Apple Music currently has 38 million paying subscribers worldwide along with over eight million customers that are taking advantage of Apple Music’s free three-month trial period. These numbers suggest that Apple Music is growing at a rate of approximately 400,000 subscribers per week. This appears to be Apple Music’s fastest growth rate since it launched in June 2015.
Although Spotify maintains a sizeable lead over Apple Music with its 71 million paid subscribers and a free, ad-supported tier, giving it over 159 million subscribers around the world, Apple Music appears to be gaining ground on Spotify.
Apple Music provides benefits like being preinstalled on hundreds of millions of iPhones and iPads. It is also available on Mac, PC, Android, Apple Watch, Apple TV and even vehicles equipped with CarPlay, Sonos, and HomePod.
While Apple Music launched in over 100 countries at once in 2015, Spotify debuted in 2008 and expanded to the US in 2011. Both services offer an individual subscription for $9.99 per month, with student plans at $4.99, and family plans for $14.99 per month which is sharable up to six people.
There are about two billion people that have access to and have means to pay for streaming music, which means that the market is still open for growth. Apple Music and Spotify together have close to 110 million subscribers, so there is clearly an opportunity for both platforms to continue growing.
A tough task for Spotify will be turning a profit, as streaming music services are not making any money due to the lack of margins, signifying that a standard $9.99 per month subscription is not profitable. Since Apple sells a wide range of other products and services, Apple Music’s profitability is likely less of a concern for Apple. The company’s broad services category brought in a record $8.5 billion revenue last quarter.