New subscriber figures suggest Apple can’t catch up, as both music services jolt forward at the same rate.
Apple wants to wow audiences over the progress of its music service, but perhaps it’s Spotify that really deserves your slow clap.
Cupertino, California-based Apple boasted at its iPhone 7 launch event on Wednesday that its Apple Music subscription-streaming service had accumulated 17 million paying members since it launched in June 2015. It added 2 million in less than three months.
That’s a peppy uptick, but some quick math indicates Apple and Spotify are adding subscribers at about the same rate. And thanks to its sizable lead, Spotify is outstripping Apple in sheer numbers.
The figures reaffirm the notion that more consumers are opting to stream music buffet-style versus buying songs a la carte. That’s partially thanks to the heavy marketing Apple pumped into its own subscription music service. The numbers also offer new perspective on a horse race between two companies that’s grown bitter this year.
Spotify and Apple both updated their subscriber figures in the last two weeks, and they both released their member counts roughly five months earlier, giving a snapshot of how much each service grew during approximately the same time period.
Spotify added 9 million members to reach more than 39 million in the five months from late March through late August. Apple Music gained 4 million subscribers to reach 17 million in the four-and-a-half months since late April.
That means both Apple and Spotify grew their membership about 30 percent over roughly the same stretch of time. But because Spotify already had a much bigger base of subscribers, the actual number of people who signed up was more than double the number who joined Apple’s service. If Apple wants to close the gap and overtake Spotify, it needs to start growing faster than its rival.
“The reality at the moment is Spotify is winning,” said Russ Crupnick, analyst and managing partner at MusicWatch. In addition to having the highest total of paid listeners and the strongest net additions, Spotify boasts users who tend to spend more time on its platform than Apple Music subscribers spend on Apple’s service, according to Crupnick’s research.
Sweden-based Spotify launched nearly eight years ago, compared with Apple Music’s late arrival in the market a year ago. Apple Music’s rollout also faced early hiccups, including bugs that wrecked some customers’ iTunes libraries.
Spotify has another substantial advantage: It’s the only service allowed to stream free, on-demand tunes with advertising. In response, competitors like Apple Music and Tidal lean on exclusives, like Apple’s lock on Frank Ocean’s album “Blonde” and Tidal’s hold on the Beyoncé album “Lemonade.” That’s led to reports that Spotify is retaliating against artists who grant exclusives elsewhere.
Because the recording industry insisted that most paid services charge the same price for comparable catalogs of millions of songs, the competition between streamers has grown more cutthroat this year. Exclusives represent one of the key ways the services are setting themselves apart from the pack.
But the streaming-music market still has “much more field to plow,” Crupnick said. “It’s way too early to pick a winner.”
Source: cnet.com
Kind of goofy. By this measure, neither service will ever catch up with “radio listeners” which has 340 million “members”. Compare PAID subscribers. How many paid subscribers does Spotify have and what’s the rate of growth? (I have a free Spotify account that I rarely use, but don’t pay for either service by the way…)
As of June 2016, [Spotify] officially reported 100 million active users worldwide,
http://www.statista.com/statistics/367739/spotify-global-mau/
I wonder how many people have both Spotify and Apple Music accounts? I know I do, although I only pay for Apple Music and so use that one much more often. I don’t really see the benefit of one over the other, except I’m well entrenched in Apple Music/iTunes at this point. Apples does make things confusing with iTunes vs Apple Music. If you accidentally open iTunes and find some music, you have to remember to switch over to Apple Music to listen to it, otherwise you will wind up buying it when you don’t have to buy it because you have the streaming service. I think iTunes and Apple Music need an integration and overhaul with Apple Music being the one and only music-centric service. If you have the subscription, you get a “Play” and a “Download” button in addition to “Buy”; show “Preview” only if you don’t sign in with a subscription account.
Anyway, Apple Music serves me just fine.
I don’t know who’s winning, but I know who’s losing- the CONSUMER, that’s who! Because any competition that relies on exclusivity will benefit no one. Its like what cord cutters are currently facing: Most people will need multiple streaming services to get all the channels they like to have. If artists and service providers like Apple and Tidal continue down this path, it will only hurt them and the artists by pushing many people back to piracy.
ugh… another cheesy headline looking for clicks. Summary of Story: Nothing New
I do not know much about Spotify, but apple music has been around a long time.
