Spotify 在 2024 年第四季財報電話會議上報告了強勁的業績,MAU 和訂閱用戶新增量、收入、毛利率、營業收入和自由現金流均創下新高。他們將這種成長歸功於過去兩年的產品創新和改進。該公司推出了一項新的視訊計劃,包括 Spotify 合作夥伴計劃和視訊播客體驗,獲得了積極的反響。
他們計劃在2025年專注於加速執行,並專注於更高價值的用戶和提高獲利能力。 Spotify 也正在投資教育內容並擴展到印度等新興市場。該公司專注於合作、發展以及透過技術和平台創造價值。他們希望透過自動化和程序化策略來發展廣告業務。
Spotify 對未來充滿樂觀,致力於打造最佳的使用者體驗、永續發展並向世界傳遞創造力。
使用警語:中文譯文來源為 Google 翻譯,僅供參考,實際內容請以英文原文為主
Operator
Operator
Good morning, and welcome to Spotify's fourth-quarter 2024 earnings call and webcast. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded.
早安,歡迎參加 Spotify 2024 年第四季財報電話會議和網路廣播。(操作員指示)提醒一下,本次電話會議正在錄音。
I would now like to turn the call over to Bryan Goldberg, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.
現在,我想將電話轉給投資人關係主管 Bryan Goldberg。謝謝。請繼續。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
All right. Thanks, operator, and welcome to Spotify's fourth-quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Joining us today will be Daniel Ek, our CEO; Alex Nordstrom, our Co-President and Chief Business Officer; Gustav Söderström, our Co-President and Chief Product and Technology Officer; and Christian Luiga, our Chief Financial Officer.
好的。謝謝接線員,歡迎參加 Spotify 2024 年第四季財報電話會議。今天與我們一起參加的是我們的執行長 Daniel Ek;我們的聯合總裁兼首席商務長 Alex Nordstrom;我們的聯席總裁兼首席產品與技術長 Gustav Söderström;以及我們的財務長 Christian Luiga。
We'll start with opening comments from the team. And afterwards, we'll be happy to answer your questions. Questions can to be submitted by going to slido.com, and using the code #SpotifyEarningsQ424. Analysts can ask questions directly into Slido, and all participants can then vote on the questions they find the most relevant. If for some reason, you don't have access to Slido, you can e-mail investor relations ir@spotify.com, and we'll add in your question.
我們先來聽聽團隊的開場白。之後,我們將很樂意回答您的問題。您可以透過造訪 slido.com 並使用程式碼 #SpotifyEarningsQ424 來提交問題。分析師可以直接向 Slido 提出問題,然後所有參與者都可以對他們認為最相關的問題進行投票。如果您因某種原因無法造訪 Slido,您可以向投資者關係部發送電子郵件至 ir@spotify.com,我們會新增您的問題。
Before we begin, let me quickly cover the safe harbor. During this call, we'll be making certain forward-looking statements, including projections or estimates about the future performance of the company. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could materially differ because of factors discussed on today's call, in our shareholder deck and in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
在我們開始之前,讓我先快速介紹一下安全港。在本次電話會議中,我們將做出某些前瞻性陳述,包括對公司未來績效的預測或估計。這些聲明是基於當前的預期和假設,但存在風險和不確定性。由於今天的電話會議、股東大會以及向美國證券交易委員會提交的文件中討論的因素,實際結果可能會存在重大差異。
During this call, we'll also refer to certain non-IFRS financial measures. Reconciliations between our IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures can be found in our shareholder deck in the financial section of our Investor Relations website and also furnished today on Form 6-K.
在本次電話會議中,我們也會參考某些非國際財務報告準則的財務指標。我們的 IFRS 和非 IFRS 財務指標之間的對帳表可在我們投資者關係網站財務部分的股東概覽中找到,也可在今天的 6-K 表格中提供。
And with that, I'll turn it over to Daniel.
現在我將把話題交給丹尼爾。
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
All right. Thanks, Bryan. Everyone, and thank you for joining us. I wanted to start by speaking to the devastation caused by the LA fires. LA is home to hundreds of Spotify employees, millions of music fans and countless members across the creative industries. We've committed our financial support to recovery efforts, and we'll continue to look for ways to help those impacted.
好的。謝謝,布萊恩。大家好,感謝你們的參與。首先我想談談洛杉磯火災造成的破壞。洛杉磯是數百名 Spotify 員工、數百萬音樂愛好者和無數創意產業會員的家。我們已承諾為復原工作提供資金支持,並將繼續尋找方法來幫助受影響的人。
And before turning to the quarter, I wanted to introduce Chief Business Officer, Alex Nordstrom and Chief Product and Technology Officer, Gustav Söderström, since they've been elevated to the role of co-presidents in January 2023, they've been leading much of the day-to-day operations at Spotify. And this is allowed me to spend more time working on the future of Spotify, which is where I've always believed that I can have the biggest impact. and will aim to bring Alex and Gustav to future calls to share their perspectives on our goals and performance.
在介紹本季之前,我想先介紹一下首席商務官 Alex Nordstrom 和首席產品與技術官 Gustav Söderström,因為他們已於 2023 年 1 月升任聯席總裁,他們’我一直領導Spotify 的大部分日常營運工作。這讓我能夠花更多時間來致力於 Spotify 的未來,我一直相信我能在這領域產生最大的影響力。並致力於在未來的電話會議中邀請 Alex 和 Gustav 分享他們對我們的目標和表現的看法。
Now, moving to our performance. We had a strong quarter and closed out 2024 even better than we anticipated. This gives us plenty of runway and flexibility for years to come. It was our highest Q4 ever for MAU additions and our second highest of all time. We also had record high subscriber additions, but that's not all, we set quarterly record highs for revenue, gross margin, operating income and free cash flow as we closed out our first full year of profitability.
現在,談談我們的表演。我們本季的業績表現強勁,2024 年的收官甚至比我們預期的還要好。這為我們未來幾年的發展提供了充足的空間和靈活性。這是我們有史以來第四季月活躍用戶新增量最高的一次,也是我們史上第二高的季度月活躍用戶新增量。我們的用戶新增數量也創下了歷史新高,但這還不是全部,在我們結束第一個全年盈利年度之際,我們的收入、毛利率、營業收入和自由現金流均創下了季度歷史新高。
So what drove this growth? Well, in large part, it's the result of countless improvements and tweaks we made over the past two years and continuous system of innovation that has brought us to where we are today. In Q4, we enhanced our product in areas like video and audio books with many more innovations to come in the quarters ahead. And it's really this ongoing commitment to incremental progress that ultimately adds up to something massive over the long term, even if the exact timing, sometimes it's hard to predict.
那麼,是什麼推動了這種成長?嗯,在很大程度上,這是我們過去兩年來所做的無數改進和調整以及持續創新體系的結果,才使我們取得了今天的成就。在第四季度,我們在視訊和有聲書等領域增強了我們的產品,並在未來幾季推出更多創新。正是這種對漸進式進步的持續承諾,最終會在長期內帶來巨大的成果,即使具體的時間有時很難預測。
Gustav, do you want to share a few thoughts on how we innovated the product, given how consequential it's been for our growth.
古斯塔夫,考慮到產品創新對我們的成長有多重要,你能否分享一些關於我們如何創新產品的想法?
Gustav Soederstroem - Co-President, Chief Product and Technology Officer
Gustav Soederstroem - Co-President, Chief Product and Technology Officer
Sure. Thanks, Daniel. So as you shared, we made some exciting updates this quarter, including launching our new video proposition at scale. But beyond the work itself, I also want to commend the team for how quickly we got it done.
當然。謝謝,丹尼爾。正如您所分享的,我們在本季做出了一些令人興奮的更新,包括大規模推出我們的新影片主張。但除了工作本身之外,我還要讚揚團隊如此迅速地完成工作。
For example, when we saw higher engagement happening on video podcast and received feedback from creators, but they were looking for new monetization opportunities. We moved really fast to launch our new Spotify partner program and video podcast experience. And video podcasts are seeing enormous spikes in popularity on Spotify, and we now have more than 330,000 video podcasts globally. And even more, over 270 million users have streamed one.
例如,當我們看到視訊播客的參與度更高並收到創作者的回饋時,但他們正在尋找新的獲利機會。我們迅速推出了新的 Spotify 合作夥伴計劃和視訊播客體驗。視訊播客在 Spotify 上的受歡迎程度正在急劇上升,目前我們在全球擁有超過 330,000 個視訊播客。並且,已有超過 2.7 億用戶觀看了該影片。
And during a creator event that we held in LA last November, we announced that we are now giving premium users the ability to watch their favorite podcast uninterrupted by dynamic ads. And we also introduced new efforts and tools to help video creators turn their shows into a sustainable business. And in just the first couple of months, actually, more than 70% of eligible shows and networks have already enrolled. We're incredibly pleased with these early results, and we will continue to innovate from here.
在去年 11 月於洛杉磯舉辦的創作者活動中,我們宣布現在高級用戶將可以不受動態廣告幹擾地觀看自己喜歡的播客。我們還推出了新的舉措和工具來幫助影片創作者將他們的節目變成可持續發展的業務。事實上,僅在前幾個月,就有超過 70% 符合資格的節目和網路已經註冊。我們對這些早期成果感到非常滿意,並且我們將繼續創新。
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Right. Well, okay. Thanks, Gustav. Another huge driver behind our MAU and subscriber growth was our annual Wrapped campaign, which celebrated 10 years. Wrapped is always a big contributor to our Q4 performance, and this year was no exception. Alex, perhaps you want to share a bit more light on what happened in the campaign.
正確的。嗯,好的。謝謝,古斯塔夫。我們 MAU 和訂閱用戶成長的另一個巨大推動力是我們為慶祝十週年而推出的年度 Wrapped 活動。Wrapped 一直以來都是我們第四季業績的重要貢獻者,今年也不例外。亞歷克斯,也許你想進一步了解競選活動中發生的事情。
Alex Norström Spotify Technology S.A. â Chief Business Officer & Co-President Happy to, Daniel. Wrapped is a massive cultural moment for Spotify, but it's also become a significant driver of our business. This year, over 245 million users engaged with Wrapped surpassing 2023's record within the first seven days of the campaign. And importantly, we saw impressive engagement in key growth markets like Brazil and Indonesia.
