Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Spotify Q2 2020 Earnings Call. Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference over
to your speaker for today,
Paul Vogel, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you, and welcome to Spotify's Q2 2020 earnings conference call. I hope everyone is continuing to stay safe. As is the case with just about everyone, our team again will be hosting this call entirely remotely. Our CEO, Daniel Ek is participating from Stockholm and I am at my home office in New Jersey.
This morning, I'm pleased to introduce our new Head of Investor Relations, Brian Goldberg, who just recently joined our team. Sure many of you recognize his name from his time at Bank of America. Also joining the IR team is Lauren Katzen, who was previously on our licensing finance team within FD and A. We're excited to have both of them on board. Mike Ercioli, who has been both part of our IR team and FP and A teams over the past few years, is transitioning into an expanded role within FP and A, but we'll be on hand to answer questions post this quarter and for the next few weeks.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Brian.
Thanks, Paul. Turning now to the call, we'll start with opening comments from Daniel. After the remarks, Daniel and Paul will be happy to answer your questions. Like last quarter, we'll be taking questions exclusively through Slido. Questions can be submitted by going to slido.com, slido.com and using the code Spotifyearnings.
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 email investorrelations@irspotify.com, and we'll add in your question. Before we begin, let me quickly cover the Safe Harbor. During the call, we will be making certain forward looking statements, including projections or estimates about the future performance of the company. These statements are based upon 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 letter to shareholders and in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 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 letter to shareholders in the Financial section of our Investor Relations page and also furnished today on Form 6 ks. And with that, I will turn it over to Daniel.
All right. Hey, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us. Like all of you, Spotify continues to navigate issues related to COVID-nineteen and we believe Spotify has a responsibility to use our platform to help build a more equitable future. For us, that means focusing on what's core to our business, amplifying the music and perspectives of black creators and taking every opportunity to connect them with current and future fans. We're also taking a hard look at what we can do to build a more equitable workplace and we have committed to increasing representation of black employees at all levels within Spotify.
When we do this right, it's good for employees, good for creators and good for shareholders. Now turning to the quarter. We're pleased with our results, which met or exceeded our guidance by almost every metric. After making adjustments to help us weather the pandemic in Q1, consumption returned to normal levels this quarter. Monthly active users increased to 299,000,000 and subscribers grew to 138,000,000 both exceeding our expectations.
Advertising revenue, which took a significant hit in Q1, improved notably throughout the quarter and we feel good about our momentum as we enter Q3. We also continue to invest in our Audio First strategy, signing exclusive deals with some of the world's most well known creators and most powerful voices. Earlier today, we launched the first episode of the Michelle Obama podcast and it features a conversation with a very special guest, President Barack Obama. Our podcast catalog now has over 1,500,000 shows, 50% of which launched in 2020. And while it's been gratifying to see so much enthusiasm for these announcements throughout the quarter, it's important to remember that with many of our newest shows, we're still early in the progress.
In some cases like DC Comics, we need to produce the content and in others like Joe Rogan, it has yet to launch on our platform. There's still work to do and much more to come. On the music front, we entered a new multiyear global license agreement with Universal Music Group that reflects our shared commitment in growing the industry and supporting artists at all stages of their careers. Universal Music Group will leverage Spotify's marketplace tools for both frontline and catalog artists to connect them with fans, grow their audiences and better monetize their fan base. And we'll also work together to develop new products and tools that drive discovery and engagement at a scale that has never before existed.
Spotify has now surpassed 60,000,000 tracks globally, giving artists even more opportunities to connect with their biggest fans. And just last week, Taylor Swift's surprise release of her new album Folklore broke the number one first day record for a female artist album in Spotify's history. She also became the most streamed artist on Spotify on any day this year with nearly 98,000,000 streams on July 24 alone. Finally, I would like to address our business overall. Investors often ask me what our secret sauce is, expecting that there's some sort of silver bullet to our growth.
