Apple Music now boasts more subscribers than Spotify in the U.S.

[DrMacintosh]

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Both services have more than 20 million subscribers, but Apple Music is finally “a hair ahead” after creeping up on Spotify for months, according to a new report. Apple’s service is expected to widen the gap in the coming months as it continues to enjoy a faster growth rate than its biggest rival.

 

We learned back in February that Apple Music was on track to overtake Spotify in the U.S. this summer. Back then, the service was enjoying a 5 percent growth rate, while Spotify’s was just 2 percent.

So it looks like Spotify has hit its peak for some reason while Apple Music is still growing, also for some reason, lol. 

 

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According to a source — a major music distributor in the U.S. — Apple is now ranked first among on-demand music streaming services in the U.S. when it comes to paying subscribers.

But ranked first in what? Number of songs? Number of happy subscribers? Number of users more likely to like Rick Astley? idk.  

 

Lets not lose our sense of reality though

Quote

Spotify still on top* worldwide

Spotify also remains a much bigger service when its free tier users are taken into account. The service has roughly 160 million total users worldwide, while Apple Music has an estimated 55 million, including 5-10 million still on a trial plan.

So yes, Spotify is still popular world wide, Apple music is only just making a dent. 

 

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It’s not all about the subscribers, though. Despite fewer customers, Apple Music attracted 170 million streams of Drake’s new Scorpion album during its first week of availability, while Spotify attracted an estimated 130 million.

This indicates that Apple Music enjoys much better user engagement. It seems a lot of peopler are signing up for free Spotify accounts that they never use.

This is very important, you need users who are actively using your platform. Having users is great but if they aren't paying and or listing to ads you aren't making money. A problem that Apple Music seems to have less of. 

 

I'm actually pretty interested in knowing how many subscribers Apple has gotten from their Android app. That probably helped their US market share a good bit but I'm still a little puzzled.

 

As far as I know Apple Music is still riddled with a bunch of bugs that kinda break the experience for a lot of users but it would appear that they either don't come up all that often or happen so infrequently that nobody is noticeably affected by it. Or I guess the bugs could have been patched. 

 

What music streaming service do you guys use, if any? 

 

Source: https://www.cultofmac.com/560041/apple-music-overtakes-spotify-us/

 

[PlayStation 2]

I'm sure part of it has to do with the fact that there's shit on Apple Music you can find that you just can't really find on Spotify, when, otherwise, they share a very similar library of content.

I personally listen either to my own local shit or listen to music through YouTube, but occasionally I use Spotify.

[Okjoek]

I just rip all my music from Youtube with a site that converts videos to MP3 files.

[captain_to_fire]

Here's why I think growth of Apple Music is very fast:

• It's available to countries where iTunes is available including the Russian Federation and they cover more than 100 countries. Spotify only covers 65 countries. 
• Apple Music is tightly integrated to iOS. After booting up a newly unboxed iPhone, there's an Apple Music splash screen when opening the Music app and chances are most people will use what's available out of the box. Newcomers to iOS who just made a new Apple ID are entitled to a free trial for 90-days.
• Apple Music is priced the same as Spotify Premium
• Apple Music has better music discovery features (like Beats1 radio) than Spotify
• Apple Music has music videos and playing tracks have lyrics at the bottom. Spotify doesn't have those
• Apple Music tend to get new songs first (except  Beyonce  and Jay-Z) and Spotify usually follows

With that said, I still prefer Spotify for a couple of reasons. 

• Spotify plays nicer to more third party streaming devices like a Chromecast. Apple Music only works with the Apple TV and the fugly HomePod.
• Spotify works well with Google Assistant on Android. 
• Spotify has an ad-subsidized free version. Apple Music doesn't have one.
• Navigating both the mobile and desktop apps of Spotify is way easier than it is on iTunes. 
• Spotify has a web player. Apple Music doesn't have one.