Alex Norström Spotify Technology S.A. – 首席商務長兼聯席總裁 很高興,丹尼爾。《Wrapped》對 Spotify 來說是一個重大的文化時刻,它也成為我們業務的重要推動力。今年,活動開始後的前七天內,就有超過 2.45 億用戶參與了《Wrapped》,超越了 2023 年的紀錄。重要的是,我們看到巴西和印尼等主要成長市場的參與度令人印象深刻。
Every year, it's just a while to see how deeply our users care about their own personalized Wrapped experience. And because it's become such a phenomenon. It also means that there's a ton of visibility. We did change up the experience and despite the massive success in the engagement, we heard from a few users that they wanted to see more -- even more creativity. So look for more surprises from us in our 2025 experience. But overall, a really big win as evidenced in our numbers.
每年,我們都會花一些時間來觀察使用者對自己個人化的 Wrapped 體驗的關注程度。因為它已經成為一種現象。這也意味著具有極高的可見性。我們確實改變了體驗,儘管在參與度方面取得了巨大的成功,但我們聽到一些用戶表示,他們希望看到更多——甚至更多的創造力。因此,請期待我們 2025 年的更多驚喜。但總體而言,從我們的數據來看,這是一場巨大的勝利。
All right. Thanks, Alex. So as you can see, many of the things we put in play are working very, very well. And 2024 was a year where we really showed what we're capable of. I'm sure you must be asking if 2024 was the year of monetization, how will we define 2025? While I'm still working it through, I am coining this year the year of accelerated execution. .
好的。謝謝,亞歷克斯。正如你所看到的,我們實施的許多措施都運作得非常非常好。2024 年是我們真正展現能力的一年。我肯定你一定會問,如果 2024 年是貨幣化之年,那我們將如何定義 2025 年?當我仍在努力實現這一目標時,我將今年稱為加速執行之年。。
So what does this look like in practice? Well, I think it will require three things: First, we need to move even faster to ship improvements, the landscape is shifting constantly, and I want to set the pace, not play follow the leader. We're also going all in on our core and investing in more music experiences on the platform, think video, think the higher-priced premium tier that we've discussed previously and new ways to bring fans and artists closer together, features and offers that will all continue to push the historic expansion we're seeing in the music industry. And finally, we must also remain disciplined with our resources as we aggressively pursue these opportunities.
那麼這在實務上是什麼樣的呢?嗯,我認為這需要三件事:首先,我們需要更快地進行改進,情況不斷變化,我想要設定步伐,而不是跟隨領導者。我們還將全力以赴,在平台上投資更多的音樂體驗,例如視頻、我們之前討論過的更高價位的高級服務,以及讓粉絲和藝術家更緊密聯繫的新方式、功能和優惠這一切將持續推動音樂產業的歷史性擴張。最後,我們在積極尋求這些機會的同時,也必須嚴格控制資源使用。
I will let Christian talk more about the forecast. But as you look at Q1, remember that there's always a little overhang that we see in this quarter. quarter that historically looks different than the rest of the year. And while we don't share an annual forecast, I couldn't be more confident in where we're headed, and I expect 2025 to deliver healthy growth alongside improved profitability. And we're doing all of this while we continue to learn and optimize investing for the long term to benefit of artists, creators and our users.
我會讓克里斯蒂安更多地談論該預測。但是當你回顧第一季時,請記住我們在本季總是會看到一些小小的懸而未決的問題。從歷史上看,本季與一年中其他時間有所不同。雖然我們沒有分享年度預測,但我對我們的發展方向非常有信心,我預計 2025 年將實現健康成長同時提高獲利能力。我們在做這一切的同時,也將繼續學習和優化長期投資,使藝術家、創作者和用戶受益。
With that, I'll turn it over to Christian.
說完這些,我會把話題交給克里斯蒂安。
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Daniel, and thanks, everyone, for joining us. Let me give you some color on the quarter four results and then some perspective on our outlook. Our quarter four was exceptionally strong. MAU grew by EUR35 million to EUR675 million in total. We added 11 million net subscribers finishing at 263 million. This represented our best quarter four for MAU net additions, while the net additions for subscriber matched the peak performance we delivered five years ago. .
謝謝丹尼爾,也謝謝大家加入我們。讓我向您介紹一下第四季的業績,然後介紹一下我們的前景。我們的第四季表現異常強勁。每月活躍用戶成長 3,500 萬歐元,總計達 6.75 億歐元。新增用戶1100萬,總用戶數達2.63億。這是我們每月活躍用戶淨增量最好的第四個季度,而用戶淨增量與我們五年前的峰值表現相當。。
Total revenue was EUR4.2 billion and grew 17% year-on-year on a constant currency basis. Premium revenue rose 19% year-on-year on a constant currency basis, driven by continued subscriber growth and ARPU growth associated with price increases. Our advertising business saw currency-neutral growth of 6%, reflecting marketer spending and brand-related campaigns. We also saw some early positive progress in our automated sales efforts.
總收入為42億歐元,以固定匯率計算年增17%。以固定匯率計算,保費收入年增 19%,這得益於用戶數量的持續增長以及價格上漲帶來的 ARPU 增長。我們的廣告業務剔除匯率因素,成長了 6%,反映了行銷人員的支出和品牌相關的活動。我們的自動化銷售工作也取得了一些早期的正面進展。
Moving to profitability. Gross margin came in at a record 32.2%, surpassing guidance by approximately 40 basis points, primarily due to content cost favorability. For the full year, gross margin came in at 30.1%, representing 450 basis points of improvement relative to the full year 2023. This was our largest rate of gross margin expansion as a public company.
轉向盈利。毛利率達到創紀錄的 32.2%,超過預期約 40 個基點,主要得益於內容成本的優惠。全年毛利率為 30.1%,較 2023 年全年提高 450 個基點。這是我們作為上市公司以來毛利率增幅最大的一次。
Operating income of EUR477 million was aided by gross profit strength. Operating income was impacted by EUR96 million in social charges in the quarter, which were EUR80 million higher than our forecast. As a reminder, we don't forecast share price movements in our outlook for the business since they are outside of control.
4.77 億歐元的營業收入得益於強勁的毛利。本季營業收入受到 9,600 萬歐元的社會費用影響,比我們的預測高出 8,000 萬歐元。提醒一下,我們不會在業務展望中預測股價走勢,因為這是我們無法控制的。
Finally, free cash flow was record EUR877 million in the quarter. Performance here was driven by our improved operating income profile as well as the net working capital favorability. We ended the year with EUR7.5 billion in cash and short-term investments.
最後,本季自由現金流達到創紀錄的8.77億歐元。這一業績的取得得益於我們改善的營業收入狀況以及淨營運資本的有利因素。我們截至年底的現金和短期投資總額為 75 億歐元。
So looking ahead to guidance. As many of you know, we are entering a seasonally smallest quarter in terms of MAU and subscriber intake as well as ad sales. As a result, in quarter one, we are forecasting EUR678 million MAU, an increase of EUR3 million from quarter four and 265 million subscribers, an increase of 2 million over quarter four. We're also forecasting EUR4.2 billion in total revenue. We anticipate a gross margin of 31.5% and an operating income of EUR548 million.
因此期待指導。大家可能都知道,就每月活躍用戶 (MAU)、訂閱用戶數量以及廣告銷售額而言,我們正進入一個季節性最小的季度。因此,我們預測第一季的每月活躍用戶數為 6.78 億歐元,比第四季增加 300 萬歐元,訂閱用戶數為 2.65 億,比第四季增加 200 萬。我們也預測總收入為 42 億歐元。我們預期毛利率為31.5%,營業收入為5.48億歐元。
With respect to the MAU net additions, we had an exceptionally strong quarter four with outperformance driven by developing markets, and we are not prioritizing retention of the recent influx of lower engagement users in quarter one as we continue to focus on growing higher value users. While this will amplify typical quarter one seasonality. For the coming quarters, we remain confident in our product and marketing strategies, and we expect full year 2025 net additions to be within the range of the last four years.
就每月活躍用戶淨增量而言,我們在第四季度表現異常強勁,這得益於發展中市場的推動。我們會繼續專注於培養更高價值的用戶。雖然這會放大典型的第一季的季節性。對於未來幾個季度,我們對我們的產品和行銷策略仍然充滿信心,我們預計 2025 年全年淨增量將在過去四年的範圍內。
We respect -- with respect to subscriber net additions, we expect another year of healthy growth with a focus on customer quality and improving LTVs. While we do not give full year guidance for gross margin and operating margin, we are expecting both to improve in 2025 on a full year basis, albeit at a more moderated pace relative to last year's exceptional levels.
我們尊重-就用戶淨增而言,我們預計未來一年將實現健康成長,重點關注客戶品質和提高 LTV。雖然我們沒有提供全年毛利率和營業利潤率的指引,但我們預計2025 年全年毛利率和營業利潤率都將有所改善,儘管與去年的卓越水平相比,增長速度將有所放緩。
As Daniel alluded to earlier, we plan to make targeted investments in our core offerings, which may make our sequential gross margin cadence a bit more variable over the course of this year. That said, our fourth quarter gross margin is expected to be higher than the quarter one due to seasonality. Finally, we expect our free cash flow generation to meaningfully exceed what we generated in 2024.
正如丹尼爾之前提到的,我們計劃對我們的核心產品進行有針對性的投資,這可能會使我們今年的連續毛利率節奏更加不穩定。也就是說,由於季節性原因,我們第四季的毛利率預計將高於第一季。最後,我們預計我們的自由現金流將顯著超過 2024 年的水平。
On capital allocation, having just generated our first year of profitability, we're very pleased with the recent inflection in our liquidity profile and the emerging optionality this provides. Sustainable growth opportunities with attractive return potential remains our top priority. We are prioritizing the business first. To the extent capacity rises, we will, of course, take our shareholders into consideration.
