Music streaming giant Spotify on Thursday said it had added 11 million monthly active users in the third quarter and had reached 788 million active users by the end of September, in line with the company's forecast. The uptick represented an 11-percent growth in users compared to a year earlier, Spotify said in a statement, adding that paying subscribers had grown by nine percent compared to a year earlier, reaching 306 million, just above the company's forecasted 305 million. "This was a quarter where we did what we said. We've built a strong business that keeps compounding," AFP quoted co-chief executive Alex Norstrom as saying in a statement. Revenue for the third quarter came in at 4.97 billion euros ($5.6 billion), up 16 percent from a year earlier. Operating income meanwhile rose 15 percent to 672 million euros. Looking forward, the company said it expected to add 30 million additional active users to the platform by the end of the year to reach 818 million. Spotify also said it expects to reach 316 paying subscribers. In recent years, the company has started expanding from music, first investing heavily into podcasts and now offering audiobooks. In early October, the streaming giant announced that it was expanding access to its audiobook service to more than 180 markets, up from the previous 22. Amid growing concern across the music industry over AI-generated content overwhelming streaming catalogues, the company has recently taken steps to identify and label AI content. Earlier this week it reported that it had taken "more than 50 million slop and spam tracks" out of recommendations -- meaning the songs would not be suggested to listeners -- this year. In August it announced that it was launching a new "AI Persona" badge to identify content producers that are AI-generated and not real people. In April, the company launched its "Verified by Spotify" badge, signaling that a profile has been reviewed and meets its authenticity standard.
