Just one month ago Apple SVP Eddie Cue disclosed that their music streaming service had amassed 38M subscribers worldwide. Then yesterday Apple confirmed a newly leaked story that they were up to 40M subs. If both of those numbers are correct that means Apple Music is growing its user base by 5% per month.
In March I posted the graphic below showing Apple’s subscriber growth compared to Spotify. While both platforms are increasing, estimates are that Spotify is growing at 2% MoM compared to Apple’s aforementioned 5%. If those two growth rates hold Apple will surpass Spotify in WW subscribers sometime in the back half of 2019. While neither company breaks out US-only listeners, analysts already think Apple has overtaken Spotify with 30Mish domestic subs.
While Apple Music’s growth is a nice to have for Tim Cook and team, it poses a much bigger challenge for Spotify. They’ve built their business, and now gone public, by driving a grow-at-all-cost strategy. It’ll be interesting to see how they react as their growth trajectory starts to slow while a very deep-pocketed competitor is just getting ramped up.