在資本配置方面,我們剛剛實現了第一年的盈利,我們對近期流動性狀況的變化以及由此帶來的新興選擇性感到非常滿意。具有可觀回報潛力的可持續成長機會仍然是我們的首要任務。我們首先要考慮的是業務。當產能增加時,我們當然會考慮到股東的利益。
In conclusion and echoing Daniel's remarks, in 2025, we expect healthy growth and continued improvements in profitability while remaining disciplined with our resources.
總而言之,與丹尼爾的評論相呼應,到 2025 年,我們預計公司將實現健康成長並持續提高獲利能力,同時繼續嚴格控制資源使用。
With that, I hand things back to you, Bryan, in Q&A. Great.
說完這些,我在問答環節將問題交還給你,布萊恩。偉大的。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Thanks, Christian. Again, if you've got any questions, please go to slido.com, #SpotifyEarningsQ424. We'll be reading the questions in the order they appear in the queue with respect to how people vote up their preference for questions. And today's first question is going to come from Doug Anmuth on 2025 framing. 2022 was an investment year for Spotify. 2023 was about efficiency. 2024 was monetization. Daniel, you want to elaborate more on '25.
謝謝,克里斯蒂安。再次重申,如果您有任何疑問,請造訪 slido.com,#SpotifyEarningsQ424。我們將按照問題在隊列中出現的順序閱讀問題,並根據人們對問題的偏好進行投票。今天的第一個問題來自 Doug Anmuth,關於 2025 年框架。 2022 年是 Spotify 的投資年。 2023 年是關於效率的。 2024年實現貨幣化。丹尼爾,你想更詳細地闡述一下『25』。
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Yes, sure. I did touch on this in my opening remarks, but I'm coining this year, the year of accelerated execution and basically, what that should mean for investors is we think we can pick up the pace dramatically when it comes to our product velocity, we're going to double down on music, and we're going to be very disciplined while doing it. And because of all the advancements in AI, because of where our org is, we feel really good about being able to do this.
是的,當然。我在開場白中確實提到了這一點,但我將今年稱為“加速執行之年”,基本上,這對投資者來說意味著,我們認為我們可以在產品速度方面大幅加快步伐,我們將加倍致力於音樂,並且在做這件事時我們會非常自律。由於人工智慧的不斷進步,也由於我們組織的現狀,我們對能夠做到這一點感到非常高興。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
All right. Our next question is going to come from Eric Sheridan on capital allocation. Given the company's rising profit trajectory, can you discuss how management thinks about the potential and/or scope for capital returns to shareholders? .
好的。我們的下一個問題來自 Eric Sheridan 關於資本配置的問題。鑑於公司利潤上升的軌跡,您能否討論管理層如何看待股東資本回報的潛力和/或範圍?。
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Eric. As you're fully right, we are actually seeing an improved trajectory on the profit side but also on the cash flow side, as I said in my remarks, we have also to remember that this is our first year of profitability. And we do want to figure out how we actually invest and can invest in returning the potential through our business, and we are prioritizing our business first. And I think that's the key message. And as I said, if excess capacity rises, we will, of course, take shareholders into consideration.
謝謝你,埃里克。正如您所說,我們實際上看到利潤方面以及現金流方面的改善軌跡,正如我在發言中所說,我們還必須記住,這是我們盈利的第一年。我們確實想弄清楚我們如何實際投資,以及可以透過我們的業務投資回報潛力,並且我們優先考慮我們的業務。我認為這就是關鍵訊息。正如我所說,如果產能過剩增加,我們當然會考慮股東的利益。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
All right. Our next question is going to come from Jessica Reif Ehrlich on Labor Relations. Your recent deal with Universal Music Group was completed earlier than usual. Can you provide some of the flexibility or benefits that were not available prior to this from Spotify's perspective and how this may impact new services?
好的。我們的下一個問題來自傑西卡·賴夫·埃利希 (Jessica Reif Ehrlich) 關於勞資關係的問題。您最近與環球音樂集團的交易比平常完成得早。您能否從 Spotify 的角度提供一些之前無法獲得的靈活性或優勢,以及這將如何影響新服務?
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Yes. I mean I sort of alluded to this a little bit in my opening remarks, too. So we look at 2025 as the year where we'll double down on music, and we're very excited about what will come. And many of these things I can't talk about just yet, so you'll have to wait and find out on the product side, but we're very excited about it.
是的。我的意思是我在開場白中也稍微提到了這一點。因此,我們將 2025 年視為加倍投入音樂事業的一年,我們對未來的發展感到非常興奮。其中很多事情我現在還不能談論,所以你必須等待,在產品方面才能知道,但我們對此感到非常興奮。
But maybe as a general upleveling to this, if you think about sort of the history of where we've been as a company, most of what we try to do in the early days was really getting people from piracy into a legal music environment. And to do that, we needed a very, very simple proposition. And that simple proposition was our freemium model.
但也許作為對此的一個總體提升,如果你思考我們公司的歷史,我們早期所做的大部分工作實際上都是讓人們遠離盜版,進入合法的音樂環境。為了做到這一點,我們需要一個非常非常簡單的主張。這個簡單的主張就是我們的免費增值模式。
You could start using Spotify for free tried out. And if you like the product, and you were using it, we added a lot of benefits for you to become a paying premium subscriber. And a lot of our consumers ended up doing that. Over time then, we added a few other modes for you to pay for Spotify, like the Family Plan, like Duo, like Student Plans, just to name a few that's been driving growth.
您可以開始免費試用 Spotify。如果您喜歡該產品並且正在使用它,我們會為您提供很多福利,讓您成為付費高級用戶。我們的許多消費者最終都這麼做了。隨著時間的推移,我們為您添加了一些其他的 Spotify 付費模式,例如家庭計劃、Duo、學生計劃,這些只是推動成長的幾種模式。
The next version of the music industry, I believe, is one where we're going to tailor the experience of Spotify to all of these different subgroups. One of them we've been talking about, which is the Super Fans. So I'm personally super excited about this one. And this is a product I've been waiting on for quite some time as a super fan of music. And I'm playing around with it now, and it's really exciting, and I can't wait to show you guys that, but that's obviously one of those things that we are talking to the music industry about bringing to the table, but there's more to come when it comes to this sort of not one-size-fits-all future of music, which we're excited about.
我相信,在音樂產業的下一個版本中,我們將為所有不同的子群體量身定制 Spotify 的體驗。我們一直在談論其中之一,那就是超級粉絲。所以我個人對這個非常興奮。身為超級音樂迷,我已經等待這個產品很久了。我現在正在嘗試,這真的很令人興奮,我迫不及待地想向你們展示,但這顯然是我們正在與音樂界討論要實現的事情之一,但當談到這種並非千篇一律的音樂未來時,我們對此感到興奮。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
All right. Our next question is going to come from Rich Greenfield on advertising. Advertising growth remains disappointing. While you're racing programmatic, there seems to be a disconnect given the size and engagement of your audience. and you'd rather lackluster advertising revenues. Can you help us understand why brands are not dying to be on Spotify given the momentum?
好的。我們的下一個問題來自 Rich Greenfield 關於廣告的問題。廣告成長仍然令人失望。當你競相進行程序化行銷時,考慮到你的受眾的規模和參與度,似乎存在著一種脫節。你寧願看到廣告收入慘淡。您能否幫助我們理解,為何在如此強勁的發展動能下,各大品牌卻不熱衷於加入 Spotify?
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Richard. Yes, I first start out to say, yes, we moved from brand sales into performance sales. It is clearly something that we recognized last year, we were late on the ball. So that is nothing to be sort of hiding away from. But from that, we actually made a decision then to move into programmatic, and that takes a little bit of time but we are on the ball now. We have done the technical build-out. It's largely completed. And we also now then are getting to a unified supply on our server, opening up to more demand on the bidding.
謝謝你,理查。是的,我首先要說的是,是的,我們從品牌銷售轉向了績效銷售。這顯然是我們去年就意識到的事情,我們行動遲緩了。所以這並沒有什麼可隱藏的。但從那時起,我們實際上就決定轉向程式化,這需要一點時間,但我們現在已經開始行動了。我們已經完成技術建置。基本已經完工了。現在,我們的伺服器也開始實現統一供應,從而滿足更多的競標需求。
As you know, we have started out now The Trade Desk and we're going to look to add more partners onto our platform. And as I said last quarter, Yes, this is a little bit late, but we have a stable transition. And this year 2025 will be the year of building and 2026 when we think we're going to get scale. I think we're delivering on time now when we know what to do, and we have happy partners, and we are happy.
如您所知,我們現在已經啟動了 The Trade Desk,並且我們將尋求在我們的平台上添加更多的合作夥伴。正如我上個季度所說的那樣,是的,這有點晚了,但我們有一個穩定的過渡。我們認為,2025 年將是建設之年,2026 年將實現規模化。我認為,當我們知道該做什麼時,我們就能按時交付,並且我們擁有快樂的合作夥伴,我們也很高興。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Okay. Our next question is going to come from Justin Patterson on pricing. It seems like we're entering a price inflationary market with Amazon announcing price increases last week and labels wanting more frequent price increases. Given your breadth of content and feature leadership, how do you think about your adjusting price to value in an inflationary environment. .
好的。我們的下一個問題來自賈斯汀·帕特森關於定價的問題。看起來我們正在進入一個價格通膨的市場,亞馬遜上周宣布漲價,而各大品牌則希望更頻繁地漲價。鑑於您所涵蓋的內容範圍和功能領導力,您如何看待在通膨環境下調整價格以實現價值?。
Alex Norstrom - Co-President, Chief Business Officer
Alex Norstrom - Co-President, Chief Business Officer
Thanks for the question, Justin. This is Alex Norstrom here. The way we think about ARPU growth going forward is that it's a function between really three things. It's price adjustments, future tiering, and then also selling add-ons to our existing subscribers. And with respect to price increases, specifically, as Daniel has mentioned before, this is now a part of our toolbox.
