Apple Music Starts To Get Traction But Only In The USA

After forking out over $3 billion to buy Beats it appears that Apple’s investment in music is paying off.

New research reveals that Apple is adding U.S subscribers at a significantly faster pace than Spotify, who is looking to float this year.

While Apple is adding new subscribers at a monthly growth rate of 5%, Spotify is only managing 2% growth.

This could mean that Apple Music takes the title of top U.S. streaming service as soon as this summer.

Unlike Spotify, Apple Music doesn’t offer a free tier of service, but its subscribers are automatically entered into a free trial when they subscribe.

As a result, Apple Music has three to four times the number of free trial users as Spotify.

Despite Apple Music’s rising popularity, Spotify has long held the No. 1 spot as the most popular streaming service in the U.S. and around the world.

Spotify has nearly twice the number of Apple Music’s subscribers on a global basis especially in markets such as Australia.

The Swedish streaming platform announced earlier this month that it hit 70 million paid global subscribers, compared to Apple Music, which counts 36 million paid listeners worldwide.

Google who also want a share of the music streaming market is widely expected to launch a YouTube, paid music streaming service, internally referred to as Remix, in March.

The service would compete head to head with Spotify and Apple Music.

At the same time Spotify which has been valued at as much as $19 billion last year, goes ahead with its plans, it would make it the first major company to carry out a direct listing, an unconventional way to pursue an IPO without raising new capital.