Spotify was growing very fast, but wasn’t making any money.

Spotify says it has 12.5 million paying subscribers. If you do some very simple math, you can guesstimate that the company is going to end up doing more than a billion dollars in revenue this year.

Another reason you can feel comfortable guessing that: A year ago, when the music streaming service was smaller, it had already hit the $1 billion mark.*

That number comes courtesy of a new filing Spotify made today in Luxembourg, which spells out its 2013 financials in considerable detail. That doesn’t tell us how the company did this year, of course. But it’s very helpful to get a sense of direction.

Big picture: As of last year, Spotify was growing very fast, but wasn’t making any money. The good news is that the company’s top line was growing faster than its losses, which is one of the reasons it could raise money at a $4 billion valuation a year ago. And it suggests that CEO Daniel Ek’s argument — that the company could indeed be profitable if it didn’t plow more money into growth — might hold up.

Here’s a snapshot of the company’s P&L from last year. Note that revenues were up more than 70 percent, while its operating loss grew by less than 20 percent.

http://recode.net/2014/11/25/spotify-is-a-booming-billion-dollar-business/

 

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