謝謝你的提問,賈斯汀。我是 Alex Norstrom。我們認為未來 ARPU 成長實際上是三件事之間的函數。這是價格調整、未來分層,然後也向我們現有的訂戶銷售附加零件。關於價格上漲,具體來說,正如丹尼爾之前提到的,這現在是我們工具箱的一部分。
We take great care in the steps to balance the value to price ratio over time. This is something we've mentioned before as well. And when it comes to value, the way we do it is we add value by way of features and content experiences. And you can see us in the last year here, adding AS, things like AI playlists, JAM and so on. And we've continuously just increase the size of the number of audio books we have. We have 350,000 audio books now in 10 markets. We have 67 million video pods. We pretty much have the world's entire catalog of music.
我們非常謹慎地採取措施來平衡隨著時間的推移價值與價格的比率。我們之前也提到過這一點。說到價值,我們的做法是透過功能和內容體驗來增加價值。您可以在去年看到我們在這裡添加了 AS、AI 播放清單、JAM 等等。我們一直在不斷增加有聲書的數量。目前,我們在 10 個市場擁有 350,000 本有聲書。我們有 6700 萬個影片片段。我們幾乎擁有全世界的音樂目錄。
And then as far as price goes, we adjust price where it makes sense. And then our subscribers reward us with more love, more engagement and sticking around. And so really, the key takeaway here is that we believe Spotify is one of, if not the most loved and highest value in subscription entertainment.
至於價格,我們會在合理範圍內調整價格。然後我們的訂閱者會以更多的愛、更多的參與和堅持來回報我們。所以,這裡的關鍵點是,我們相信 Spotify 是訂閱娛樂領域中最受歡迎、價值最高的服務之一。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
All right. Another question from Rich Greenfield on video. Daniel, video is clearly important to you. but it's still a small fraction of time spent with Spotify today. Would you be able to quantify that amount of consumption? And do you have a long-term goal for mobile time spent with video versus audio only? And will the TV play a role in video's growth over time? .
好的。影片中還有來自 Rich Greenfield 的另一個問題。丹尼爾,影片對你來說顯然很重要。但這仍然只是人們如今使用 Spotify 時間的一小部分。您能量化這個消費量嗎?您對在行動裝置上觀看影片和聆聽音訊的時間有一個長期目標嗎?隨著時間的推移,電視是否會在影片的發展中發揮作用?。
Gustav Soederstroem - Co-President, Chief Product and Technology Officer
Gustav Soederstroem - Co-President, Chief Product and Technology Officer
Rich, this is Gustav. I'll take that question. So as you know, we had this event in LA in November that I mentioned, where we launched a new video offering. And as you know, I think podcasts are becoming video. This is very important to us. And so, we saw this pretty early on, and we pivoted our model to build both a better creator experience with the premium payouts, but also importantly, a better consumer experience, where premium users in these current four markets receive an experience uninterrupted by ads. And we launched this just recently, but we are very pleased with what we're seeing so far.
里奇,這是古斯塔夫。我來回答這個問題。如你所知,我們在 11 月在洛杉磯舉辦了我提到的這次活動,推出了一款新的影片產品。正如您所知,我認為播客正在變成視訊。這對我們來說非常重要。因此,我們很早就看到了這一點,並調整了我們的模式,不僅透過付費付費為創作者提供更好的體驗,更重要的是,為消費者提供更好的體驗,讓當前四個市場的付費用戶獲得不受廣告幹擾的體驗。我們最近才剛推出這個產品,但我們對目前看到的結果感到非常滿意。
So about 70% of the eligible creators for this offering have already opted in, which is above our expectations. We're very happy about that. And we already have more than 300,000 video podcasts, and this is growing, and we have about 6 million total podcasts, So we're very happy with the engagement we're seeing. It's very early, but we're very happy with it.
因此,大約 70% 符合資格的創作者已經選擇加入,這超出了我們的預期。我們對此感到非常高興。我們現在已經擁有超過 30 萬個視訊播客,而且這個數字還在不斷增長,目前我們的播客總數約為 600 萬個,因此,我們對所看到的參與度感到非常滿意。雖然還為時過早,但我們對此感到非常高興。
And when it comes to engagement, obviously, we always want to maximize engagement across all platforms. As I think you know, we invest heavily in ubiquity, and that includes TV. So we've been investing in the TV experience for several years, and it is a very important part
當談到參與度時,顯然我們總是希望最大限度地提高所有平台的參與度。我想您知道,我們在普及方面投入了巨資,其中包括電視。所以我們多年來一直在投資電視體驗,這是非常重要的一部分
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Okay. Next question from Benjamin Black on margins. Gross margins came in above expectations this quarter. Could you dig into the drivers of variability here? And also, could you help us understand the trajectory of gross margins and operating margins for 2025?
好的。下一個問題來自 Benjamin Black,關於利潤率。本季毛利率超出預期。您能深入研究一下這裡造成變化的驅動因素嗎?另外,您能幫助我們了解 2025 年毛利率和營業利益率的變化趨勢嗎?
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Ben. The gross margin for quarter four was -- I mean, we said the content cost favorability. And as you said, there was a one-timer on the impairment coming through. I'm not going to go into more details on quarter four, but I just want to give you then a little bit on the drivers going forward. And we don't give a guidance for the full year, but we do try to make it as easy for you as possible.
謝謝你,本。第四季的毛利率是——我的意思是,我們說的是內容成本的有利性。正如你所說,有一個關於損害的一次性事件發生。我不會詳細介紹第四季度,但我只想向您介紹一些未來的驅動因素。我們不提供全年的指導,但我們會盡力為您提供盡可能方便的指導。
And that's why -- at the same time, as we said, that we're going to plan to make targeted investments in our core offerings, and we have done that before. We have done it in audiobooks, and we're now doing the video, and we're saying we're also going to invest in music this year. That will then come through the year. But to give you some kind of -- something to hold on to, we also said that -- this will be more variable over the course of this year. But in the end of the year, it should be higher than we ended in 2024 for the full year. And the quarter four will also be higher than quarter one.
這就是為什麼——正如我們所說,我們計劃對我們的核心產品進行有針對性的投資,而我們之前已經這樣做了。我們已經在有聲讀物方面取得了進展,現在我們正在製作視頻,而且我們今年還將在音樂方面進行投資。這將會在今年實現。但為了提供您一些可以依靠的東西,我們也說過,今年的情況將會更加多變。但到今年年底,它應該會高於 2024 年全年的水平。第四季的業績也將高於第一季。
And I think with that, you just -- you can imagine that there will be possibilities for distortion, but there is also that there is an investment that needs to come through this year to drive the growth we are looking for in the business. And finally, I just want to on that also mention that the seasonality will play in as well. Okay.
我認為,你可以想像可能會出現扭曲的可能性,但今年也需要進行投資來推動我們所尋求的業務成長。最後,我想提一下,季節性也會發揮作用。好的。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
All right. Our next question is going to come from Batya Levi on the Spotify Partner program. How has the response been from the creators, your partner program. Can you quantify the impact expect on margins in first quarter from the program? And does it ramp from here?
好的。我們的下一個問題來自 Batya Levi,關於 Spotify 合作夥伴計畫。您的合作夥伴計劃的創作者對此有何反應?您能否量化該計劃對第一季利潤率的預期影響?它是從這裡開始上升的嗎?
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
On the video side. And Gustav already mentioned, we've seen tremendous results and a very big uptake on video podcasters coming to the platform overall. And now more and more of them are obviously adopting our partner program. As it pertains to margins, I think his answer, I don't need to regurgitate it. I think it was pretty solid one, which is we feel really good about it on the year, but maybe some variability in the quarters.
在視頻方面。古斯塔夫已經提到,我們已經看到了巨大的成果,並且整個平台上視訊播客的使用率非常高。現在顯然越來越多的公司正在採用我們的合作夥伴計劃。至於利潤,我想他的回答是,我不需要重複它。我認為這是一個相當可靠的結果,我們對今年的表現感到非常滿意,但在各個季度可能會有一些變化。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Next question is from Deepak Mathivanan on user plans. Recently, some of us family plan users were prompted to enter our ZIP codes. Spotify family plans are somewhat widely shared by people outside of the household by many. Do you see opportunity for sharing crackdown in the family plan?
下一個問題來自 Deepak Mathivanan 關於用戶計劃。最近,我們一些家庭計畫使用者被提示輸入郵遞區號。Spotify 家庭計劃已被許多人在家庭以外的人廣泛分享。您是否看到了家庭計劃中打擊共享住房的機會?
Alex Norstrom - Co-President, Chief Business Officer
Alex Norstrom - Co-President, Chief Business Officer
Thanks, Deepak. Alex here. It's just wild to see how popular the family plan is. It's making up a big proportion of our subscriber base. And we constantly make changes to make sure that users and subscribers use the family plan in the right way. And as we kind of go along, we see that there are positive results coming off of this, and we're just going to continue to innovate and iterate on this.
謝謝,迪帕克。這裡是亞歷克斯。家庭計劃如此受歡迎真是令人難以置信。它佔據了我們用戶群的很大一部分。我們不斷做出改變以確保用戶和訂閱者以正確的方式使用家庭計劃。隨著我們的不斷推進,我們看到了積極的成果,我們將繼續創新和迭代。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
We've got another question from Doug Anmuth on MAU, the funnel. Can you talk about the drivers of the record MAU net additions across marketing, promotions and other factors? And how does this position Spotify for premium subscriber additions in 2025?
Doug Anmuth 也向我們提出了另一個關於 MAU(漏斗)的問題。您能否談談行銷、促銷和其他因素導致 MAU 淨增量創紀錄的驅動因素?那麼這對 Spotify 在 2025 年吸引優質用戶有何影響?
Alex Norstrom - Co-President, Chief Business Officer
Alex Norstrom - Co-President, Chief Business Officer
I'll take this, Doug. It's Alex again. So if you take a step back and really think about what we're doing here, it's -- we believe that music is the most beloved art form in and around the world. If you add to that, the video podcasts and then also our recent entering into the books market with audiobooks, we just see this enormous time ahead of us. So there's plenty of headroom for us to grow.
