Apple slices into Spotify’s lead in U.S. music market

“Spotify, Apple and other streaming services do not publicly break down their subscriber counts by country, but they do report the figures to music distributors and record companies,” Anna Nicolaou reports for The Financial Times. “As of last week, Apple had between 21m and 21.5m US subscribers, while Spotify had 22m to 22.5m, according to industry executives. A year ago, Spotify had about 17m US subscribers to Apple’s 13m, these people say.”

“Music executives expect Apple to match Spotify in the US by next month. Apple should end the year with about 27m US subscribers to Spotify’s 24m, according to internal forecasts viewed by the FT,” Nicolaou reports. “Apple’s music service has also been growing faster than Spotify in the UK and Canada, countries that were heavy adopters of the iTunes store, these executives said.”

Globally, Spotify “said it had signed up 75m paying customers to the end of March, and expected that to increase to nearly 100m by the end of the year,” Nicolaou reports. “Apple most recently reported it had 50m subscribers as of May, although this includes people who signed up for a free trial, inflating the number… Daniel Ek, Spotify’s co-founder and chief executive, has brushed off concerns about Apple’s threat. ‘We don’t see any meaningful impact of competition,’ he said on a call with investors in May. ‘We don’t think that this is a winner takes all market.'”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: “We don’t see any meaningful impact of competition” sounds nearly exactly like Research in Motion’s half-CEOs as they were sucked into whirlpool on their ride down the porcelain throne.

Apple Music has rendered Spotify’s future decidedly dimmer.

The best customers are those who pay. As demonstrated by years of data, from disparate sources, those paying customers are also significantly more likely to be iPhone owners than those who’ve settled for poor iPhone facsimiles. A healthy portion of these coveted customers will leave for Apple’s comprehensive offering which offers better family rates, more music, likely exclusives, and seamless integration across all Apple devices. It’ll even work with crappy Windows PCs and Android phones eventually (not that those are likely to be Spotify’s paying customers, but whatever, some of them will join Apple Music and maybe even graduate to Apple devices because of it).

Spotify could quickly be left with an unprofitable system, with a dwindling music library because they cannot afford to pay music royalties. — MacDailyNews, June 9, 2015

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Spotify is a poor man’s Apple Music. The demographics in this race, as ever, greatly favor Apple in the long run. — MacDailyNews, January 3, 2018

SEE ALSO:
Apple Music now has more paying subscribers in the U.S. than Spotify – July 6, 2018
Apple revs up their own music publishing business – June 14, 2018
Oliver Schusser named new Apple Music chief as service passes 40 million subscribers – April 11, 2018
Apple Music hits 40 million paid subscribers milestone – April 4, 2018
Apple Music hits 38 million paid subscribers – March 12, 2018
Apple Music expands student membership pricing to 82 new countries – February 13, 2018
Apple Music poised to knock off Spotify – February 12, 2018
Apple Music was always going to win – February 6, 2018
Apple Music on track to overtake Spotify, become No. 1 streaming service in U.S. this summer – February 4, 2018
Apple Music and Spotify now account for the majority of music consumption in the UK – January 3, 2018
Spotify files for its IPO – January 3, 2018
Spotify hit with $1.6 billion lawsuit from music publisher – January 2, 2018
Apple Music passes Pandora and Spotify in mobile usage – March 29, 2017
Spotify hits 50 million paid subscribers – March 3, 2017
Apple Music surpasses 20 million paid members 17 months after launch – December 6, 2016
Oh ok, Spotify listeners are upgrading to Apple Music – July 19, 2015
Spotify CEO claims to be ‘ok’ with Apple Music – June 9, 2015