The reality is that at a platform of our scale, it's rarely about one thing. Instead, it's about setting up a culture of experimentation and being willing to double down on opportunities if we believe they have the potential to enhance the user experience and change the slope of our growth curve. And I want to share 2 recent examples that I think exemplifies this point. Over the last 2 years, we've tripled the number of experiments from a few 100 to 1000 of AB tests. Some of these experiments yield nothing more than a few key learnings, while others have shown great promise.
In one of our recent podcast experiments, we increased listening among the test group by 33%. And that's just one example of many. And when we see results like this, you should expect us to invest even more. And we know that no one experiment is going to materially impact us even in the next year. It's the thousands of little things that we're doing, which will gradually add up over time.
The second example I want to point is new market launches. Just this month, we launched in Russia and 12 other European countries. And our 1st week in Russia was huge, even bigger than our 1st week in India. So if we do this right, we have the opportunity to reach 250,000,000 more listeners in these markets over the long term. And we're now operating in nearly every country across Europe, but there's still a lot of pent up demand for Spotify in markets around the world, which is why we have plans for further expansion globally.
What these two recent examples underscore is that staying focused on the long term growth whilst managing for speed of iteration near term is what will drive future growth. And using that lens and with the examples I gave, I think it is apparent that we still have many more improvements left to make. And that's also why we keep investing. And with that, I'll turn it back to Brian.
Thanks, Daniel. Again, if you have any questions, please go to slido.comspotifyearnings. And the first question today is going to come from Eric Sheridan. Can you frame the impacts you expect long term in your business from greater podcast content consumption, lower churn, greater gross ad share of streamed audio, increased long term ad supported gross margins?
Well, it's really about taking a step back. And I think what we're seeing here is the beginning of our flywheel. So as we talked about before, Spotify is now going after all of audio and that's obviously a significantly larger market than just the music industry in and on itself. And so what we're seeing is that by every piece of content that we're adding on the service that we're successfully serving to our consumer, we're creating more engagement. That engagement in turn leads to obviously lower churn.
But more importantly, now that we have almost 300,000,000 monthly active users on the platform, these users are also when they find great shows sharing that on social media and other forms to other consumers as well, driving this virtuous cycle where more and more people are learning about what's going on, on Spotify and more and more creators want to be on Spotify creating this virtuous flywheel. So with the expansion of podcasts, we're definitely seeing more of that and it's happening at a faster click than what we've seen before and we're very encouraged by it.
Yes. And then from a numbers perspective, I would say everything you mentioned, is what we're looking at to value each piece of content. So it is the combination of what is it doing for our user growth, what is it doing to improve retention and lower churn and then also how can we grow advertising on top of it. And so when we look at pieces of content and we look at how much we need to add and where we're spending, it's really about the LTV of the overall spend on content and how it impacts holistically the entire business from user growth to subscriber growth to advertising growth.
Okay, great. Next question from Rich Greenfield. What percentage of ad revenue is now directly tied to podcasting? Trying to understand what ad supported music revenues were down year over year relative to 21% overall ad decline in the quarter as podcasting growth and acquisition first time benefits presumably benefited the 21% decline?
Yes. So I would say a couple of things on this. One is, podcasting is still reasonably small relative to the overall amount of advertising. That being said, it did outperform in the quarter and we felt it was one of the stronger areas of growth, which is great. Hopefully, everyone have seen the deal we struck with Omnicom at the last couple of weeks, which is a $20,000,000 deal to invest in podcast advertising moving forward, which we're really excited about.
And the other thing about podcasting is it's having a couple of effects. One is overall podcast growth is there. And so we finished this quarter at 21% of MAU, which is up from 19%. Podcast consumption is still up over 100%. And we're seeing advertisers really wanting to invest in podcasting as a media.
The other thing that's benefiting us is that we're starting to sell more media deals across all of our products. And so we're seeing nice growth from deals that incorporate both music advertising and podcasting advertising in the deals. And so in general, podcast was strong in the quarter. It's still reasonably small, but growing very nicely.
Okay. Next question from Eric Sheridan. Can you update investors on your views on acquiring licensing podcasting content? What will drive either approach? Any update on the level of investments in podcasts?
