Apple Watch users can finally listen to Spotify music without an iPhone. This is a boon to runners, and continues the trend of making Apple’s wearable more independent.
Spotify’s Q2 earnings showed largely positive growth, although the streaming music giant suffered a 21% decline in ad revenue and a 48% rise in operating costs due to deals like its $100 million licensing deal for The Joe Rogan Experience.
Total monthly active users on the platform grew to 299 million, while paid subscribers increased to 138 million. Apple Music, which does not operate a free listening tier (outside of Beats 1 radio), last reported 60 million paid subscribers in June 2019 when it had passed 60 million.
The coronavirus-induced lockdown is affecting huge parts of the service economy. However, one area it doesn’t seem to be negatively impacting in the U.S. is the streaming music market.
According to a report from Music Business Weekly, published Monday, streaming music service subscriptions are not only not slowing down right now; in some cases they’re actually increasing.
Apple reportedly signed the contracts it needs to keep streaming songs from the biggest labels. However, there supposedly was no mention in the agreements of an “Apple Prime” that would bundle this company’s music and video streaming services.
Streaming music services such as Apple Music have completely taken over the music market, a new report from the Recording Industry Association of America makes clear.
The organization notes that streaming now accounts for a massive 80% of the music market in the United States. That’s up from a minuscule 7% a decade ago in 2010. In the first half of 2019, 61 million people in the US had streaming subscriptions.
Spotify’s third fiscal quarter figures show that it is growing considerably faster than Apple Music.
“We continue to feel very good about our competitive position in the market,” the streaming giant noted in a statement. “Relative to Apple, the publicly available data shows that we are adding roughly twice as many subscribers per month as they are. Additionally, we believe that our monthly engagement is roughly 2x as high and our churn is at half the rate.”
In its latest quarterly earnings, Spotify has revealed that it currently has 108 million paying subscribers. That’s approaching 2x the number who subscribe to Apple Music, which is around 60 million at present.
That’s an increase of 31% year-on-year, although it’s slightly below what the streaming music giant had been aiming for.
Tool, the American rock band which was a staple of alternative music in the 1990s and early 2000s, is finally bringing its back catalog to streaming services.
The exact services the album will be available on haven’t been named. However, it seems incredibly likely that Apple Music — one of the most popular streaming services — will be among them.
Spotify has updated its Spotify Stations app with support for CarPlay. The app is intended to provide a radio station-like experience, which customizes itself to your tastes.
With its latest update, you no longer need to use your iPhone to access the app. If you’re a CarPlay user, you can do it right from your dash.
The makers of TikTok, the runaway most popular iOS app for the past five consecutive quarters, are planning to get into the streaming music game.
According to a new report, ByteDance is gearing up to launch a streaming music service to take on the likes of Spotify and Apple Music.
