Minus a brief PR meltdown from TIDAL, dialogue surrounding the streaming market tended to be limited to that of Swedish platform Spotify until Apple Music chimed in. Just 40 days since the widely covered launch of Apple’s bid to enter the controversial shift in music consumption habits, the technology giant has announced it now has 11m subscribers using the platform in its infancy. Breaking down to approximately 9m individual subscribers and 2m under the family tier, the industry will now await to see if Apple Music’s initial sum of subscribers will last past the platform’s initial three-month free trial period.

Apple set an audacious long term target of 100m paid subscribers, a figure that could well be attainable given the size and scope of the company’s business. Spotify currently counts 75m active users, but only 20m+ of which fall under the platform’s paid subscription model. Though Apple Music is currently short of its numbers, the gap is small enough for the latest competitor to the streaming market to play serious catch-up. Beatport may have dropped the ball with their recent royalty payouts shenanigans, but the platform’s recent pairing with Spotify signals a potential peak for the Swedish platform and its repertoire with electronic dance community. With Apple Music’s Beats 1 programming garnering more and more tastemaker and consumer attention and increased pressure to nail the curation element of their respective user experiences, both platform’s will have to work hard to keep music lovers flocking towards their respective solution.

Source: NYT 

Tags: apple music, beats 1, spotify, streaming

Categories: News