And how critical is putting podcast content exclusively on your own platform against your long term goals for the business model?
Yes. I mean, we are really pursuing sort of all strategies in tandem. It's really all about creating the best overall user experience as I talked about before with this virtual cycle. Now that said, exclusivity is a key component of that strategy. We want to create more and more original programming that only exists on Spotify.
And I think this quarter you started seeing some of those announcements come in, in a big way. And obviously, that's something we're pursuing with creators, but it's important that we are an open platform and we're seeing more and more content. As I mentioned in my opening statements, over a 1,500,000 shows are now available on Spotify and about 50% of them was created in 2020. It's impossible even if we wanted to have all that content exclusively on our platform. So it's going to be a mix of all of those things going forward.
Okay. Next question from Richard Kramer. With the UMG deal, has Spot secured any firm commercial commitment to pay for 2 sided marketplace services?
So as we talked about before, we're very, very excited about marketplace and the momentum it's having. We're seeing lots and lots of big artists come in. We saw John Legend. We saw the 1975 Lady Gaga among many others adopt the tools this quarter. So we're very excited about it.
And with the Universal Music Group announcements, they're really now leaning in because of that really early excitement in the marketplace and want to adopt more tools and want to go deeper because they're seeing the potential impact that it can have on their business.
Next question from Eric Sheridan. Can you give us a sense of how the ad market evolved over the recent quarter in terms of ad budgets, pricing and how you see those dynamics evolving against the current macro backdrop? Can you provide color on any variability by industry verticals, geographies or type of ad budget?
Yes. So the advertising market, it definitely started the quarter started off slow. We mentioned coming out of Q1 that the last 3 weeks of Q1 were pretty weak and saw some big declines and that continued into April May. We were actually running behind on the ads business for April May, probably down about 25% on those 2 months. And then we really had a nice pickup in June.
June was only down about 10% on the advertising side. In terms of geographies, I'm not going to get into specifics, but we've a much higher percentage of our revenue on the ad side comes from North America than on the premium side. So how North America goes tends to be how our overall business goes. And then in terms of product, the direct business was weak in the quarter and actually underperformed our expectations. And we were very strong on our ad studio, which is our self-service tool, which outperformed.
And as I mentioned above, podcasting outperformed as well.
Okay. Next question from Michael Morris. Is the level of podcast engagement similar across both premium and ad supported users? Are you seeing a difference in churn for podcast users? If so, can you quantify the relative impact?
So at a high level, I would say, the good news is that podcast engagement in general overall is increasing. So as I mentioned, we're now 21% of our MAU engage with podcasts, which is up from 19%, and consumption was up over 100% in the quarter. So we continue to see it going up in general. Premium does have higher engagement than the ad supported business, but both of them have been moving up nicely and both of them have been improving. And with respect to any impacts on churn, we don't break that out individually.
Next question from Doug Anmuth. Do you expect podcasts to have a bigger financial impact through advertising dollars or more through incremental premium subscribers to the platform?
Really say it depends on what the time horizon is that you're looking at it. Obviously, our subscription business is a much larger business. So even if we improve that by a small percentage base, that's likely going to be a larger impact than even if we improved advertising business with the strong double digits growth as well. So think in the short term, any improvement we can make on improving retention is going to be material, to the subscription business and that's how you should look at it. But long term, when I look at the landscape, what excites me is that we're going after all of audio.
And all of audio is a multibillion user opportunity. And it's a marketplace that only in its existing form today is north of $50,000,000,000 in advertising revenue. And it's the combination of subscription and advertising long term that I think is the future of media businesses. And Spotify has really since its inception played in both of these businesses. So I'm very excited about long term both being a principal player in advertising as well as in subscription.
And so over the long term, it will become a bigger part of our business.
And I would just add, which I think I mentioned earlier, when we look at some of the larger content deals we've done, we are measuring or forecasting both sides of the equation in terms of how we value that content moving forward.
