Apple Music is helping, not hurting, Spotify
30 million paid customers compared to Apple’s 13 million
Apple Music currently has 13 million paying subscribers. Spotify has 30 million, up 10 million compared to June 2015.
There are also 100 million total active accounts on Spotify, up from 75 million. Apple barely has a free tier, excluding Beats 1 radio, so can’t compete in that regard.
Let’s just say maybe Apple Music did more to help Spotify than tech pontificators could’ve anticipated, by not only normalising the concept of streaming music, but also by having a paid-only, broken service to boot. From Reuters:
“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.”
I guess it’s fair to note that Apple Music on Android is still only in beta, and barely (in a bad way), but that’s no excuse.