@offerPop5210673 “Sweden-based Spotify launched nearly eight years ago, compared with Apple Music’s late arrival in the market a year ago.”
@offerPop5210673 You don’t appear to know much about Apple music either
@offerPop5210673 you might be confusing Apple Music which is only a year old with iTunes which has been slowing down windows machines and ruining people’s media libraries for decades
So here’s a big question. Can you upload your own music to your Spotify library? I use Google Play Music because a while back I uploaded some 160GB of owned music (ripped CDs) to my Google Music Library. Google limits the NUMBER of songs not the amount of data apparently.
For a while, I was just streaming my own uploads. I was using Spotify as well at the time. The problem was my more obscure stuff simply was not available in the Spotify library. Sometime is was the not so rare stuff too. I had invested a lot of time crafting playlists in Spotify so I was reticent to give it up but eventually did. Now I’m all in with Google Play. I have big issues with the GPM UI BUT all my music is there.
Spotify has one very enviable feature: cross device playback sync. Pause a song on my work computer and resume playback of the same song in the same spot on my phone in the car. THAT KICKS BUTT!. I’ve been begging GPM to add the feature for years.
Still, at this point, I’m so invested in GPM that I’m not likely to leave. Oh and by simply subscribing to GPM, I get to use YouTube without ads. That’s pretty cool too.
@Gussy2000 I use Spotify and have “uploaded” my playlists. What I think Spotify does, is look at my playlist and then find the song in its catalogue. Every song I have added to Spotify from my collection has been there, except for a few re-sampled mixes, that are bootlegs.
Personally, I like that Apple Music is integrated with Siri and available on my Apple TV. It also has a wider selection of the music that I prefer listening to.
And another perk that Apple Music has going for it is that it is (effectively) backed financially by one of the biggest company in the world, which kinda increases the chances that Apple Music will be supported and continue to be around. Last I heard, Spotify is still making a loss, and interesting enough, one of the fingers has been pointed at the free tier, which is reportedly losing more money than it is bringing in. So yes, continue to tout Spotify’s higher subscription numbers. There’s a certain delicious irony when you realise that more than half that number is somehow responsible for Spotify’s continued poor financial results.
It will be interesting to see if Spotify will still be around in the next 5 years.
Subscribers are those who pay Spotify. Spotify got 100m total active users (sub and free).
Can songs be downloaded in Apple Music like Spotify? I have Spotify but Apple is offering 3 months free to try the service.
@doubleout Yes, you can. I would give it a try.
Thanks. I will.
I prefer Pandora and iHeart radio. Never had an interest in Spotify or Apple.
Meanwhile…over at Tidal…they are discussing who they should sell out to.
@ds92jz Tidal is audiophile hype, and a waste of money on just about all devices out there- You need a hyper expensive device and a high bandwidth connection to stream their high bit rate music, and don’t forget, you’ll need a system capable of reproducing the extra resolution in those streams- a cheap earphone won’t do!
Mind you I am a Full-Tilt Apple Eco-System owner. (I’ve a few MS Windows hanging around here somewhere as well.)
It’s one of “those.” You don’t know what you have until you’ve experienced and then miss it. (Such as I am with my Apple Flag Waving!)
But(!) I’m afraid after I discovered Spotify, I’ll never go back. Spotify – (and for the $$) beats all the streaming services I’ve tried.
@billfinkri It would be helpful if people who liked one service over the other explained their reasons WHY one service is better than the other. All it seems is fanboyism here.
@BuffaloBlizzard @billfinkri It would even be better if you took (what do they call it?) initiative and discovered why instead of staying blind and not knowing. (And NEVER ever knowing why.)
I believe, it’s elementary, try initiative and do your own investigating and see why. (You want ME to influence YOUR preferences over mine?) Doesn’t sound reasonable. Then we’d start getting into the (less intellectual) Apple Vs. PC debates. I ALWAYS stand clear of those – usually those who cannot afford the Apple Eco system are the complainers. (Twits, I used to call ’em.)
The _only_ point I attempted – was that even though I favor the “Apple Eco” system, I made my point by saying that *I* found Spotify to better suite me. (Intellectually, I tried, anyway.)