Okay. Another question here from Doug. Can you talk about how the recent Universal deal may treat the 2 sided market big difference
big difference here is really Universal's willingness to experiment and go all in on marketplace. And that's what I think should be the bigger takeaway here for all investors as well. So what that means in essence is Universal has seen the early success. It's very excited by it and I want to make sure that it can get behind and experiment a lot more with the paid tools of marketplace, but also the organic tools that allows artists to create more fans, engage with those fans and monetize those fans better. And so overall, we want to work with all labels, but we are very, very encouraged to see Universal go all in on the tools and services that we're building.
Okay. Next question from Mark Mahaney. Where can ad supported gross margins go near term and long term can these gross margins match those of premium?
Yes. So in the very long term, we definitely think ad gross margins could reach the premium gross margins. We haven't given a timeframe on that, but we believe that's where we're headed. In the near term, there's a couple of factors at play here. 1 obviously is the weaker overall ad environment, which is impacting gross margins.
And particularly on the ad side, there are some, minimum that we pay in certain markets where the advertising hasn't quite reached critical mass. And so as we get to a tipping point in some of those markets on the music side, the gross margin will improve. And then additionally, just a reminder, we now account for all of the costs of podcasting in our ad supported business. So the entire brunt of the investment we're making on the content side is hitting the ad supported line. And so as we continue to invest in content, the ads business will fill up more.
We do expect ads gross margins to improve in Q3 and then be even better in Q4.
Our next question is from Steven Cahall. What do you expect will be the impact to MAUs, premium subs and gross profit when the Joe Rogan experience comes exclusive to Spotify in September?
I think it's too early to talk about what the impact will be. Yes, we obviously know it's a big show and we are encouraged by the reception we've seen in the marketplace. So I do think a lot of his fans are very excited about the announcement, but it's going to take time and we have to learn how to market and merchandise the Joe Rogan show, both to its existing fans as well as to all of the other 300,000,000 or so listeners on Spotify, as well. Because this, as we have talked about before, even with the announcement of Joe Rogan, this was the number one searched for show on Spotify that we're now including. So I think it's going to be a very, very positive one.
But again, I think the best way to think about this is that Spotify is not about one single show. It is really about the drumbeat now of new exclusive content, original programming and the 1,500,000 podcasts that exist on the platform that's growing at a very, very rapid pace. So there's something for everyone. That's the message I want you to take away.
Next question is from Rich Greenfield. Howard Stern's multi year agreement with Sirius expires at the end of this calendar year. If you were Howard Stern, why would you want to be on Spotify versus Sirius?
I can't really speak to Howard Stern specifically. What I can say though, as you've seen in the quarter, there are more and more great creators around the world that are turning to Spotify. And I think part of that reason is because this is an interactive medium. This allows them to better connect with their audience, seeing the data, seeing how they're engaging with the content, seeing the feedback directly. It is an international platform too, not just the domestic.
So while we are very large in North America, we are equally large in Europe and LATAM and Asia as well. So this is a global audio platform unlike anything else. And now thirdly, the size of this platform is just huge compared to many of these platforms that may operate in just one market. So I think the combination of that interactivity, the flexibility that it allows you and the global nature and scale of this platform is what excites a lot of creators to be on our platform.
Next question is from Richard Kramer. How will you get the local data to target podcast ads you intend to insert? Will each host have to record a large number of ads, which will be inserted depending on local interests, customer segment, etcetera?
I'll take this and maybe Paul you can chime in as well. So just to level set with everyone, there's a number of different tools that we have in our podcasting advertising sets. And the host read ads is one of them and what we call SAI is something very different. So specifically to address the question on our Host Red Ads, the host itself decides among a number of different brands that it wants to work with and then reads those ads in and then Spotify serves that base to the audience that best suits the advertisers intent. And then with SCI, it's more dynamically created ads that are set in.
Some of them are recorded by the advertisers themselves and some of them are host read ads as well that are baked into the mix. But this is a very, very nascent marketplace that exists today. So generally speaking, when it comes to podcasts, a lot of this data that we're now talking about that's become standard on the Internet has not existed. So, what I think the general trend has been is that when you have add Internet level data and accessibility of those tools, the performance of those ads goes up. And when the performance of those ads goes up, the value goes up as well, both to the creator and to the platform as well.
