Apple Music Is the World's Second Most Popular Music Streaming Service Behind Spotify

[ackmondual]

Look at the title of the graph...

I did. It just says subscribers, but I'd like to know how many listeners are on there as well.

 

[Big-mac-attack]

Used Spotify for several years. Thought it was meh, clunky and interface sends in loops …and it had really bad suggestions. It tries too hard to be smart. But maybe it’s for peeps that like to be told what to like and listen to. Apple Music didn’t have a great start a few years ago when I was testing it out and I initially passed on it. Made the switch last year when I bundled with the Apple One package and there’s no turning back for me. To me it’s now just a slick extension of iOS, which I like. Seamless.

 

[UltimaKilo]

Spotify's Mac desktop app is far superior to Apple Music on the app. It has a responsive, quick UI. It is easy to find things and songs stream immediately.

Apple Music, on the other hand, is slow and clunky, full of bugs and doesn't work half the time. It's the worst Mac App I use (and it's from Apple, on their own platform.)

I know people say this all the time, but it's true: Steve is spinning in his grave.

"Spinning" in his grave? 🤣

 

[dominiongamma]

Still Apple Music pays A LOT more streaming royalties than Spotify does.

The myth was debunked

 

[skitidetdu]

The myth was debunked

I get streaming royalties from Spotify and Apple Music for the same tracks and it is clearly stated in the reports from the distributor the number of streams and amount that is payed from each service.

 

[gco212]

I get streaming royalties from Spotify and Apple Music for the same tracks and it is clearly stated in the reports from the distributor the number of streams and amount that is payed from each service.

Apples and bowling balls. All of these streamers pay out differently based on how people listen to songs. You would need the data for how many people streaming your song are paid subscribers as opposed to ad-funded to get a fair comparison. The royalty rate is also lower for anyone listening to the "radio" or "discover" feature rather than specifically picking those songs to play. Spotify users could be listening to the discover features more regularly than Apple Music users (I don't know that to be true, but Spotify generally has more popular algorithms for that). Spotify also has a much larger international install base, and users in some countries pay far lower monthly rates and thus the artists have smaller royalties passed through.


All of these could reduce the per overall stream rate, while the rate for paid users on Spotify and Apple Music if it's selected by paying customers is exactly the same. I'm not even saying that's necessarily true, but the data isn't there to support the idea that Apple actually pays more. And I don't generally believe Apple is bad at negotiations or benevolently giving more money to record labels, so I'm not going with the assumption that Apple gives out more money per stream out of the goodness of its heart.

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

Put simply Apples rates are higher because they have less total subscribers than Spotify, they have less total subscribers than Spotify because their app is 💩

 

[Shanghaichica]

Nobody is paying for Spotify. People only use it because it’s free.

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

Nobody is paying for Spotify. People only use it because it’s free.

 

[ericwn]

Put simply Apples rates are higher because they have less total subscribers than Spotify, they have less total subscribers than Spotify because their app is

Can’t say I enjoyed either app but the Spotify one was uglier and less intuitive to me.

 

[Abazigal]

Put simply Apples rates are higher because they have less total subscribers than Spotify, they have less total subscribers than Spotify because their app is

To put it more accurately, they are not shovelling money into a furnace by subsidising a free tier that’s making a net loss.