Apple Music Is Slowly Beating Spotify, Faster Paid User Growth

When Apple announced that it was launching a paid music streaming service called Apple Music, it was widely criticized for copying Spotify. Fast-forward three years later and it seems the service is quickly gaining steam, putting it within a stone’s throw away from its older rival. The paid user growth of Apple Music is simply outpacing Spotify, which many thought was inevitable.

Apple Music was launched in 2015 and since then, it has become a dominant force in the music streaming industry. Its paid users have been growing at a rate of five percent per month compared to Spotify’s two percent, despite the latter being a much older service, the Wall Street Journal reports. At least, this is what the publication claims insider sources have been saying.

Neither Apple Music nor Spotify provides actual numbers with regards to their subscription growth rate. As such, relying on third-party sources has become a necessity to get any kind of information with regards to such figures, at all.

In any case, even if the rate of growth for Apple Music’s paid users is off, it was always going to pose a huge problem for Spotify. As Gizmodo rightly points out, the Cupertino firm has a lot of money to burn. It could invest in its music streaming service in ways that Spotify could only dream of.

With Spotify coming to the scene ten years ago, the success of Apple Music might seem almost insulting. What’s more, the Swedish service is also preparing to launch an initial public offering (IPO) and Apple’s success is only going to dampen the prospect of a huge valuation.

The last time Spotify hinted at how many users it had, the figure was at over 70 million globally. In comparison, Apple appears to only have 36 million, but a lot of those are based in the U.S., which is the largest music streaming market in the world.