So we're very, very excited about bringing Internet level advertising technology to the podcast medium. And this is something that I'm very, very encouraged by and that I think you should look out for the next coming quarters years.
Next question is from Michael Klink. Can you elaborate on how you expect the addition of video will impact the growth of Spotify's advertising business? Is it realistic for investors to expect a positive impact in the next 12 months?
Yes. So I think the way you should look at video overall is it's yet another capability that we're adding for creators to connect to fans as well. And it's just in this quarter as well with discovery of podcast where the podcast charts are coming in, more and more tools and data that we're adding to podcasters as well. This is another innovation as well to allow podcasters to creatively express themselves in a different way. So you should expect us to iterate on that.
Now that said, we are an audio first platform. And so we expect for the foreseeable future, the majority of consumption to be audio, meaning that consumers that watch video will go in and out of the video experience and then being able to put that experience in their pocket and continue. And then when they hear something interesting, pull it back up and then watch the show again. So this is you should not look at this as some of the other platforms like YouTube and Snap where it's predominantly a lean in experience. Video is an added capability.
It is priced very attractively for advertisers, but the share of video on Spotify is low right now and it will be growing, but I don't think you should expect it to be another YouTube.
Next question from Matt Thornton. On podcasts, can you give some color on, 1, what percent of hours are currently monetizable and how is that trending? 2, how current ad loads and CPM stack up versus industry average? And 3, the 3rd party ad network opportunity?
Yes. So, we don't really disclose ad loads particularly, but I'd say they're pretty close to industry averages. I would say in general what's really interesting and I think Daniel touched on this is as you get better at targeting when you have tools like SAI, you're able to actually increase your monetization, increase the relevancy of the ads and increase overall monetization without actually having to increase the overall ad load. So we feel really optimistic that our technology and the innovation we're bringing to technology will allow for greater monetization over time and doing it in a way where you don't necessarily have to increase ad loads. In some cases, you might even be able to lower ad loads if you're able to target the ads more specifically to users with a higher ROI.
And in terms of the 3rd party ad network opportunity, it's definitely something potentially longer term we could look into. We know that when we launched SAI, which is only on our owned and operated properties, the number of inbound calls we got from folks who had interest in using that technology as well was pretty high. So nothing to announce at this point in time, but obviously something we would potentially consider. One thing I would add also,
I think part of this question was how where we are in just the rollout of this. So we're very, very early days. So the expectation I want everyone to have is the vast majority of advertising you hear on Spotify today is the burnt in ads that the podcasters themselves have served. Spotify does not participate in that. But by building out tools like SAI and Host Read Ads, which are a lot more efficient and better for the advertisers, better for the creator as well.
We expect that to mean a lot more adoption in the coming quarters as well. So just want to make everyone aware of that.
Next question is from Rich Greenfield. You mentioned a change in the cadence and promotional offers impacting churn. How should we think about the timing length of major promos going forward?
Yes. So I think if
you take a step back, historically we've run promotional offerings seasonally. So 1 in the summer and 1 at the holiday period of time every year, which we've done for the last couple of years. Last year, we did even more experimentation with offers at different times and different types of offers. And so for instance, in 4Q of last year, we had an always on promotion that started earlier in 4Q than normal. And in Q1 this year, we actually extended the normal holiday campaign into Q1, which persisted for through the early parts of February.
The seasonal cadence there is that we had more folks in Q2 this year coming off of seasonal campaigns than we normally do. So as a result, you normally expect some uptick in churn when you have people rolling off of those promotional offerings. I would say that, while the quarter on quarter year on year churn was down, but quarter on quarter was up modestly, but that was totally expected and in line with our expectations. And moving forward, you can expect us to continue to experiment. I would say the seasonal campaigns are likely to continue to happen with the same regularity.
And then we'll experiment with other offerings, other promotions, other regional plans over time.