Edited July 7, 2018 by captain_to_fire

[JoeCoke]

And I'm just sitting here with MP3s on Winamp/Samsung Music like an animal.

 

8 minutes ago, Okjoek said:

I just rip all my music from Youtube with a site that converts videos to MP3 files.

Spoiler

 

[PlayStation 2]

3 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

 

• Navigating both the mobile and desktop apps of Spotify is way easier than it is on iTunes. 
• Spotify has a web player. Apple Music doesn't have one.

These two. I can personally attest to iTunes being a sluggish piece of shit on Windows. It seems to be far snappier on macOS, though.

The latter... yeah, I gotta agree, if Apple Music had a web player, I think it'd open a bit more appeal to some people. Especially audio quality-wise, they'd be at a basic fighting level with Spotify in that regard, as Spotify on web browsers taps out at 256kbps AAC (from what I remember) and Apple Music defaults to that.

[Commodus]

1 minute ago, captain_to_fire said:

• Spotify plays nicer to more third party streaming devices like a Chromecast. Apple Music only works with the Apple TV and the fugly HomePod.
• Spotify works well with Google Assistant on Android. 
• Navigating both the mobile and desktop apps of Spotify is way easier than it is on iTunes. 
• Spotify has a web player. Apple Music doesn't have one.

 

Some corrections:

 

Apple Music works on Sonos speakers (I know, I have a whole setup).  Can't voice control it, but you can use the Sonos app (or soon, AirPlay 2) to play things.  Also, the HomePod isn't ugly.  It's a cylinder covered in a 3D weave fabric.  It's inoffensive, but not ugly.

 

I actually prefer iTunes for Apple Music navigation... among other things, it's much easier to clear your queue and to slot a song into the mix.  It's subjective, I know, just saying that your stance isn't necessarily definitive.

 

Technically, there is a web player for Apple Music, but it's intended for web creators embedding tracks (you can play tunes all you like there).  The suspicion is that Apple may eventually roll out a full web player.

[captain_to_fire]

2 minutes ago, Commodus said:

I actually prefer iTunes for Apple Music navigation... among other things, it's much easier to clear your queue and to slot a song into the mix.  It's subjective, I know, just saying that your stance isn't necessarily definitive.

Search in iTunes is universal only. I can't just search for a single song within a playlist or list of saved songs. Spotify has both universal search and a per-playlist search function on both mobile and desktop. The only UI advantage I can think iTunes/Apple Music has is it can sort songs by genre but that's just it. Here's a problem with the Apple Music app also, it automatically arranges songs alphabetically but doesn't have the option to arrange songs by date added. Spotify for desktop and mobile has it.

6 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Technically, there is a web player for Apple Music, but it's intended for web creators embedding tracks (you can play tunes all you like there).  The suspicion is that Apple may eventually roll out a full web player.

This is why Spotify plays nicer to other platforms. If one day I decide to switch to Linux, I can still access Spotify web player. Apple Music simply doesn't have one.

8 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

hey'd be at a basic fighting level with Spotify in that regard, as Spotify on web browsers taps out at 256kbps AAC (from what I remember) and Apple Music defaults to that.

When streaming on cellular data, there's an option to stream Apple Music at a lower bit rate to save on data but unfortunately unspecified. Spotify automatically defaults to 96 kbit/s when streaming on cellular data. I don't think the kind of compression matters when it comes to quality since both OGG Vorbis and AAC are lossy compression. 

[rockking1379]

Personally I switched off Spotify to Apple Music because of iCloud family sharing. I already had a shared subscription for extra iCloud storage.

[PlayStation 2]

2 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

When streaming on cellular data, there's an option to stream Apple Music at a lower bit rate to save on data but unfortunately unspecified. Spotify automatically defaults to 96 kbit/s when streaming on cellular data. I don't think the kind of compression matters when it comes to quality since both OGG Vorbis and AAC are lossy compression. 

