Apple Music subscriber base grew 36% in 2019, second only to Spotify
Music streaming subscriptions were up 32% globally last year, with Apple Music maintaining a comfortable second place position behind Spotify, according to newly published estimates.
Though Apple Music trailed behind Spotify in global market share, the service's subscription base grew 36% in 2019.
Apple Music, as part of the company's broader services push, has been steadily gaining ground in the streaming industry. But while the service's subscriber base has blossomed since its launch in 2015, Spotify remains the global market leader.
New data published on Friday backs that up. According to research from Counterpoint Research, Apple Music trailed behind Spotify in total market share throughout the 2019 calendar year. However, the research firm adds that Apple's total subscription base actually grew 36% year-over-year, echoing the broader increase across the industry.
Apple has been making improvements to its service, including "the introduction of night mode, curated playlists to target a group, etc," research analyst Abhilash Kumar said.
Spotify grabbed 31% of the total revenue and 35% of total paid subscribers globally. Apple Music was in second place with 24% of total streaming revenues and a 19% share of the total paid subscriptions.
In third place was Amazon Music, which has been slowly increasing its market share. It had 15% of the market, up from 10% in 2018. In January, Amazon Music announced that its streaming service had 55 million customers worldwide.
While Apple hasn't released exact figures for its paid subscribers in 2019, Apple Services Chief Eddy Cue said in June of that year that the service had passed 60 million subscribers. That was the last official word from Apple, though it's likely that the number of subscribers has grown significantly since then.
As of October 2019, Spotify announced that it had 248 million listeners globally, though that includes the service's ad-supported free tier. Apple Music, by comparison, doesn't offer a free tier.
Counterpoint believes that global music subscriptions will grow more than 25% in 2020, with numbers exceeding 450 million paid subscribers by the end of the year.
Though Apple Music trailed behind Spotify in global market share, the service's subscription base grew 36% in 2019.
Apple Music, as part of the company's broader services push, has been steadily gaining ground in the streaming industry. But while the service's subscriber base has blossomed since its launch in 2015, Spotify remains the global market leader.
New data published on Friday backs that up. According to research from Counterpoint Research, Apple Music trailed behind Spotify in total market share throughout the 2019 calendar year. However, the research firm adds that Apple's total subscription base actually grew 36% year-over-year, echoing the broader increase across the industry.
Apple has been making improvements to its service, including "the introduction of night mode, curated playlists to target a group, etc," research analyst Abhilash Kumar said.
Spotify grabbed 31% of the total revenue and 35% of total paid subscribers globally. Apple Music was in second place with 24% of total streaming revenues and a 19% share of the total paid subscriptions.
In third place was Amazon Music, which has been slowly increasing its market share. It had 15% of the market, up from 10% in 2018. In January, Amazon Music announced that its streaming service had 55 million customers worldwide.
While Apple hasn't released exact figures for its paid subscribers in 2019, Apple Services Chief Eddy Cue said in June of that year that the service had passed 60 million subscribers. That was the last official word from Apple, though it's likely that the number of subscribers has grown significantly since then.
As of October 2019, Spotify announced that it had 248 million listeners globally, though that includes the service's ad-supported free tier. Apple Music, by comparison, doesn't offer a free tier.
Counterpoint believes that global music subscriptions will grow more than 25% in 2020, with numbers exceeding 450 million paid subscribers by the end of the year.
Comments
Because of this, I prefer Apple Music -- though I consider the two services to be roughly equal in end-user experience.
On topic: Streaming music is growing. Looks like all the major players grew. Seems more and more of the public is finding perpetual services an acceptable proposition.
I base my claim of AM turning a profit on the facts that a) Services generally reports double-digit growth, and AM is part of that and b) the rate of growth in AM suggests that it is profitable (though unlikely to be the most profitable part of Services, of course).
Even assuming AM has added zero users since they passed the 60M paid users mark, at an average of $5/month per user (trying to average out both individual and family subscriptions, conservatively), that's $10M per day. I don't know it for a fact, but I'm pretty sure there's room for profit in there even after paying the copyright holders and infrastructure costs. And even if the service hasn't paid back its initial development and running costs yet somehow, it will rather quickly if it continues to grow -- since costs should now be stable yet income is growing.
The rate of growth of AM doesn't suggest profitability. It suggests growth. Nothing more. Cook himself said AM doesn't have to be profitable to achieve it's goals. The same goes for Amazon and Google. All three of them can subsidize music as a loss leader. Are they doing that? IDK. Just like I don't know if any of them run their music services at a profit. There's nothing out there that supports an assumption either way. Math certainly doesn't.
Perhaps now is the time for all those smaller companies to petition that Spotify is abusing their market dominance in music.
I wish Jimmy Iovine and Dre stayed at Apple. They were doing a great job. I feel Apple would be #1 by now.
I'm curious as to why you would say it is a horrendous mess.
But I agree with others on here, the playlists and recommends are pretty poor. I've never used Spotify or Amazon music so I can't compare to them. But as a heavy metal fan, if the band is not mainstream then chances are Apple Music isn't going to recommend it. I'm sure metal is a very small % of their user base, so they are not going to spend as much time curating quality playlists like they will for pop and rap, but I do feel like a forgotten minority on their product.
But as someone who is very passionate about music I have my sources for finding music that fits my tastes. Bandcamp is an excellent service that lets me follow users with like minded taste and I get notified when they purchase music. I've discovered countless bands through their recommendations. Also, whenever I decide to buy an album that I love, I'll do it on Bandcamp since their downloads are DRM free. Plus there's music on there (especially in the underground metal scene) that is not available in Apple Music. Overall for $17 a month (family plan) Apple Music can't be beat and I love the service.