More than one in every 10 people in Latin America now pays for Spotify, according to the company’s co-CEO Alex Norström.
Speaking on Spotify‘s Q3 2026 earnings call on Thursday (October 22), Norström said that “Latin America is around 11%” in terms of the share of the region’s population paying for the service.
Norström shared the numbers while making the case for how high a percentage of the world’s population may one day subscribe to the DSP’s Premium tier – using Sweden as his benchmark.
Said Norström: “Sweden is a clear demonstration of how high the opportunity can go: in our first and most established market, nearly 50% of the population pays for Spotify.
“Globally, that figure is still under 4%, and in key markets like the UK and Germany, it’s between 20% and 25%.
“Latin America is around 11%, and then across emerging markets, we’re less than 3%.”
Added Norström: “What makes our position unique is how balanced it is.
“In developed markets, we’re growing a highly engaged monetizing base with a lot more room for growth. In emerging markets, we’re still early, with hundreds of millions of subs to come.”
Norström also pointed to the consistency of Spotify’s subscriber growth since its stock market listing.
“When we went public in 2018, we had 71 million subscribers,” he said. “Since then, every single year, we’ve been adding 25 million subs or more.”
Spotify’s Q3 2026 shareholder deck shows that Latin America housed 24% of the company’s 306 million Premium subscribers at the end of September.
That was up from 23% a year earlier, and from 21% in Q3 2022.
North America accounted for 25% of Spotify’s subscribers in Q3 2026 – just one percentage point ahead of Latin America.
In Q3 2022, the gap between the two regions was seven percentage points (28% vs. 21%).
(Europe remains by far Spotify’s biggest market by volume of subscribers, with 36% of global subs in Q3.)
By MBW‘s estimate, Spotify had around 73 million Premium subscribers in Latin America at the end of Q3, up from around 65 million a year earlier.
That compares to approximately 77 million in North America.
The Latin American figure would indeed equate to roughly 11% of the region’s population, which the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) put at 663 million in 2024.
Latin America‘s share of Spotify’s monthly active users (encompassing free users plus paying subscribers) held at 21% in Q3 2026, which works out to some 165 million users.
On that basis, around 44% of Spotify’s current active users in Latin America pay for a Premium subscription, versus 39% across Spotify’s global user base.
Spotify‘s global subscriber base finished Q3 1 million ahead of its guidance.
“Our outperformance was broad-based and led by rest of the world and Latin America,” said Spotify CFO Christian Luiga on Thursday’s call.
Latin America was the world’s fastest-growing region for recorded music revenues in 2025, up 17.1% YoY, according to IFPI’s Global Music Report 2026.
It was the region’s 16th consecutive year of growth, with Brazil ranking as the world’s eighth-largest recorded music market and Mexico ranking tenth.
At its Investor Day in May, Spotify said that “3.5% of the world subscribes to Spotify”.
“We also remain committed to our north stars: one billion subscribers, one hundred billion in revenue, and over 40% in gross margin,” said Norström at the event.
Spotify has guided to 316 million Premium subscribers and 818 million monthly active users for Q4 2026.Music Business Worldwide
