Apple Music U.S. Growing Faster Than Spotify

By Roy Sotelo, Christian Post Contributor Tuesday, February 06, 2018

Apple Music U.S. is growing fast in terms of subscriber rate, now even overtaking the largest global digital music service, Spotify.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that Apple Music U.S. had gained a monthly growth rate of 5 percent, which is currently higher than Spotify's 2 percent growth rate. With this growth rate, Apple Music is speculated to have more US-based subscribers than Spotify by the summer.

It should be noted that Spotify has been topping Apple Music for quite a while before the recent months, and the recent change in growth may shake the music app industry.

Several factors come to play as we look at Apple Music's fast and increasing subscriber growth rate. Apple Music requires people to subscribe to trial mode before being able to use the application. Spotify is free to all, with ads supporting its profit. Further, Apple Music is preinstalled on all iOS devices.

However, worldwide figures show that Apple Music still has a long way to go to beat Spotify.

Spotify revealed on Twitter that it had 70 million subscribers as of January this year. This is quite a large number, especially as opposed to Apple Music's 36 million subscribers. Spotify still clearly holds a stronger influence in other parts of the world, particularly where Android phones are more commonly purchased. Spotify has also been longer available in the market.

Although Apple Music is available for Android, it is unlikely for the application to overtake Spotify for Android-users as it does not offer many unique features that would distinguish it from Spotify, Google Play Music, or other familiar Android music service applications.

Even so, Apple Music has its perks. For one, it holds exclusive music. Famous for this is Taylor Swift's discography, which Swift opted to pull out from Spotify as she disagreed with sharing her music for free. Apple Music would also be convenient for previous iTunes users as it would be easier to transfer their music libraries to the app.