What you need to know

  • Apple Music and Spotify continue to grow at an impressive pace.
  • Both added over one million U.S. subscribers per month in the first half of 2019.
  • The streaming services now account for 80% of the music industry's revenue.

Apple Music and Spotify are the two leading music streaming services and they aren't going anywhere anytime soon. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (via The Wall Street Journal), each added over one million U.S. subscribers per month in the first half of 2019.

The two streaming services now account for 80% of the total music industry revenue in the United States. Music revenue in the U.S. rose 18% to $5.4 billion in the first half of 2019, with most of that growth coming from paid streaming services.

Music streaming revenue—which includes paid subscriptions and ad-supported options—rose 26% to $4.3 billion in the same time period. Leading the charge are paid subscriptions ($3.3 billion to be exact), but ad-supported streaming services continue to grow with Spotify and YouTube's free tier driving 25% growth from year-over-year to $427 million.

Last time figures were revealed, Spotify led the subscribers battle with over 100 million worldwide while Apple broke 60 million subscribers.

To continue the rapid growth, the two are rolling out alluring initiatives. Spotify recently launched its refined Spotify Lite app that uses less data and occupies less memory.

Apple Music just launched a web player that's now available to everyone and recently announced a partnership to bring the service directly to Porsche's newly announced Taycan EV sports car.

Apple Music Subscription

Apple Music is Apple's massive music service, comprising a subscription music catalog, iCloud Music Library syncing across your devices, Beats 1 live and algorithmic radio, customized playlists, and more artist exclusives than you can shake a stick at.

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