@billfinkri @BuffaloBlizzard “usually those who cannot afford the Apple Eco system are the complainers.”
That pretty much sums up the mentality of most diehard apple fanatics. They already think they are better than the average schmo because they have more money. Buying into the echo system is just status thing.
@befuddledms @billfinkri @BuffaloBlizzard Exactly, Bravo! Proud of it too.
I think Apple fans don’t have a why since iTunes was forced to them. And ignorance being bliss are happy with it until Apple Music invented subscription services as far as they know. They know what Spotify is but notGPM,. Prime music or that Rhapsody even existed as one of the first Subscription services. They were happily listening to 30second samples and paying g .99 just to hear a song they liked.
Lol. Cue apple trying to strong arm spotify yet again with shady and borderline illegal means because they dont like the margins in this business they just hoped into. Hey apple, if a business model doesnt look profitable enough for you then dont get into it! dont try and screw over 40million plus happy subscribers of existing services. As per usual, a consumer hostile move to help a floundering stock price.
Id put money on apple causing a few technical issue “mistakes” on the spotify app on updates to iOS. apple is a dirty company. If you cant see that trail of customer abuse and flagrant cash grabs in the last few years then you are a delusional apple apologist, its all easily verifiable fact. They better play nice, android is hot on thier heels, and has surpased them in many ways, like oh i dont know giving people what they want instead of telling them what you want them to want. Oh.. seriously, still a 720p screen?! I guess they got a good deal on them in bulk in 2012 and are still trying to get rid of them, thats the only logical explanation i can think of. Courageously leading the tech? Lol, only if it will make them a buck (lightning chorded headphones and proprietary BT headsets) dumb.
“Apple Music vs. Spotify: Guess who’s winning now”
David seldom beats Goliath in real life.
@BruinGuy So I guess it’s good that Spotify isn’t in the smartphone business where Apple is a Goliath.
I’m kind of dense – but why isn’t a streaming service like Pandora mentioned in this music discussion?
@mikethaler very few paid subscribers.
@mikethaler Pandora doesn’t sell the type of licensing and use as Apple and Spotify, which let you play anything in their library and download anything to your device. Pandora just generates ‘radio’ stations without letting you choose what to listen to.
@pucketbw @mikethaler Blech. Old, outdated model. I like the “jukebox” style model the subscription streaming service offer.
You wouldn’t want just one radio station. You probably shouldn’t want, or expect, on winner in streaming. What matters is really if they are on sound financial footing.
I hope for more services, not a winner.
One thing has me about ready to dump Spotify is that you cannot shuffle without repeating tracks. This is a common problem that Spotify seems to ignore, in spite of many postings in the forums about this problem? I have actually resorted to using a third party tool to randomize playlists, and then just turn of their broken shuffle option.
Google Play Music shuffles then into a list that you can then edit… I don’t know Apotify, but GPM has really good features and a great family plan for up to 6 people I think. Way to go.
Enough of Apple already! I get so tired of seeing the name as it’s dropped just to catch attention. It’s so obvious. I too would have preferred an article on all streaming services to something like this. Come on CNET, up your game and quite playing to the “core”.
@sacksack It’s not as if the article name was misleading. If you wanted to avoid Apple articles you could have easily avoided clicking on this one.
Actually I think this article nicely points out that even with the growth Apple has seen in subscriptions it is simply not doing as well as Spotify. That’ saying a lot – signing up for Apple Music is dead easy on iOS and still more people chose Spotify. What does that tell you? It’s not as great as Apple hoped you would think it is.
@jmonty–2003 @sacksack …or so many people brainlessly hate Apple that they avoid Apple products.
This thing about Apple fanboys is such a myth. There are at least 10x more hard-core Apple haters than Apple fanboys.
@BuffaloBlizzard @jmonty–2003 @sacksack I never got the apple hate until recently. Now that I finally saw things things for what they really are I now understand some of it. This whole removing the headphone jack thing has prompted me to research the Mfi program and learn how much money they make on every accessory with a lightning port and how much they made on devices that uses a headphone jack ($0) and to look at some android phones.
I was blind but now I can see.
My biggest gripe with apple music is you cannot make it work independent of icloud if you want to make a streaming playlist… in order to make a playlist that just streams I have to ‘ invade ‘ my on phone library by engaging in itunes match ….. SUCKS ! Just make the apple music work alone like spotify does….