My money would be 128kbps, considering that before Apple offered 256kbps music for purchase, they did 128kbps.

I'd argue that bitrate would matter in a sense, especially if one defaults to something lower than the other. Spotify's default 160kbps OGG is considerably worse quality than 256kbps AAC, but at low bitrates like 96kbps, it's not gonna sound that good anyways. 320kbps OGG is considerably better than 256kbps AAC, though, so there's that.

[mr moose]

I still buy cds and dvds.

[captain_to_fire]

2 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

My money would be 128kbps, considering that before Apple offered 256kbps music for purchase, they did 128kbps.

I'd argue that bitrate would matter in a sense, especially if one defaults to something lower than the other. Spotify's default 160kbps OGG is considerably worse quality than 256kbps AAC, but at low bitrates like 96kbps, it's not gonna sound that good anyways. 320kbps OGG is considerably better than 256kbps AAC, though, so there's that.

I guess I need audiophile grade headphones to hear the difference of each bit rate. Too bad Apple's asinine courage got rid of the 3.5 mm headphone jack which is the stupidest change smartphone OEMs moved in to.

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, captain_to_fire said:

I guess I need audiophile grade headphones to hear the difference of each bit rate. Too bad Apple's asinine courage got rid of the 3.5 mm headphone jack which is the stupidest change smartphone OEMs moved in to.

Honestly, I was going to wonder where removing the headphone jack was going to lead to until Google did it.

[SansVarnic]

(I use Pandora shhhhh.....)

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, SansVarnic said:

(i use pandora shhhhh.....)

Now now, there's no shame...

unless Pandora doesn't have a high bitrate option

[captain_to_fire]

1 minute ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Now now, there's no shame...

unless Pandora doesn't have a high bitrate option

I was hoping someone in the forum will jump in and say they use TIDAL HiFi. 

[LienusLateTips]

Why though

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, captain_to_fire said:

I was hoping someone in the forum will jump in and say they use TIDAL HiFi. 

watch that unironically be me

[Guest]

I moved to Apple Music from Spotify recently, after being a Spotify premium customer for a while due to:

- Lossless playback

- Availability of songs

- Integration with mp3 library

- Better EQ

- iCloud Integration

 

I always find after a few months on Spotify my songs grey out due to not being available in my country or being changed or something and the playlist doesn’t. automaticially update. The fact is Apple Music is a much better service.

[DrMacintosh]

3 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

The fact is Apple Music is a much better service.

The best service is intenret downloads and syncing with iTunes  

[Guest]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

The best service is intenret downloads and syncing with iTunes  

I only use iCloud

Havent actually synced my iPhone with iTunes since 2013.

[DrMacintosh]

2 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

I only use iCloud

Havent actually synced my iPhone with iTunes since 2013.

I actually store my downloaded music in iCloud Drive, on a physical external drive, and on my PC. Triple redundancy lol! I WiFi sync with my MacBook and really my PC is just the ugly ducking. All it does it hold music, doesn’t really play tracks anymore. 

[PlayStation 2]

You ever have full CDs you just rip because you can't stream 'em?

[DrMacintosh]

3 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

You ever have full CDs you just rip because you can't stream 'em?

 

I do love that iTunes can reach out the the internet to identify the Album, get the Metadata, and Album art and throw it all in your library in minutes. Super convenient. 

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

I do love that iTunes can reach out the the internet to identify the Album, get the Metadata, and Album art and throw it all in your library in minutes. Super convenient. 

Yeah, it can do that for a lot of albums.

This was one of 'em for the metadata and album identification, but at the time of me ripping it, it couldn't find the art for it. I found a 1280x1280 version of that art, anyways, so it's all cool.

I go in and edit the data anyways, though. I tend to be consistent with my titling (say, You Gots to Chill vs. You Gots To Chill and The Fast and the Furious vs. The Fast And The Furious) so that's something that doesn't affect me hugely.