我接受這個,道格。又是亞歷克斯。所以,如果你退一步認真思考我們在這裡所做的事情,那就是——我們相信音樂是全世界最受喜愛的藝術形式。如果再加上視訊播客以及我們最近透過有聲書進入圖書市場,我們就會看到,我們面前還有一段漫長的路要走。因此,我們還有足夠的發展空間。
The most important thing is that we are relentlessly focused on building this, what we call the best and most valuable subscriptions offering for paying users around the world. And I'm really happy to report that our strategies are working.
最重要的是,我們堅持不懈地致力於打造這項服務,為全球付費用戶提供最好、最有價值的訂閱服務。我很高興地告訴大家,我們的策略正在發揮作用。
If you, for instance, take a look at the monthly time spent on Spotify, it's one of the highest compared to any of the top entertainment platforms out there. Our subs just love the wonderful combo of music, video podcast now, and audio books. And it's worth repeating that in Q4, we had 11 million net adds, which was a record, tied with Q4 in 2019. And the growth was really just broad-based across geo, product with US and emerging markets leading the outperformance.
例如,如果你看看人們每月在 Spotify 上花費的時間,你會發現,與任何頂級娛樂平台相比,它是最高之一。我們的訂閱者非常喜歡音樂、視訊播客和有聲讀物的完美組合。值得重複的是,在第四季度,我們淨增了 1,100 萬用戶,創下了歷史新高,與 2019 年第四季持平。而且成長其實是跨地域的,產品方面,美國和新興市場表現領先。
We even saw some progress for the moments in a day that users use Spotify -- subscribers use Spotify. And one interesting stat is that we're now second to only AM and FM radio in the US in cars. So the sub to MAU ratio is roughly 40% now and in more developed markets, it's 50% or even north of 50%. And the bottom line here is that the funnel is strong around the world.
我們甚至看到用戶一天中使用 Spotify 的時刻(訂閱者使用 Spotify)取得了一些進展。一個有趣的統計數據是,我們現在在美國汽車中僅次於 AM 和 FM 廣播。因此,目前訂閱者與每月活躍用戶的比例約為 40%,而在較發達的市場,這一比例為 50% 甚至超過 50%。最重要的是,這個漏斗在世界各地都很強大。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Okay. We got another question from Michael Morris on competition. Can you expand on the shifts in competitor dynamics in select developing markets comment from your shareholder deck. And are these positive or negative shifts? Are they all from the same competitor? And how long do you expect the impact to continue?
好的。邁克爾莫里斯(Michael Morris)向我們提出了另一個關於競爭的問題。您能否從股東的角度詳細說明特定發展中市場中競爭對手動態的變化?這些轉變是正面的還是負面的?他們都來自同一個競爭對手嗎?您預計這種影響會持續多久?
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Yes. So again, there's always competitive dynamics. We're obviously operating in a highly competitive market place with lots of competitors. That's not news to us. That's something that's existed really from the beginning of the start of this company and keeps being the case. And we have everything from sort of global tech platforms as competitors to sometimes local regional ones. What tends to happen is that local regional ones tends to be quite -- when it's early stages of markets, they tend to be quite present.
是的。所以,競爭態勢總是存在的。顯然,我們的市場競爭非常激烈,競爭對手眾多。這對我們來說不是什麼新聞。這個問題從公司創立之初就一直存在,並且一直持續存在。我們的競爭對手有全球性技術平台,有時也有本地區域性平台。通常的情況是,當市場處於早期階段時,本地區域性企業往往相當活躍。
And then as the market matures, they tend to fall away. And so what we were specifically referencing in this case was a net positive to Spotify, where one of our competitors fell away in the marketplace. But again, overall, lots of competitors exist in this marketplace. We're focused on driving the best product. The best product will have the most engagement. The most engagements will mean the highest lifetime value, which, of course, is the driver of the business. So nothing really to see here except the sort of normal play.
隨著市場逐漸成熟,它們就會逐漸消失。因此,我們在這個案例中特別提到的是,這對 Spotify 來說是一個淨利好,因為我們的一個競爭對手在市場上消失了。但整體而言,這個市場上存在著許多競爭對手。我們專注於推出最好的產品。最好的產品將會獲得最多的參與度。最多的參與意味著最高的終身價值,這當然是業務的驅動力。所以除了正常的比賽以外這裡真的沒什麼好看的。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Okay. Next question from Rich Greenfield on education. Can you explain how you're thinking about the education and courses product that initially launched in the UK? What have you learned to date? Is it a video-first product? The audio/video mix? Will there be ask in educational content?
好的。下一個問題來自 Rich Greenfield 關於教育的問題。您能否解釋一下您對最初在英國推出的教育和課程產品的看法?到目前為止你學到了什麼?它是視訊優先的產品嗎?音訊/視訊混合?教育內容會有提問嗎?
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
So it's really early days when it comes to our educational program, but it's a category that I'm personally quite passionate about. What I can say so far is that we're really pleased with the early developments. There's been millions of subscribers in the UK that have seen educational content. There's been very strong demand in terms of people trialing out the educational part and even sampling it. So, so far, very positive early indications.
因此,我們的教育計畫還處於早期階段,但這是我個人非常熱衷的一個類別。到目前為止我可以說的是,我們對早期的發展感到非常滿意。英國有數百萬訂閱者曾觀看教育內容。人們對試用教育部分甚至進行抽樣的需求非常強烈。因此,到目前為止,早期跡象非常積極。
But these are very, very early days. And if you know this company and known us for a while, this is quite oftentimes, we do experiment quite a bit in different verticals. Sometimes we pivot with these learnings. Sometimes we double down and scale. It's a space, however, that is quite exciting and maybe to put that in perspective for investors. So the global entertainment industry is probably somewhere between $2 trillion to $2.5 trillion case.
但現在還處於非常早期的階段。如果您了解這家公司並且認識我們有一段時間了,您就會知道,我們經常會在不同的垂直領域進行大量的實驗。有時我們會根據這些學習成果做出調整。有時我們會加倍努力並擴大規模。然而,這是一個相當令人興奮的領域,或許可以讓投資者更了解它。因此全球娛樂業的規模可能在 2 兆到 2.5 兆美元之間。
If you look at the global educational marketplace, it's $6 trillion, $6.5 trillion in totality. But if you remove sort of basic education or elementary or K9 or K-12 education, it's about $2 trillion to $2.5 trillion. So the space of knowledge versus entertainment is an interesting one.
如果你看看全球教育市場,規模是 6 兆美元,總計 6.5 兆美元。但如果去掉基礎教育、小學、K9 或 K-12 教育,其成本約為 2 兆至 2.5 兆美元。因此,知識與娛樂之間的空間是一個有趣的空間。
And if you think about Spotify as a product, one of the most amazing things for us is we're not a pure-play entertainment platform. We are also a platform where people spend a lot of time educating themselves already with podcast, with audio books. So education is really a quite natural step and extension into that journey. But it's super early days, and you should not be surprised if we keep on experimenting, improving or pivoting the product that we're putting out in the marketplace.
如果你將 Spotify 視為一種產品,那麼對我們來說最令人驚奇的事情之一就是我們並不是一個純粹的娛樂平台。我們也是一個平台,人們花很多時間透過播客、有聲書進行自我教育。因此,教育實際上是這趟旅程中非常自然的一步和延伸。但現在還處於非常早期的階段,如果我們繼續試驗、改進或調整我們正在進入市場上的產品,你也不應該感到驚訝。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Okay. Our next question is from Michael Morris on our Premium business. Premium subscriber additions significantly exceeded your fourth quarter outlook at 11 million and were an acceleration compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. Why do you forecast the slowdown to 2 million net adds in first quarter of '25 relative to the 3 million you added in the first quarter of '24?
好的。我們的下一個問題來自邁克爾莫里斯 (Michael Morris) 關於我們的高端業務。高級訂閱用戶數量的增加顯著超過了您對第四季度 1,100 萬的預期,並且與 2023 年第四季相比有所加速。為什麼您預測 2025 年第一季的淨新增人數將放緩至 200 萬,而 2024 年第一季的淨新增人數為 300 萬?
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Yes. Thank you. It is true. We did an acceleration and very happy about quarter four. We said the wrapped developing markets, our competitors moving out was a reason that we overperformed. That usually brings a little bit of a hangover into the first quarter. And first quarter also from a seasonality point of view is usually weaker.
是的。謝謝。是真的。我們進行了加速,對第四季感到非常滿意。我們說,包裹發展中市場,競爭對手的退出,是我們表現優異的一個原因。這通常會給第一季帶來一些負面影響。從季節性的角度來看,第一季通常也較為疲軟。
Then, of course, as always, how we do our product marketing strategy for the year and over the year will also have an impact of how we see things. But we feel -- I think the most important message is that for the full year, we see a healthy growth still for the company.
當然,與往常一樣,我們如何制定今年及全年的產品行銷策略也會對我們的看法產生影響。但我們感覺——我認為最重要的訊息是,就全年而言,我們看到公司仍然保持健康的成長。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Okay. Our next question is from Justin Patterson also on the subscriber business. Given the progress in margins and retention, how are you thinking about reinvesting in marketing or adjusting pricing features in rest of world markets to drive the next wave of subscriber growth?
好的。我們的下一個問題來自賈斯汀·帕特森,同樣是關於用戶業務的。鑑於利潤率和保留率的提高,您如何考慮在行銷方面進行再投資或調整世界其他市場的定價功能,以推動下一波用戶成長?
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
What I would say is for sort of the near to midterm, the profitability and growth of profitability for the company still will be very much our developed markets. But with that said, what I'm particularly pleased about in Q4 and maybe even the back half of the year is the development of the emerging markets. We saw it pretty clearly in MAU top line growth. And I think that's due to a lot of the twists that the teams have been doing that gets people in the funnel.