Next question from Lloyd Walmsley. Can you tell us how much premium gross margins benefited in 2Q relative to year ago from the extended use of the free trial this year versus last year's 99 for 3 months? What about the total impact to first half premium gross margins?
Yes. So in Q2 that impact was small. It was probably about 15, 20 basis points. And it had a bigger impact in Q1 around 80 basis points. So together, it's probably about a 40 basis points or so for the first half of the year.
Next question from Rich Greenfield. The core Apple Podcasts experience has evolved in years, but there are a wide array of dedicated podcast apps such as Pocket Cast, Overcast, Castro, etcetera. How would you rank the experience of Spotify as a podcast player versus the dedicated apps and you become the best place for podcasts?
Well, that's certainly our ambition. Again, what I've said prior is that we want to be the de facto audio platform of the world. And there's a lot more innovation that we have started doing about 2 years ago and that we keep shipping quarter by quarter. I think my personal favorite at the moment, which I'm super excited about is the ability to do group listening remotely. So just as an example, this is something we announced yesterday, where consumers can now share what they're currently listening to and people can tune in to that experience, whether that be podcast or whether that be music.
But because we have this large music platform and because we have this audio platform, all of the benefits that we are developing for the music ecosystem are coming to the podcast ecosystem as well. And that's true of advertising as well as the discovery tools and other usability benefits too. And I think over time that's going to compound into an amazing user experience that we believe will be attractive to most if not all consumers around the world who are interested in listening to audio content.
Next question comes from Ben Swinburne. Why do you believe COVID-nineteen pressures seem to persist and be more substantial in Latin America and Rest of World relative to North America? And separately, do you think there has been a reduction in artist releases due to COVID and if that's impacted engagement?
It's a very good question. And generally, I would say, we see some of the seasonality on a market by market basis, as well not related to COVID, but just due to seasonality, due to holidays, that kind of thing. My best thesis at the moment, we have talked about this last quarter that there's been a pull forward effect of smart devices and smart home devices. So smart speakers, smart TV screens, etcetera, exploding in consumption. This has been a very, very nice tailwind overall.
My best thesis at the moment is we don't have the same extent of smart devices in LatAm as we do in say more mature markets like North America and Europe. And that can have some of the impact that we're seeing as well on that. But that's my own thesis and not something that I can sort of just confirm on a broader basis.
Next question from Sumant Wahi. Can you talk about the margin profile of the podcast business in the shape of the ROI? What are your expectations there?
Yes. So I think, as we've talked about in the short term, short to intermediate term, we're still in investment mode and we're going to continue to invest in the business and you'll see the content drag on gross margins continue for some period of time as advertising grows. Over the long term, we think it should be margin accretive. How long that takes, we'll have to see. And I think we said on a couple of occasions that if you continue to see the goodness in the business from podcasting, whether it's on user growth or subscriber growth, if we see it impacting the retention numbers and churn numbers in a positive way, we're going to continue to invest in that business.
And so, I think you'll see it holistically in our LTV and our LTV to SAC and how we think about that. But it could be a drag for a period of time before it starts to be a benefit, which we think will be significant over time.
The one added thing I would probably add to what Paul said, just overall is that the best measure that we use internally for judging the business success is the LTV to SAC metric. And baked into the LTV metric, of course, is the retention of our basis. It is about getting exclusive content. And that exclusive content may mean that we are the only place that have that show, which enables pricing power as well. So long term, that's the flywheel, that's the metric that we're focusing on.
So we are investing in business to build a differentiated business compared to all other businesses that exist here. And we think this will be the audio platform on the Internet and that's a large opportunity and a very valuable opportunity both with subscription and advertising.
Okay. Next question comes from Brian Russo. On your recent renewal with UMG, can you confirm this partner has agreed to treat podcasting on your freemium tier in the same manner that the other majors have with regard to a carve out of listening time?
I think what we have said is that, from a podcasting perspective, the advertising related to podcasting will be 100 percent Spotify's and not shared. Beyond that, I'm not sure we've commented much on any other terms of the deals.