No surprise 39 million vs 19 million Apple Following as per ..
Catch up Apple well like that’s going to happen.
Spotify said from the beginning their Subscribers had increased since Apple came on the scene.
So Nope no Surprise Apple is Loosing…
This article would’ve been better if it compared all streaming music services, not just these two.
Spotify can be played on the web (my PC), Amazon Echo, and just about everywhere else. This is the main reason I chose it over Apple music. No ecosystem lock-in.
Also the experience on iOS sucked prior to iOS 10.
@RF99 Apple Music is available on Windows and Android, too.
@jamra989 @RF99 Yea, but a lot of those people still have a bad taste in their mouth from iTunes being a POS on windows and android fans aren’t exactly amorous towards apple.
Spotify’s success deserves the sarcasm of the ‘slow clap’???
Not clear whether the numbers cited for Spotify’s subscriptions include free subscriptions.
@tundraboy Pretty sure I read somewhere that non-subscription Spotify users are over 100m now, or maybe that’s just the total of paying+non-paying users. If anyone knows the exact number feel free to correct me …
100m total users as of June
I stream music on my radio and it’s free.
@Motyoj OK old timer. Thanks for the words of wisdom.
@delmore_s @motyoj ????????
@Delmore_S You’re welcome, punk.
Kind of goofy. By this measure, neither service will ever catch up with “radio listeners” which has 340 million “members”. Compare PAID subscribers. How many paid subscribers does Spotify have and what’s the rate of growth? (I have a free Spotify account that I rarely use, but don’t pay for either service by the way…)
As of June 2016, [Spotify] officially reported 100 million active users worldwide,
http://www.statista.com/statistics/367739/spotify-global-mau/
I wonder how many people have both Spotify and Apple Music accounts? I know I do, although I only pay for Apple Music and so use that one much more often. I don’t really see the benefit of one over the other, except I’m well entrenched in Apple Music/iTunes at this point. Apples does make things confusing with iTunes vs Apple Music. If you accidentally open iTunes and find some music, you have to remember to switch over to Apple Music to listen to it, otherwise you will wind up buying it when you don’t have to buy it because you have the streaming service. I think iTunes and Apple Music need an integration and overhaul with Apple Music being the one and only music-centric service. If you have the subscription, you get a “Play” and a “Download” button in addition to “Buy”; show “Preview” only if you don’t sign in with a subscription account.
Anyway, Apple Music serves me just fine.
I don’t know who’s winning, but I know who’s losing- the CONSUMER, that’s who! Because any competition that relies on exclusivity will benefit no one. Its like what cord cutters are currently facing: Most people will need multiple streaming services to get all the channels they like to have. If artists and service providers like Apple and Tidal continue down this path, it will only hurt them and the artists by pushing many people back to piracy.
ugh… another cheesy headline looking for clicks. Summary of Story: Nothing New
I do not know much about Spotify, but apple music has been around a long time.
@offerPop5210673 “Sweden-based Spotify launched nearly eight years ago, compared with Apple Music’s late arrival in the market a year ago.”
@offerPop5210673 You don’t appear to know much about Apple music either
@offerPop5210673 you might be confusing Apple Music which is only a year old with iTunes which has been slowing down windows machines and ruining people’s media libraries for decades
So here’s a big question. Can you upload your own music to your Spotify library? I use Google Play Music because a while back I uploaded some 160GB of owned music (ripped CDs) to my Google Music Library. Google limits the NUMBER of songs not the amount of data apparently.
For a while, I was just streaming my own uploads. I was using Spotify as well at the time. The problem was my more obscure stuff simply was not available in the Spotify library. Sometime is was the not so rare stuff too. I had invested a lot of time crafting playlists in Spotify so I was reticent to give it up but eventually did. Now I’m all in with Google Play. I have big issues with the GPM UI BUT all my music is there.
Spotify has one very enviable feature: cross device playback sync. Pause a song on my work computer and resume playback of the same song in the same spot on my phone in the car. THAT KICKS BUTT!. I’ve been begging GPM to add the feature for years.
Still, at this point, I’m so invested in GPM that I’m not likely to leave. Oh and by simply subscribing to GPM, I get to use YouTube without ads. That’s pretty cool too.