我想說的是,從近期到中期來看,公司的獲利能力和獲利成長仍然很大程度上取決於我們發達的市場。但話雖如此,我對第四季乃至下半年特別高興的是新興市場的發展。我們在每月活躍用戶收入的成長中清楚地看到了這一點。我認為這是由於團隊進行了大量曲折才使人們進入渠道。
We're trying to increase engagement. I feel really good about some of the music things we're planning across the year. That will drive even further engagement in those emerging markets. And when we have some very strong engagement, it typically then always correlates with strong conversion to subscriber growth. And this has been the case from the early days of Latin America where people were questioning how big that market could be, and I now I think everyone realizes it's a very big market and can be a meaningful additive driver for both revenue and profitability for both the company and the music industry holistically.
我們正在努力提高參與度。我對我們全年計劃的一些音樂活動感到非常滿意。這將進一步推動這些新興市場的參與。當我們擁有非常強大的參與度時,它通常總是與訂閱者成長的強勁轉換有關。從拉丁美洲早期開始,人們就一直在質疑這個市場到底有多大,但現在我認為每個人都意識到這是一個非常大的市場,可以成為雙方收入和盈利能力的重要附加驅動力。產業的整體發展。
And I certainly believe that will be the case for these emerging markets, too. I also want to note that in Q4, we did see a positive trend on subscriber net additions from emerging markets, too. So we are making progress on that front, but I think that there's just to set expectations. You should expect more of the profitability growth to come from developed markets rather than emerging markets. But over a long-term time, we feel very confident that places like India and others will be substantial businesses to Spotify that will deliver.
我堅信這些新興市場也會如此。我還想指出的是,在第四季度,我們確實看到新興市場用戶淨增趨勢呈現正面趨勢。因此,我們在這方面取得了進展,但我認為這只是設定期望而已。您應該預期更多的獲利成長來自已開發市場而不是新興市場。但從長遠來看,我們非常有信心印度等地將為 Spotify 帶來巨大的業務。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Okay. We've got a question from Ben Swinburne on Label Relations. How does your new agreement with Universal Music Group impact your ability to continue to diversify your service beyond music, while at the same time, drive improving margins. Should we expect any changes to how your music royalties are calculated over time as a result of this Streaming 2.0 agreement?
好的。我們收到了 Ben Swinburne 關於標籤關係的問題。您與環球音樂集團達成的新協議將如何影響您繼續在音樂之外提供多元化服務的能力,同時提高利潤率?由於該串流媒體 2.0 協議的實施,我們是否應該預期您的音樂版稅計算方式會隨著時間的推移而改變?
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Well, I'll start, and maybe Christian wants to add something. So first and foremost, I think one of the most common misconception that I quite often hear from analysts is that they believe that there is a win-lose dynamic between us and the labels. Ever since starting this company 18 years ago, that's not how we've looked at this. We always look at this as a win-win dynamic. And if you want to simplify it to the very core, everything for Spotify is if we get meaningful scale, our margins and our profit goes from there.
好吧,我先開始,也許克里斯蒂安想補充一些內容。首先,我認為我經常從分析師那裡聽到的一個最常見的誤解是,他們認為我們和唱片公司之間存在著雙輸的關係。自從 18 年前創立這家公司以來,我們就不是這樣看待這個問題的。我們始終將此視為雙贏的局面。如果你想將其簡化到最核心的程度,那麼對於 Spotify 來說,如果我們獲得有意義的規模,我們的利潤和利潤就會從那裡開始。
So the first, really, I would say, 16 years of the company, all we were focused on was driving meaningful scale. We did not worry about profitability. And so that's why you heard me say, we have a great product but not necessarily a great business. Through cost reductions, but then also through the year of monetization, I think we're now proving that we're a great business too. And much of that really comes from that added scale that we're now operating at. Like most platform businesses, more scale begets more profitability. So that's what I can say at the simplest term.
因此,我想說,在公司成立後的前 16 年裡,我們一直致力於實現有意義的規模化。我們並不擔心獲利能力。所以你們會聽到我說,我們有很好的產品,但不一定有很好的生意。透過降低成本,然後透過一年的貨幣化,我認為我們現在證明我們也是一家偉大的企業。這很大程度來自於我們目前營運規模的擴大。與大多數平台業務一樣,規模越大,獲利能力越強。這就是我能用最簡單的方式說的話。
As usual, we will not comment on any of the specifics with the deal negotiations other than to say that we believe this sets us up for very strong growth. And if we're growing very nicely, our label ecosystems and our partners will benefit from this, too, and that's what we call the win-win.
像往常一樣,我們不會對交易談判的任何細節發表評論,只會說我們相信這將為我們帶來非常強勁的成長。如果我們發展得很好,我們的標籤生態系統和合作夥伴也將從中受益,這就是我們所說的雙贏。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
We've got a question from Rich Greenfield for Christian. Having a few months under your belt now here at Spotify, what differentiates Spotify's culture? And have there been any meaningful changes you've made since starting either structurally or philosophically?
我們有里奇·格林菲爾德 (Rich Greenfield) 向克里斯蒂安 (Christian) 提出一個問題。您已經在 Spotify 工作了幾個月,您認為 Spotify 的文化有何不同?從開始以來,您在結構或哲學上是否做出了任何有意義的改變?
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Thank you. That is, of course, an interesting question for me. Maybe I'll ask actually, Daniel, in the end to see if I've done some meaningful changes, but it's quite early days. I would say that coming into this company and thinking about what is it that makes it different and what is it that I feel that is strong culture in this company, I would say that there's a couple of things.
謝謝。這對我來說當然是一個有趣的問題。丹尼爾,也許我最終會問一下我是否做了一些有意義的改變,但現在還為時過早。我想說,來到這家公司並思考是什麼讓它與眾不同以及我認為這家公司強大的文化是什麼,我會說有幾件事。
One is that the focus on how to create value through the technology and platform is very strong in the company. And you feel that when you get into the company. The other thing on focus is that it is a very focused company. So the company and my colleagues and myself, we are very focused on whatever we want to do, make sure we try to stay focused.
一是公司非常注重如何透過科技和平台創造價值。當你進入公司的時候你就會感受到這一點。關於重點的另一件事是,這是一家非常專注的公司。因此,公司、我的同事和我自己都非常專注於我們想做的事情,確保我們盡力保持專注。
And I think that is in an easy way, trying to explain how this company feels like. And it's also then -- which is maybe important also, it is important is that it's also fun to be here. When it comes to my own work and what I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about how I can then come in with my leadership and my experience and with the help of my colleagues here, how we can improve our scalability. That's where I tried to put my focus and work on through the structure we have and the structure we can have, how do we get those proof points that actually make us -- make a difference when it comes to scalability over time. That's where I'm trying to work right now.
我認為這是一種簡單的方式,試圖解釋這家公司的感受。而且這也很重要——這也許也很重要,重要的是來到這裡也很有趣。當談到我自己的工作和我所考慮的事情時,我在思考如何利用我的領導力和經驗,並在我同事的幫助下,提高我們的可擴展性。這就是我試圖集中精力並致力於透過我們現有的結構和可以擁有的結構來獲得那些真正讓我們在長期可擴展性方面有所作為的證明點。這就是我現在努力工作的地方。
Anything to add, Daniel, on my --
丹尼爾,還有什麼要補充的嗎?--
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
I think the main thing people can see from Christian coming in is he used to have a suit and tie on every day. And as evident from Spotify's culture, he's now sitting in T-shirt. So we're loving to see that difference in culture showing up.
我認為人們從克里斯蒂安身上看到的主要特徵是他每天都穿著西裝打著領帶。從 Spotify 的文化就可以看出,他現在穿著 T 卹。因此我們很高興看到文化差異的顯現。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
We've got a question from Eric Sheridan on advertising. Can you discuss how to think about the building blocks for growth in the company's advertising business as we progress deeper into 2025? And how might video inventory around creator efforts accelerate the ads possibility?
艾瑞克·謝裡丹(Eric Sheridan)向我們提出了一個關於廣告的問題。您能否討論一下隨著我們進入 2025 年,如何思考公司廣告業務成長的基礎?圍繞創作者努力的影片庫存如何加速廣告的可能性?
Alex Norstrom - Co-President, Chief Business Officer
Alex Norstrom - Co-President, Chief Business Officer
Great question, Eric. It's really a question of how supply meets demand. And if you think about the advertising market, it's just growing, growing, some say that it will grow from $1 trillion to $2 trillion in the next decade. I don't know what the number is. It's just clear that it's growing.
很好的問題,埃里克。這實際上是一個供應如何滿足需求的問題。如果你考慮廣告市場,它一直在成長,有人說未來十年它將從 1 兆美元成長到 2 兆美元。我不知道這個號碼是多少。很顯然它正在增長。
And on the supply side, if you look at Spotify, we have a pretty distinct and unique inventory of audio engagement, which is very high, and so very sticky. And if you think about how we've treated our supply before on the free tier, it's -- we've generally just used direct sales to meet this demand. And so the difference now from before is that we are going to implement automation and programmatic. And the idea with that is simply to just be saying, hey, we're open for business now, and we're going to have our supply meet the ever-increasing demand that's out there.
在供應方面,如果你看看 Spotify,你會發現我們擁有非常獨特和獨特的音頻參與度庫存,這個庫存非常高,而且非常具有粘性。如果您想想我們之前在免費層如何處理我們的供應,我們通常只是使用直接銷售來滿足這種需求。所以現在與以前的差別是我們要實現自動化和程序化。我們的想法很簡單,就是說,嘿,我們現在開始營業了,我們將保證我們的供應滿足不斷增長的需求。
As far as video goes, it's a format that is obviously very potent and very attractive. And the more video inventory grows, the more supply we will have and the more demand we will be able to meet.
就視訊而言,它是一種顯然非常有效且非常有吸引力的格式。視訊庫存越多,我們的供應量就越大,我們能夠滿足的需求就越大。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
All right. Our next question comes from Doug Reitz on margins. What's driving the expected sequential decline in gross margins in the first quarter of 2025? And is your new deal with Universal a factor?
好的。我們的下一個問題來自 Doug Reitz 關於利潤的問題。預計2025年第一季毛利率將季減,原因何在?您與環球影業的新協議是其中一個因素嗎?