Okay. Next question from Richard Kramer. What ROI do you think you could provide advertisers or labels for their promoted songs? How do you balance that with the legal limitations on payola and consumer expectations around recommendations?
Yes. So we have been investing in marketplace for quite some time and in particular we've had Marquis being out there. We are always of course monitoring consumer satisfaction and making sure that that is high. That's the gauging factor that we're looking into everything. But I do want to talk a little bit about the onuses behind this.
I talked about the economics of a label before, but the single largest cost of a label today unlike before, it used to be that distribution was the single largest cost of a label. Today, the single largest cost of a label is promotion and marketing. And what's so exciting to me is that Spotify is the platform where most people are consuming and discovering content. So if labels instead reinvest some of the portion of the marketing spend that they use to promote and market artist on this platform natively, the results should be a lot better. You should see better results for consumers because they're getting more of what they actually like.
You should be see better results for artists and labels as well because they're able to grow their fans a lot better, at more efficiently prices than say other advertising marketplaces or billboards that they've traditionally spent them on. And of course, for Spotify, it means a higher gross margin business as well. So I really do look at this as a win win win where it's better for the consumer, better for artists and labels and better for Spotify.
Okay. Next question comes from Steven Cahall. When users combine into a premium duo account or a family plan, how is this factored into gross adds, net adds and churn?
Well, if you're already a subscriber and you just move within plans, you continue to be a subscriber, so there's no change there. And for gross adds, it's just it would be new users to the platform. So, with respect to churn, if you're moving from one plan to the other, but you're seeing subscriber shouldn't impact churn either. So, yes, that's pretty much it.
Okay. We've got time for about 2 or 3 more questions. We'll go to Mark Mahaney. Can you talk through the P and L impact so far from the 2 sided marketplace and comment on its potential future financial impact?
Yes. So I think we mentioned last year that it was about $30,000,000 benefit to gross profit and then to start the year, we said that we expect the marketplace to be up about 50% of a contribution to gross profit in 2020. And so there's no change at all to our expectations for the year in terms of how marketplace is rolling out. And sorry, just to add, I know there's some questions on a good majority of that is contra cost, so it's a benefit to gross margin without revenue. There is some revenue attached to the benefits of marketplace, but it's reasonably small.
The majority of the benefit we get is directly related to benefits we see directly in the gross margin.
And the next question comes from Deepak at Barclays. With Joe Rogan coming on the platform exclusively in September and other podcasts potentially launching, how are you thinking about the potential benefit to premium subs and MAUs in your 3rd Q4 guidance?
Yes. So, it's a great question. And to piggyback on what Daniel said earlier, we've been reasonably conservative with the expectations for how much it benefits our platform. And so when you look at the guidance range, again, if you go back to the start of the year, we had mentioned a certain level of conservatism within our guidance, particularly for MAU with respect to how much potential benefit we're going to see this year from podcasts and podcast launches and new content launches. And so, we definitely have seen continued growth in MAU.
As I mentioned earlier, it was up this year more than it was up at the same time, first half of twenty nineteen. And we've seen really nice growth there. But I would say the exact impact modeled in for the benefits of any of the content is still fairly minor. And so there is some conservatism baked into the MAU side with respect to the benefit of podcasts and new content.
One addition I would just make there too is that the interesting So to the extent So to the extent that we're looking at this as a big event, that's fantastic and that's great. And I'm sure it will have a big impact with both existing fans and new fans alike. But for me, this is really about adding more and more and more reasons for you come to Spotify and be on the Spotify ecosystem as well. And with that, I'm very excited about both the launches we've already had, but also the coming announcements in the coming quarters about all the other shows that we're making that there should be something for every single person on the Spotify platform and more and more of those shows will only exist on Spotify.
Okay. The question from Richard Kramer. What precisely are you hoping to gain from the Apple antitrust case? What's your ideal outcome? And given that 70% plus of U.
