Advertising is not yet the key revenue stream for Spotify, according to the latest company reports. Despite more than half of total users hearing ads on the service, only 11.7% – $175m – of total company revenue came from advertising in the fourth quarter of 2018. As a result, Premium users, who don't hear ads but pay a monthly subscription fee, accounted for nearly 90% of all company revenue in Q4 2018, at US$1.3bn.
However, ads are becoming more important for the audio streaming service. Advertising's share of total revenue rose 3.5 percentage points (pp) between Q1 2017 and Q4...