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Well, I'm not going to go point to details on the UMG part. But first of all, quarter one, I think the main driver in quarter one is seasonality. Ad sales is usually weaker and it is a weaker quarter. And therefore, the gross margin will be always a little bit lower in that quarter.
好吧,我不會去指出 UMG 部分的細節。但首先,第一季度,我認為第一季的主要驅動因素是季節性。廣告銷售通常較弱,這是一個較弱的季度。因此,該季度的毛利率總是會略低一些。
But on top of that, we have made several investments in video and others. And this, of course, will also impact margin. But without going into any details, that's what I'm going to say.
但除此之外,我們還在影片和其他領域進行了多項投資。當然,這也會影響利潤。但我無需贅述任何細節,我只想說這些。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Right. We've got a sort of a related question from Mark Zgutowicz on margins. Now, that podcast is breakeven on gross profit, how should we be thinking about a podcast expense trajectory exiting 2024? And when can we expect accretion?
正確的。Mark Zgutowicz 向我們提出了一個有關利潤率的問題。現在,播客的毛利已經達到收支平衡,我們該如何看待 2024 年播客的費用走勢?我們什麼時候可以期待增生?
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Well, as say, we have then moved into essentially a breakeven point on into video. So you should see it a little bit like with audio books. We targeted disciplined investments that would create future value for our customers and investment that we believe gives healthy returns over time. But also can have an impact on the margin as we take us there.
好吧,就像說,我們已經進入了視訊領域的損益平衡點。因此,您應該看到它有點像有聲讀物。我們的目標是進行有紀律的投資,為我們的客戶創造未來價值,我們相信這些投資隨著時間的推移會帶來豐厚的回報。但當我們到達那裡時也會對利潤產生影響。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Okay. Our next question is from Maria Ripps. I was Spotify thinking about skippable versus non-skippable, the user experience and the monetization potential and technologically, how onerous would it be to implement non-skippable ads given most podcast ads are served in episode.
好的。下一個問題來自瑪麗亞·里普斯(Maria Ripps)。我在Spotify 考慮過可跳過與不可跳過的廣告、用戶體驗和盈利潛力,以及從技術角度來看,鑑於大多數播客廣告都是在劇集中播放的,實現不可跳過的廣告會有多繁重。
Gustav Soederstroem - Co-President, Chief Product and Technology Officer
Gustav Soederstroem - Co-President, Chief Product and Technology Officer
Maria, this is Gustav. I'll answer that. So this is what we announced at the LA event in November. And the way to think about it is that for videos, we are now offering precisely this. We are offering podcast, video podcast without dynamic ad interruptions. And as you say, what we had to solve there was the monetization. So we are instead paying out for this video podcast to these creators so that they are not making less money. In fact, they're making the same or more.
瑪麗亞,這是古斯塔夫。我來回答這個問題。這就是我們在 11 月洛杉磯活動上宣布的內容。我們可以這樣想,對於視頻,我們現在提供的正是這些。我們提供沒有動態廣告幹擾的播客、視訊播客。正如你所說,我們必須解決的是貨幣化問題。因此,我們向這些創作者支付視訊播客的費用,以便他們賺的錢不會減少。事實上,他們的產量與去年相同,甚至更多。
So we're doing that for video podcast right now. We're not doing it for audio podcast yet. For technical reasons, they work differently, the ad stacks. There's something called dynamic ad insertion in podcast that doesn't really exist in video, et cetera. So we're doing this for video right now. No plans for audio at the moment.
因此我們現在正在為視訊播客做這件事。我們尚未對音訊播客進行此操作。由於技術原因,它們的工作方式不同,廣告堆疊。播客中有一種稱為動態廣告插入的功能,但在影片等中實際上並不存在。因此我們現在正在對影片進行這樣的處理。目前沒有音訊計劃。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Our next question is from Benjamin Swinburne. Can you share your perspective on artificial general intelligence, and how it might benefit Spotify's business over the long term? Do you need to invest meaningfully to capture this opportunity? Or has DeepSeek shown the benefits can be accrued sooner and at lower cost?
下一個問題來自本傑明·斯溫伯恩(Benjamin Swinburne)。您能否分享您對通用人工智慧的看法,以及它將如何使 Spotify 的業務長期受益?您是否需要進行有意義的投資來抓住這個機會?或者 DeepSeek 是否已表明可以更快地以更低的成本獲得收益?
Gustav Soederstroem - Co-President, Chief Product and Technology Officer
Gustav Soederstroem - Co-President, Chief Product and Technology Officer
Ben, thanks for the question. I appreciate that. This is Gustav. So quickly how to think about AI or ASI artificial suuperintelligence and Spotify is that AI really drives three areas for us. One is, as for any other tech company, just productivity, both in -- when it comes to writing code, but also in general. And as everyone else, we're very aggressively adopting coding assistance, et cetera, and seeing great productivity increases. So that's one benefit of AI.
本,謝謝你的提問。我很感激。這是古斯塔夫。那麼快速思考 AI 或 ASI 人工智慧和 Spotify 是 AI 真正為我們推動了三個領域。一是,和其他科技公司一樣,生產力,不僅體現在編寫程式碼方面,也體現在一般方面。和其他人一樣,我們也積極採用編碼輔助等,並且看到了生產力的大幅提高。這是人工智慧的一個好處。
The other one that maybe we haven't talked much about is actually moderation costs. So you've seen Spotify launch comments, for example, on podcast that are very successful for us. We get a lot of people commenting, this is something that we can only do because of AI. Previously, the cost of moderation were just prohibitive for a company like us. So that's been a great boon for us. And then the third area is obviously the user experience.
我們可能還沒有談論太多的另一個問題是審核成本。例如,您已經看到 Spotify 在播客上推出評論,這對我們來說非常成功。我們收到很多人的評論,這是我們只有借助人工智慧才能做到的事情。以前,對於我們這樣的公司來說,審核的成本實在太高了。這對我們來說是一個巨大的福音。第三個領域顯然是使用者體驗。
Maybe the most obvious thing in the user experience is actually the recommendations, which is one of the biggest impacts. And it's important to know that even though we've been doing recommendations for a long time, they actually benefit even more from this new generation of AI. But there are also new experiences like the AI DJ, AI playlists, et cetera. And we think that -- we are investing at a prudent level in AI today.
也許使用者體驗中最明顯的其實就是推薦,這是最大的影響之一。重要的是要知道,儘管我們已經做了很長時間的推薦,但他們實際上從新一代人工智慧中受益更多。但也有新的體驗,像是 AI DJ、AI 播放清單等等。我們認為-我們目前對人工智慧的投資是審慎的。
And when it comes to DeepSeek, we see this as sort of further evidence that these large AI models and intelligence in general is getting commoditized and open source pretty fast, meaning that the dollar cost of unit per intelligence, if you want to think about it like that, it keeps dropping rapidly and the industry forecasted to drop even more. So we feel we're investing at a prudent level, and we'll continue to do that. We look very good at our position right now and our level of spend.
至於 DeepSeek,我們認為這進一步證明了這些大型人工智慧模型和智慧正在快速商品化和開源,這意味著每個智慧的單位成本,如果你想的話就這樣,它一直在快速下降,預計行業還會進一步下降。因此,我們認為我們的投資是審慎的,而且我們會繼續這樣做。我們目前的狀況和支出水準看起來非常好。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
All right. We've got a question now from Richard Kramer on the Premium business. What sort of price elasticity do you expect when you consider further price hikes? Do you have any sense of the portion of your base, which might pay a premium for a super fans or HiFi tier if you finally launch one?
好的。我們現在收到了理查德·克雷默 (Richard Kramer) 關於高級業務的提問。當您考慮進一步漲價時,您預期價格彈性會是怎樣的?您是否了解,如果您最終推出超級粉絲或 HiFi 層,那麼他們中哪些人可能會支付額外費用?
Alex Norstrom - Co-President, Chief Business Officer
Alex Norstrom - Co-President, Chief Business Officer
Rich, Alex, it's good to hear from you. As discussed before, price adjustments is now part of our toolkit. And so we do it continuously. And in markets where we raised prices in this previous quarter in Q4, churn was low and really in line with what we've seen with other increases from before. And as far as the super fans and HiFi tier goes, obviously, we do research and primarily, we talk to our own users to ask them who is interested in what products and what additions and so on.
里奇,亞歷克斯,很高興收到你的來信。正如之前所討論的,價格調整現在是我們工具包的一部分。所以我們一直這樣做。在我們於第四季調漲價格的市場中,客戶流失率很低,與我們之前看到的其他漲價情況一致。至於超級粉絲和 HiFi 層,顯然,我們會進行研究,主要是與我們自己的用戶交談,詢問他們誰對什麼產品和哪些附加功能感興趣等等。
And I can tell you that as we scale and now we've scaled to 263 million subscribers, there is more and more people that are interested in something like a super premium tier. And as Daniel told you, I'm also super excited about this product that we're working on, but have nothing more to share from that currently.
我可以告訴你,隨著我們規模的擴大,現在我們的訂閱用戶已達到 2.63 億,越來越多的人對超級高級套餐之類的服務感興趣。正如丹尼爾所說的那樣,我對我們正在開發的產品感到非常興奮,但目前還沒有更多可以分享的資訊。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Okay. We've got a question from Kannan Venkateshwar -- also on premium. Could you talk about the potential for tiering pricing by content instead of degree of access like family, Duo, et cetera? And is there flexibility under your agreements with content providers for, say, a podcast tier?
好的。我們收到了 Kannan Venkateshwar 的一個問題,也是關於保費的問題。您能否談談按內容而不是按訪問程度(如家庭、Duo 等)進行分級定價的可能性?您與內容提供者達成的協議是否具有彈性,例如播客層?
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Well, I mean, some of this, Alex already touched upon that we're sort of moving from this one size fits all to this much more sort of specialized Tier as the base of to be many more versions of Spotify in the future that will adapt to all the various subsegments of this now 263 million base strong consumer base. And so yes, we're very excited about sort of entering into that new era of more tailored Spotify for your needs.
