According to the report published by The Telegraph, Spotify now has a 100 million monthly active users, which includes about 30 million paying subscribers. If we compare this number with Apple’s subscription numbers of paying subscribers, Spotify has almost two times more subscribers as Apple Music has.
Subsequently, Apple services chief Eddy Cue has announced at the WWDC 2016 that took place last week that Apple Music now has 15 million paying subscribers, just two weeks before the first birthday of the service. From the information that we were able to gather, Apple Music was at 13 million subscribers in April and 11 million subscribers in February, that equals to a 2 million subscribers per two-month growth rate.
Spotify was first launched back in October 2008 and came to the U.S. almost three years later. It still is the world’s most popular streaming service, however, it looks like Apple’s service is closing the gap fast. Both services are priced similar to each other and cost $9.99 per month for individuals and $14.99 per month for families. However, Spotify is the only platform that has a free ad-supported platform.
The growth of the service provided by Apple has not gone unnoticed by the streaming platform, however, it claims that it has affected them in a positive way and has lead to an increase in their overall business. Spotify has even surpassed Skype as the most lucrative startup in Europe and is now valued at roughly $8.5 billion.
“It’s great that Apple is in the game. They are definitely raising the profile of streaming. It is hard to build an industry on your own,” Jonathan Forster, a vice president and one of its first employees, told Reuters in an interview.
“Since Apple Music started we’ve been growing quicker and adding more users than before.”
Despite this increase in the overall revenues, the service is still at a loss owing to the high royalties and revenue sharing that it has to do with the music labels.