S. Subs are on iOS, how would it affect earnings?
Paul, maybe you can talk about the specific impact for us. But just overall, the most important thing for us is to create platform principles where it's a more fair and equitable marketplace for us and other startups to engage and compete for consumers' attention, time and wallets. We ultimately think this is important not just for Spotify, but actually for the broader ecosystem as well. The best service is the one that should be when not the one who had an existing platform that we're able to lock in consumers with as well. So that's certainly what we're hoping for as an outcome and maybe Paul have something more specific on the impact for us.
Yes. Nothing other than what I think what we said in the past, which is we've grown really, really nicely and really well in the face of some, let's say, competitive dynamics that aren't ideal for us in terms of how we can market and talk to our consumers within the iOS ecosystem. So we feel really good about the growth we've had in spite of the fact that there are limitations that Apple puts on us and our ability to market, promote and convert our users into subscribers.
All right. And our last question will come from Ben Swinburne. Product mix shift largely due to discounted and family plans continues to benefit users but way on ARPU and your year over year premium revenue growth which is slowing. Why should shareholders view this trend positively for the long term earnings power of the business and not a sign of a maturing market?
I guess I'll start and I'll see if Daniel has any questions comments on this one. But I think for us, we've really been in a mode of growing market share and it's all been about growing users and growing subscribers. And as we've talked about on a number of calls, we really focus on LTV to SAC and making sure that we're adding subscribers that we believe will be profitable and profitable over the long term. And so we continue to add. We've had a lot of success with our family plan and student plans.
The affinity plans have helped us grow our overall subscribers and gain share. But we have seen ARPU decline, it was down 9% in the quarter, as I mentioned, 7% excluding FX and there was another 1% impact of the revenue reversal, so down about 6%. I think over long term, our expectation is that ARPU will moderate in terms of declines and start to move higher. But for now, it's really been about market share gains over near term profitability.
And I think the only thing I would add to that is, we keep looking at all of those changes in product mix from the lens of just the overall LTV. So there are many variables that go into LTV. One of them, of course, is retention and overall acquisition as well when we monitor for that. And as Paul said, we've been mostly focused for growth and I think rightly so because with the scale of the platform that enables more and more and more of the benefits that we've been talking about as well. It's easier for us to market to existing consumers when we're doing something like podcasts.
Those consumers are internal marketing to other new consumers to join the platform too. We're seeing this virtual cycle of more and more people joining the platform on the basis of that. Long term though, just to elevate this discussion, we are very, very bullish still and we're still in the early days on this journey of going after the audio platform of the world. And that is still measured in billions of consumers as we're still relatively early in that cycle. And just from a TAM perspective, even today, the radio industry is north of $50,000,000,000 most of that is advertising.
Advertising today a small portion of the Spotify's business, but it will be a much bigger one overall. So that's an added potential benefit. Then on the subscriber side, as Japan and the U. S. Have shown before, there are existing audio products that are monetized at much higher ARPUs than Spotify in those marketplaces.
And I think the Spotify product and content mix is getting better by the day. And over time that gives us confidence that we should have ability to be a significant player in subscription and have pricing power as well going forward. So I think the combination of those 2, growth will still be the priority given that we're talking about in the billions. But I am very, very bullish on our ability both on advertising and subscription long term.
Okay. That concludes our question and answer session. Daniel, do you have any final closing remarks?
Yes, sure. So in closing, we had a very strong quarter. And as I mentioned just before, I've really never been more bullish about where we are today and our future opportunity. And there's still billions of people who have yet to discover our on demand music streaming or listen to our podcast. And of course, many more we have yet to reach in markets around the world where Spotify doesn't yet exist.
And speaking of podcast, the last thing I wanted to do is just to encourage you to check out Spotify's new For the Record podcast that's coming out this Friday. Paul and I will be sharing additional thoughts about the quarter and we will be discussing my philosophy on growth, innovation and the importance of risk taking. So feel free to check that out, shameless plug. But thanks again for joining us this morning. This is an exciting time to be focused on audio and we're only just getting started.
Thanks again everyone for joining. The replay of the call will be available on our website and new for the first time also on the Spotify app under Spotify Earnings Call Replays. Thanks again.
This concludes the Spotify Q2 2020 earnings call. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.