Spotify this afternoon reported its first quarterly earnings since its February IPO filing, and in the report, the company revealed that it now has 75 million paid subscribers.
The 75 million number is up from the 71 million paying subscribers that Spotify reported at the end of February, and it's almost double the number of subscribers who pay for Apple Music.
Apple in April said that it had 40 million paid subscribers across 115 countries and an additional eight million people using the service through the free three-month trial.
Though it has 75 million paid subscribers, Spotify's total subscriber base is much larger at 170 million subscribers due to the free tier that it offers.
While Spotify has more paying subscribers than Apple Music, the latter service has been gaining new subscribers at a quicker rate. A recent report from The Wall Street Journal suggested Apple Music is on track to overtake Spotify in U.S. subscribers as soon as this summer because its five percent growth rate per month outpaces Spotify's two percent growth rate.
Spotify last month beefed up its free tier with on-demand playlists, song recommendations, and a new low-data mode with the hopes that a more robust free tier will convert more listeners into paid subscribers.
Spotify stock is down following its earnings release as its $1.36 billion in revenue fell short of the $1.4 billion in revenue estimated by Wall Street.
Top Rated Comments
Spotify is easy to use on Linux.
Try iTunes on Linux via Wine, it's a nightmare.
Moreover, they could develop and promote their iCloud.com website by adding Apple Music there.
A lot of folks would get familiar with that domain and would see other options, such as Pages or iCloud Drive.
iMessage could also have a debut there. So we would gain a handful of useful apps there: iMessage (in the Cloud), Apple Music, Apple Maps, and the rest that's already there. Apple could steal the Google's momentum for web apps. (even further by making them iCloud-hosted, using CloudKit, or even making an App Store for iCloud.com).
Finally, a simple Apple Music on the web would resolve issues with lack of the Linux support or the need to install that crappy iTunes on Windows.