@Gussy2000 I use Spotify and have “uploaded” my playlists. What I think Spotify does, is look at my playlist and then find the song in its catalogue. Every song I have added to Spotify from my collection has been there, except for a few re-sampled mixes, that are bootlegs.
Personally, I like that Apple Music is integrated with Siri and available on my Apple TV. It also has a wider selection of the music that I prefer listening to.
And another perk that Apple Music has going for it is that it is (effectively) backed financially by one of the biggest company in the world, which kinda increases the chances that Apple Music will be supported and continue to be around. Last I heard, Spotify is still making a loss, and interesting enough, one of the fingers has been pointed at the free tier, which is reportedly losing more money than it is bringing in. So yes, continue to tout Spotify’s higher subscription numbers. There’s a certain delicious irony when you realise that more than half that number is somehow responsible for Spotify’s continued poor financial results.
It will be interesting to see if Spotify will still be around in the next 5 years.
Subscribers are those who pay Spotify. Spotify got 100m total active users (sub and free).
Can songs be downloaded in Apple Music like Spotify? I have Spotify but Apple is offering 3 months free to try the service.
@doubleout Yes, you can. I would give it a try.
Thanks. I will.
I prefer Pandora and iHeart radio. Never had an interest in Spotify or Apple.
Meanwhile…over at Tidal…they are discussing who they should sell out to.
@ds92jz Tidal is audiophile hype, and a waste of money on just about all devices out there- You need a hyper expensive device and a high bandwidth connection to stream their high bit rate music, and don’t forget, you’ll need a system capable of reproducing the extra resolution in those streams- a cheap earphone won’t do!
Mind you I am a Full-Tilt Apple Eco-System owner. (I’ve a few MS Windows hanging around here somewhere as well.)
It’s one of “those.” You don’t know what you have until you’ve experienced and then miss it. (Such as I am with my Apple Flag Waving!)
But(!) I’m afraid after I discovered Spotify, I’ll never go back. Spotify – (and for the $$) beats all the streaming services I’ve tried.
@billfinkri It would be helpful if people who liked one service over the other explained their reasons WHY one service is better than the other. All it seems is fanboyism here.
@BuffaloBlizzard @billfinkri It would even be better if you took (what do they call it?) initiative and discovered why instead of staying blind and not knowing. (And NEVER ever knowing why.)
I believe, it’s elementary, try initiative and do your own investigating and see why. (You want ME to influence YOUR preferences over mine?) Doesn’t sound reasonable. Then we’d start getting into the (less intellectual) Apple Vs. PC debates. I ALWAYS stand clear of those – usually those who cannot afford the Apple Eco system are the complainers. (Twits, I used to call ’em.)
The _only_ point I attempted – was that even though I favor the “Apple Eco” system, I made my point by saying that *I* found Spotify to better suite me. (Intellectually, I tried, anyway.)
@billfinkri @BuffaloBlizzard “usually those who cannot afford the Apple Eco system are the complainers.”
That pretty much sums up the mentality of most diehard apple fanatics. They already think they are better than the average schmo because they have more money. Buying into the echo system is just status thing.
@befuddledms @billfinkri @BuffaloBlizzard Exactly, Bravo! Proud of it too.
I think Apple fans don’t have a why since iTunes was forced to them. And ignorance being bliss are happy with it until Apple Music invented subscription services as far as they know. They know what Spotify is but notGPM,. Prime music or that Rhapsody even existed as one of the first Subscription services. They were happily listening to 30second samples and paying g .99 just to hear a song they liked.
Lol. Cue apple trying to strong arm spotify yet again with shady and borderline illegal means because they dont like the margins in this business they just hoped into. Hey apple, if a business model doesnt look profitable enough for you then dont get into it! dont try and screw over 40million plus happy subscribers of existing services. As per usual, a consumer hostile move to help a floundering stock price.
Id put money on apple causing a few technical issue “mistakes” on the spotify app on updates to iOS. apple is a dirty company. If you cant see that trail of customer abuse and flagrant cash grabs in the last few years then you are a delusional apple apologist, its all easily verifiable fact. They better play nice, android is hot on thier heels, and has surpased them in many ways, like oh i dont know giving people what they want instead of telling them what you want them to want. Oh.. seriously, still a 720p screen?! I guess they got a good deal on them in bulk in 2012 and are still trying to get rid of them, thats the only logical explanation i can think of. Courageously leading the tech? Lol, only if it will make them a buck (lightning chorded headphones and proprietary BT headsets) dumb.
