Rapidly-growing Apple Music tops 17 million subscribers

In spite of only launching a little over a year ago, Apple Music has already exceeded 17 million subscribers, Apple announced at its Sept. 7 press event.

As recently as June, the service was said to have about 15 million subscribers. In its latest figures the company didn't break down how many people are actively paying versus using their free three-month trials.

Apple still has some ways to go to catch up with Spotify, the industry leader in on-demand streaming, which in August said it had 39 million paid Premium subscribers, on top of a far larger cohort using its free ad-based tier. Spotify has been around since 2008 however, meaning it took eight years to reach that figure.

Apple's growth in music streaming likely stems from a combination of factors, including its massive advertising budget. Apple Music is also deeply integrated into iOS and iTunes, whereas people interested in services like Spotify or Tidal have to download separate clients, and can't use voice controls on Apple platforms — though that may eventually change thanks to Siri's third-party app support in iOS 10.

On top of this Apple has pursued an aggressive exclusivity strategy, making some albums available only on its service, if normally just for a week. Spotify has allegedly responded by keeping artists who agree to outside exclusives off of featured playlists, and/or burying their tracks in search results, though Spotify denies the latter.

The Apple strategy saw a major setback recently when Universal issued a moratorium on all exclusives for its artists, likely because of an incident with Apple Music and pop musician Frank Ocean. As one of the world's biggest labels, that cuts off a number of potential deals.

22 Comments

cali 3494 comments · 10 Years

About 8 years ago

I was wondering if this article would come.

What's your opinion on 17 million? Is it a hit to Spotify and do you think Spotify will fold soon?

I think it's time for Apple to open Apple Music like the App Store and allow indie artists access. I also think Apple should become a record label and hire acts like Frank Ocean, Dr. Dre and others including indie artists who they can make stars in a matter of days.

boltsfan17 2294 comments · 12 Years

cali said:

I was wondering if this article would come.

What's your opinion on 17 million? Is it a hit to Spotify and do you think Spotify will fold soon?

I think it's time for Apple to open Apple Music like the App Store and allow indie artists access. I also think Apple should become a record label and hire acts like Frank Ocean, Dr. Dre and others including indie artists who they can make stars in a matter of days.

Spotify isn't going to fold anytime soon. They still have more than double the amount of paid subscribers compared to Apple Music. At their current growth rate, Spotify should be at 50 million paid subsribers by the beginning of next year. Until Apple Music removes the requirement of having to use iTunes Match to listen offline, I will never use it again.

Dracarys 72 comments · 8 Years

cali said:

I was wondering if this article would come.

What's your opinion on 17 million? Is it a hit to Spotify and do you think Spotify will fold soon?

I think it's time for Apple to open Apple Music like the App Store and allow indie artists access. I also think Apple should become a record label and hire acts like Frank Ocean, Dr. Dre and others including indie artists who they can make stars in a matter of days.

The last thing I'd want is for Apple to become a record label and further their attempt at making the music industry their monopoly.

thewhitefalcon 4444 comments · 10 Years

boltsfan17 said:

cali said:

I was wondering if this article would come.

What's your opinion on 17 million? Is it a hit to Spotify and do you think Spotify will fold soon?

I think it's time for Apple to open Apple Music like the App Store and allow indie artists access. I also think Apple should become a record label and hire acts like Frank Ocean, Dr. Dre and others including indie artists who they can make stars in a matter of days.

Spotify isn't going to fold anytime soon. They still have more than double the amount of paid subscribers compared to Apple Music. At their current growth rate, Spotify should be at 50 million paid subsribers by the beginning of next year. Until Apple Music removes the requirement of having to use iTunes Match to listen offline, I will never use it again.

And yet Spotify continues to lose hundreds of millions of dollars because streaming is a losing business. The only ones who can handle it are companies who just consider it an ecosystem value add and can write off the losses.

thewhitefalcon said:

boltsfan17 said:

cali said:

I was wondering if this article would come.

What's your opinion on 17 million? Is it a hit to Spotify and do you think Spotify will fold soon?

I think it's time for Apple to open Apple Music like the App Store and allow indie artists access. I also think Apple should become a record label and hire acts like Frank Ocean, Dr. Dre and others including indie artists who they can make stars in a matter of days.

Spotify isn't going to fold anytime soon. They still have more than double the amount of paid subscribers compared to Apple Music. At their current growth rate, Spotify should be at 50 million paid subsribers by the beginning of next year. Until Apple Music removes the requirement of having to use iTunes Match to listen offline, I will never use it again.

And yet Spotify continues to lose hundreds of millions of dollars because streaming is a losing business. The only ones who can handle it are companies who just consider it an ecosystem value add and can write off the losses.

I haven't seen the 2016 numbers, but Spotify increased its revenue from streaming by 80% in 2015. Revenue is increasing a lot faster than their losses.