her music from the service after Spotify refused to withhold it from its free version. Of course, music labels also urge Spotify to take more efforts to convert free users into paying subscribers, in order to get more royalty payouts.

Spotify also raised over $500m in new funding, which valued the company at $8.5bn – major investors were TeliaSonera and Goldman Sachs. The former explained that the investment was part of the efforts to seek new ways to develop when the core business of telecom operators slows. Telco has found it difficult to grow due to fierce competition, and decided that it could try luck with companies operating within the telecom, media and Internet industries.