“Apple Music vs. Spotify: Guess who’s winning now”
David seldom beats Goliath in real life.
@BruinGuy So I guess it’s good that Spotify isn’t in the smartphone business where Apple is a Goliath.
I’m kind of dense – but why isn’t a streaming service like Pandora mentioned in this music discussion?
@mikethaler very few paid subscribers.
@mikethaler Pandora doesn’t sell the type of licensing and use as Apple and Spotify, which let you play anything in their library and download anything to your device. Pandora just generates ‘radio’ stations without letting you choose what to listen to.
@pucketbw @mikethaler Blech. Old, outdated model. I like the “jukebox” style model the subscription streaming service offer.
You wouldn’t want just one radio station. You probably shouldn’t want, or expect, on winner in streaming. What matters is really if they are on sound financial footing.
I hope for more services, not a winner.
One thing has me about ready to dump Spotify is that you cannot shuffle without repeating tracks. This is a common problem that Spotify seems to ignore, in spite of many postings in the forums about this problem? I have actually resorted to using a third party tool to randomize playlists, and then just turn of their broken shuffle option.
Google Play Music shuffles then into a list that you can then edit… I don’t know Apotify, but GPM has really good features and a great family plan for up to 6 people I think. Way to go.
Enough of Apple already! I get so tired of seeing the name as it’s dropped just to catch attention. It’s so obvious. I too would have preferred an article on all streaming services to something like this. Come on CNET, up your game and quite playing to the “core”.
@sacksack It’s not as if the article name was misleading. If you wanted to avoid Apple articles you could have easily avoided clicking on this one.
Actually I think this article nicely points out that even with the growth Apple has seen in subscriptions it is simply not doing as well as Spotify. That’ saying a lot – signing up for Apple Music is dead easy on iOS and still more people chose Spotify. What does that tell you? It’s not as great as Apple hoped you would think it is.
@jmonty–2003 @sacksack …or so many people brainlessly hate Apple that they avoid Apple products.
This thing about Apple fanboys is such a myth. There are at least 10x more hard-core Apple haters than Apple fanboys.
@BuffaloBlizzard @jmonty–2003 @sacksack I never got the apple hate until recently. Now that I finally saw things things for what they really are I now understand some of it. This whole removing the headphone jack thing has prompted me to research the Mfi program and learn how much money they make on every accessory with a lightning port and how much they made on devices that uses a headphone jack ($0) and to look at some android phones.
I was blind but now I can see.
My biggest gripe with apple music is you cannot make it work independent of icloud if you want to make a streaming playlist… in order to make a playlist that just streams I have to ‘ invade ‘ my on phone library by engaging in itunes match ….. SUCKS ! Just make the apple music work alone like spotify does….
No surprise 39 million vs 19 million Apple Following as per ..
Catch up Apple well like that’s going to happen.
Spotify said from the beginning their Subscribers had increased since Apple came on the scene.
So Nope no Surprise Apple is Loosing…
This article would’ve been better if it compared all streaming music services, not just these two.
Spotify can be played on the web (my PC), Amazon Echo, and just about everywhere else. This is the main reason I chose it over Apple music. No ecosystem lock-in.
Also the experience on iOS sucked prior to iOS 10.
@RF99 Apple Music is available on Windows and Android, too.
@jamra989 @RF99 Yea, but a lot of those people still have a bad taste in their mouth from iTunes being a POS on windows and android fans aren’t exactly amorous towards apple.
Spotify’s success deserves the sarcasm of the ‘slow clap’???
Not clear whether the numbers cited for Spotify’s subscriptions include free subscriptions.
@tundraboy Pretty sure I read somewhere that non-subscription Spotify users are over 100m now, or maybe that’s just the total of paying+non-paying users. If anyone knows the exact number feel free to correct me …
100m total users as of June
I stream music on my radio and it’s free.
@Motyoj OK old timer. Thanks for the words of wisdom.
@delmore_s @motyoj ????????
@Delmore_S You’re welcome, punk.