Apple Music overtakes Spotify in U.S. subscriber counts
Apple Music has pulled ahead of Spotify in the U.S. market, a major music distributor claims, with Apple's streaming service said to have overtaken its main rival in terms of the number of paid subscribers from the United States.
The unidentified U.S.-based distributor shared subscriber counts for the streaming services with Digital Music News, advising that while both Apple Music and Spotify have more than 20 million subscribers in the market, Apple is now a "hair ahead." Exact counts were not published for confidentiality reasons.
The distributor's report also points to Apple Music being the most popular of on-demand music streaming services in the United States, though not the most popular music service overall. By comparison, the report notes Sirius XM Satellite Radio has more than 33 million subscribers.
Since its launch, Apple Music has rapidly increased its subscriber base to make it one of the biggest services of its kind in the world, including outpacing Spotify's growth. In May, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed Apple Music had more than 50 million users split between paid subscribers and trials, while in April the service passed the 40 million paid subscriber milestone.
Analysis at the time speculated a growth rate for Apple Music of approximately 4 million paid subscribers per month.
A February report suggested the growth rate of Apple Music was around 5 percent per month, compared to Spotify's 2 percent growth. The report anticipated Apple Music growing past Spotify in the U.S. at some point this summer.
Spotify continues to be the larger service overall, ending its March financial quarter with a 75 million subscribers, a year-on-year increase of 45 percent. Spotify also recorded 170 million active users during the period, including both paid and free tier users, itself up 30 percent on 2017's figures, suggesting the service is still seeing growth.
A more recent indicator of how each of the services are faring is the record-setting release of Scorpion, Drake's fifth album, which took place last month. On the first day of availability, Apple Music hosted more than 170 million streams of the album, while Spotify achieved only 132 million streams despite the higher user base.
The unidentified U.S.-based distributor shared subscriber counts for the streaming services with Digital Music News, advising that while both Apple Music and Spotify have more than 20 million subscribers in the market, Apple is now a "hair ahead." Exact counts were not published for confidentiality reasons.
The distributor's report also points to Apple Music being the most popular of on-demand music streaming services in the United States, though not the most popular music service overall. By comparison, the report notes Sirius XM Satellite Radio has more than 33 million subscribers.
Since its launch, Apple Music has rapidly increased its subscriber base to make it one of the biggest services of its kind in the world, including outpacing Spotify's growth. In May, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed Apple Music had more than 50 million users split between paid subscribers and trials, while in April the service passed the 40 million paid subscriber milestone.
Analysis at the time speculated a growth rate for Apple Music of approximately 4 million paid subscribers per month.
A February report suggested the growth rate of Apple Music was around 5 percent per month, compared to Spotify's 2 percent growth. The report anticipated Apple Music growing past Spotify in the U.S. at some point this summer.
Spotify continues to be the larger service overall, ending its March financial quarter with a 75 million subscribers, a year-on-year increase of 45 percent. Spotify also recorded 170 million active users during the period, including both paid and free tier users, itself up 30 percent on 2017's figures, suggesting the service is still seeing growth.
A more recent indicator of how each of the services are faring is the record-setting release of Scorpion, Drake's fifth album, which took place last month. On the first day of availability, Apple Music hosted more than 170 million streams of the album, while Spotify achieved only 132 million streams despite the higher user base.
Comments
Spotify boasting about its user is not different than Google boasting about Android activations 8 years ago. Quantity not quality.
Considering AM is the default music app on every iOS device it would be embarrassing for Apple if it didn’t take over Spotify.
Actually I just subscribed to my first service through Spotify thus month and its due to Apples set up.
Apple Music is confined to limited devices while Spotify is basically universal across the board in both products as well as how you can access it. Different phones, tablets, web browser, video game consoles, speakers, etc.
Biggest reason is how Apple has handled speakers. I already have speakers in every room. Speakers that are better than Apple Home Pod. I just want to make them smart as well as sync them but Apple doesn't have a way to do this while Google and Amazon do. I just say "google play rock music on spotify" and it syncs across the entire household as well as smart commands without the need to do wonky workarounds because Apple doesn't play nice outside its own phone.
I'm an Apple Music subscriber, however, and I quite like it. But, I'm one of those weirdos who likes iTunes. I've been using iTunes since it ran on Mac OS 9. My whole history and collected music library, ratings, playlists, etc are in iTunes. It just makes sense to stay with iTunes, which now makes a music streaming service available. For me, it never made sense to even bother with Spotify because it was a complete foreign environment.
As for "anti competition" [based on monopoly practices I assume you mean], that is hard to justify at a global level when Apple's installed base might be 30% of the total smartphone market. Microsoft had greater than 90% of the entire PC OS market at the time.
That is the kind of behaviour that would get them in hot water. Why stop at Spotify? Why not ban Google Maps, iCab, WhatsApp, Gmail ...
In Europe, the decision was made to address the IE issue by tackling the 'bundling' side, but that was just the least bad option for trying to shove the genie back in the bottle.
Since Apple Music requires a sub subscription in the same manner as Spotify does, and there is no reason to think Apple are artificially under-pricing the Apple Music service, a case for anti-competitive behavior here is currently weak.
Why would they bother? This article proves they are already winning in the US without banning Spotify. They make more money and more happy customers by offering competing services. Unlike MS or Google, Apple has never been about dominating marketshare for any of their products. The closest they've ever come to any monopoly was the iPod but they only tripped into that monopoly because the competition was so bad.
According to the RIAA, in 2017 there were 35.3 million paid streaming subscriptions, up from 22.7 million in 2016. At the same growth rate, that would mean there are currently about 42 million paid streaming subs. If Apple and Spotify each have about 20 million, that only leaves 2 million subs for all the other services combined. That's not credible, IMO, unless the growth rate in 2018 is far higher than the growth rate last year.