 Despite concerns about the economy, Spotify's fourth-quarter numbers show that people throughout the world are still eager to pay for music enjoyment. With monthly active users up 20% year-over-year, Spotify's fourth-quarter statistics handily exceeded projections. Despite the company's advertising gross margin being thin and negatively impacting bottom line earnings, revenue increased easily. After making significant investments for a year, it is thought that Spotify is in a good position to increase operating leverage and platform monetization in the near future. As the first month of the year came to a close, Spotify released its fourth-quarter financial results. The good news for investors is that the results exceeded all expectations. The company handily exceeded listener and subscription expectations despite worries about global consumer spending, with monthly active users gaining 20% year-over-year and premium paid subscribers rising an outstanding 14%. In actuality, Spotify's monthly net additions to active users were $33 million, a quarterly record high and $10 million more than expected. I wouldn't get too hung up on Spotify's lack of profitability, even while headlines may be focusing on the company's $231 million in operational losses. As investments in its podcasting business were stepped down, gross margin in the quarter exceeded projections. Although it might seem unfavorable, Spotify's podcasting market is still developing and requires less money to achieve viewing and engagement targets. In fact, despite the decline in podcast investments, this area of the business continued to expand at the greatest rate, with podcasting income increasing by more than 30% annually. Spotify should be able to more easily push toward continuous profitability in the future with less investment and podcasting over the following couple of years, together with a decrease in corporate overhead costs.