While Apple has announced its own streaming music service Apple Music, Spotify announces today it…
While Apple has announced its own streaming music service Apple Music, Spotify announces today it has 20 million paying subscribers. Another 55 million use the free version of the streaming music service, which means a total of 75 million users. A year ago Spotify was at 10 million paying subscribers and at 40 million free-riders, respectively. Just to give you an idea of the scale we are talking about, France’s Deezer has 6 million paying subscribers and another 10 million who use it for free. With or without Taylor Swift, the Spotify train is taking up speed. Spotify’s losses continue to increase though, not really a surprise as it is aggressively pushing its service and at the same time providing payouts to labels (who correctly pay out to their bands, or not).
It’s clear that Apple Music – which only has a paying version (besides the first 3 free months) – will have a tough battle to win if it wants to convert that many people to use their service. It’s hard to predict if (or how many) people with Apple devices will make the switch from Spotify to Apple Music. Those using Spotify on their Apple devices are used to a rather slick experience, it’s not sure that Apple’s offering will be able to beat this. Talking of ‘beat’, the 24/24 radio offering Beat 1 is not exactly a reason to switch over to Apple Music either. One thing is sure, those who have never used a streaming service on their Apple devices might now be convinced after all with what Apple has on offer, thus creating a bigger market share for streaming music. But even for Apple, who has 800 million accounts it can connect, convincing 75 million of them to use Apple Music won’t be exactly be an easy task.
Nevertheless, the battle for who will be the biggest streaming company has just started. Because of this Spotify closed a funding round of more than US$500 million to try to keep the competition on a distance.
Disclaimer:Side-Line did not get any bribes from Spotify for this story :).
Since you’re here …
… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading Side-Line Magazine than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help.
Side-Line’s independent journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we want to push the artists we like and who are equally fighting to survive.
If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps fund it, our future would be much more secure. For as little as 5 US$, you can support Side-Line Magazine – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.
The donations are safely powered by Paypal.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.