嗯,我的意思是,Alex 已經提到了這一點,我們正在從這種千篇一律的模式轉向更加專業的層級,作為未來 Spotify 更多版本的基礎,這些版本將適應目前2.63 億強大消費者群體的各個細分市場。是的,我們非常高興能夠進入 Spotify 的新時代,更加滿足您的需求。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Right. We've got time for a couple more questions. Looks like the next one is from Mark Mahaney on Marketplace. Can you provide any update on two-sided marketplace? Has growth remained consistent?
正確的。我們還有時間回答幾個問題。看起來下一個是 Marketplace 的 Mark Mahaney。您能提供任何關於雙邊市場的最新消息嗎?成長是否保持穩定?
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
Christian Luiga - Chief Financial Officer
The full year 2024 was growing roughly similar to 2023. And I think the important thing is we see the adoption of the product across all customer types, and that is very good. And the inventory expansion from our MAU and the higher engagement is also visible. And we do expect then that the healthy double-digit growth to continue -- will continue into 2025.
2024 年全年成長與 2023 年大致相同。我認為重要的是我們看到所有類型的客戶都採用了該產品,這是非常好的。我們的 MAU 和更高的參與度帶來的庫存擴張也是顯而易見的。我們確實預計健康的兩位數成長將持續到 2025 年。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Okay. We've got another question from Richard Kramer. On the product side, What did you learn from using the Google Notebook LLM for wrapped? What was the customer reaction? And how might you amend this in 2025? And then finally, with R&D expenses down approximately $200 million in 2024, is there more efficiency to be realized in 2025?
好的。我們收到了理查德·克萊默的另一個問題。在產品方面,您從使用 Google Notebook LLM 進行包裝中學到了什麼?顧客的反應如何?到 2025 年您會如何修改這個情況?最後,2024 年研發費用減少約 2 億美元,2025 年是否能達到更高的效率?
Gustav Soederstroem - Co-President, Chief Product and Technology Officer
Gustav Soederstroem - Co-President, Chief Product and Technology Officer
Thanks, Richard. Gustav here. So if we start with Google Notebook LLM and Wrapped, yes, we did build a very unique and first-of-its-kind experience. It's actually sort of the first ever podcast about you, where we took data by users and built a deeply personalized story about your year. And this was deeply appreciated by users. So we learned two things.
謝謝,理查。這裡是古斯塔夫。因此,如果我們從 Google Notebook LLM 和 Wrapped 開始,是的,我們確實建立了一種非常獨特且史無前例的體驗。這實際上是有史以來關於您的第一個播客,我們收集了用戶的數據並建立了一個關於您這一年的深度個人化故事。並得到了使用者們的深切讚賞。因此我們了解到了兩件事。
We learned that our users love personalized storytelling. We kind of knew that through Wrapped already. This was just taking it one step further and leveling up. And why are we doing this? Well, we think that AI presents a great opportunity for products. It's very important for us to always be at the very cutting edge of this.
我們了解到我們的用戶喜歡個人化的故事敘述。我們已經透過《Wrapped》知道了這一點。這只是更進一步,更上一層樓。我們為什麼要這樣做?嗯,我們認為人工智慧為產品提供了巨大的機會。對我們來說,始終處於這一領域的最前沿非常重要。
People talk of sort of a product overhang that there's also capability, but no one is building the products yet. We want to be the company that builds those products. We want to be the company that's the best in the world at building AI-based products. This is why you see us innovating and trying these things before others.
人們談論某種產品懸而未決的問題,稱其也具有能力,但尚未有人生產這種產品。我們希望成為生產這些產品的公司。我們希望成為世界上最好的人工智慧產品製造公司。這就是為什麼你會看到我們先於其他人進行創新和嘗試這些事情。
And we learned a lot about how to do this at scale. Obviously, doing this for one user, one thing for hundreds of millions on a single day. It was a very different challenge. We already had a very good relationship with Google because we're hosted on GCP. But we leverage that to do something that even they haven't done at this scale before.
我們學到了很多關於如何大規模實現這一目標的知識。顯然,這是為一個用戶做這件事,是一天為數億人做一件事。這是一個非常不同的挑戰。由於我們的系統託管在 GCP 上,因此我們與 Google 已經建立了非常好的關係。但我們利用這一點來做一些他們以前從未做過的如此規模的事情。
We learned a lot about what users like. We learned a lot about how you build this experience in a scalable but still safe way, which is always tricky when you're doing it at scale. So this is something that you will see us do more of in the future in terms of deeply personalized AI products. It was a great learning experience. We had a lot of fun.
我們了解了很多關於用戶喜好的資訊。我們學到了很多關於如何以可擴展但仍然安全的方式建立這種體驗的知識,當大規模地進行這種體驗時,這總是很棘手的。因此,就深度個人化的人工智慧產品而言,未來你會看到我們做更多這樣的事。這是一次很棒的學習經驗。我們玩得很開心。
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
I maybe add, it took us what was it three months when we did it from start to finish.
我想補充一下,我們從頭到尾花了三個月的時間。
Gustav Soederstroem - Co-President, Chief Product and Technology Officer
Gustav Soederstroem - Co-President, Chief Product and Technology Officer
it was less than that actually. I think we came up with it about six to eight weeks before we launched it.
但實際上比這個還要少。我想我們是在產品推出前六到八週就想到這個點子的。
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Yes. So okay. Well, pretty fast, which I think gives us also a lot of confidence that we can speed things up in 2025 as well, which is why we set the target we did for accelerated execution for the year.
是的。好吧。嗯,相當快,我認為這也給了我們很大的信心,我們也可以在 2025 年加快進程,這就是我們設定今年加速執行目標的原因。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Our last question today is going to come from Justin Patterson on a related topic on product innovation. Gustav, it seems like your team is innovating on product faster than ever since the 2023 reorganization. As you look to 2025, how are you thinking about the pace of feature launches and evolving the product from here? .
我們今天的最後一個問題來自賈斯汀·帕特森(Justin Patterson),關於產品創新的相關主題。古斯塔夫,自 2023 年重組以來,您的團隊在產品方面的創新速度似乎比以往任何時候都快。展望 2025 年,您如何看待功能發布的速度以及未來產品的改進?。
Gustav Soederstroem - Co-President, Chief Product and Technology Officer
Gustav Soederstroem - Co-President, Chief Product and Technology Officer
Thanks, Justin. I appreciate that vote of confidence. We are thinking about it this way. So as Daniel mentioned, we are speeding up, and we intend to speed up even more. The last two years, Alex and I have been running the company in a fairly unique way, which is very synchronized. We actually don't have our own direct reporting teams. We have a single team together that is called the eTeam, which really represents the people who run Spotify.
謝謝,賈斯汀。我很感激這份信任。我們正在這樣思考。正如丹尼爾所提到的,我們正在加快速度,而且我們打算進一步加快速度。過去兩年,亞歷克斯和我一直以一種相當獨特的方式經營公司,這種方式非常同步。我們實際上沒有自己的直接報告團隊。我們有一個共同的團隊,叫做 eTeam,它真正代表了經營 Spotify 的人。
It's about 15 people. And what we do is we work in increments of six months, senior people in the company pitch their ideas for the company, something called Bs. Alex and I then prioritize these into something called the B board. It's a stack ranked list of what Alex, and I want the company to achieve within the next six months. Then we send this list out to the company and the company commits to this.
大約有15個人。我們的做法是,以六個月為一個週期,公司高層領導會向公司推廣他們的想法,也就是所謂的 Bs。然後,亞歷克斯和我根據這些內容的優先順序,將其放入所謂的 B 板中。這是 Alex 和我希望公司在未來六個月內實現的目標的排序清單。然後我們將這份清單寄給公司,公司對此作出承諾。
They spent about one to two weeks committing to this, coming back, saying what they can do. And then we were heads down working for six months on this plan. This has proven to be very efficient for us. It means that everyone in the company has the same view of what it is we want to do. People don't fight over priorities because they're crystal clear. And this is one of the reasons why we're speeding up, and we think we have more to gain there.
他們花了大約一到兩週的時間致力於此,然後回來告訴他們能做什麼。然後我們花了六個月的時間埋頭來制定這個計畫。事實證明,這對我們來說非常有效。這意味著公司裡的每個人對於我們想要做的事情都有相同的看法。人們不會為了優先事項而爭吵,因為他們已經非常清楚。這就是我們加快步伐的原因之一,而且我們認為我們可以獲得更多的收益。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Great. Well, that concludes our Q&A session for today. I'd like to turn the call back over to Daniel for some closing remarks.
偉大的。好了,今天的問答環節就到此結束。我想將電話轉回給丹尼爾,請他做一些結束語。
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Daniel Ek - Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, Founder
All right. Well, I'm very, very excited about 2025. And I think you guys, and hopefully, you feel it too after this Q&A session, too, but we feel really good about where we are, both as a product and as a business. And we will continue to place bets that will drive long-term impact, increasing our speed while maintaining the levels of efficiency we achieved last year. And I think it's really this combination that will enable us to build the best and most valuable user experience, grow sustainably and deliver creativity to the world. So thanks again for joining, everyone.
好的。嗯,我對 2025 年感到非常興奮。我想你們,希望你們,在這次問答環節之後也有同樣的感受,但我們對目前的狀況感到非常滿意,無論是作為產品還是作為業務。我們將繼續下注以產生長期影響,提高我們的速度,同時保持去年實現的效率水平。我認為正是這種結合使我們能夠打造最佳、最有價值的使用者體驗,實現永續發展並向世界提供創造力。再次感謝大家的加入。
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
Bryan Goldberg - Head, Investor Relations
That concludes today's call. A replay will be available on our website and also on the Spotify app under the Spotify Earnings Call Replays section. Thanks, everyone, for joining.
今天的電話會議到此結束。重播將在我們的網站和 Spotify 應用程式的 Spotify 財報電話會議重播部分提供。感謝大家的加入。
Operator
Operator
This concludes Spotify's fourth-quarter 2024 earnings conference call and webcast. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
這就是 Spotify 2024 年第四季財報電話會議和網路直播結束。感謝您的參與。您現在可以斷開連線。