Spotify now has 1m paying users

Streaming music service says 15% of its active users now stump up for music on-demand.

Spotify says it now has more than one million paying users, and that these represent 15% of the streaming music service's active users.

That means around 6.7 million people have used Spotify in the last month. Last September, the company signed up its 10 millionth registered user, but at least 3.3 million appear to be dormant.

Spotify also says that its users have created more than 200 million playlists, and that its paid subscribers are growing at twice the rate of its free users.

Mobile has been a key ingredient in Spotify's subscriber growth. At the end of 2009 the company had 250,000 paying users, but its iPhone, Android and Symbian apps have been a powerful incentive for free users to upgrade to Premium subscriptions.

The million milestone comes as Spotify continues to negotiate with labels and publishers in the US for its launch there. Like all its rivals, the company is also trying to get a handle on what Apple's new subscription rules mean for its business - potentially, it may have to include an in-app subscription option in its iPhone app, giving up 30% of those revenues to Apple.