Apple may be having a heyday with the impressive subscriber numbers for their Apple Music service, but Spotify has surprised the app community by securing the elusive No. 1 spot for top grossing apps in the U.S.
While Spotify has managed to reach this status before in the U.K., their previous record in the U.S. was No. 3.
Interestingly, it may be that the competing Apple Music has a hand in Spotify’s recent success. Apple CEO Tim Cook stated in a recent statement to San Francisco iPhone app developers that Apple Music lost around 40 percent of their user base when the free trial ended, and while those are high conversion numbers for paid streaming iPhone apps, it’s possible that many of those 40 percent (numbering in the millions) moved over to Spotify as an alternative. After all, the idea of paid streaming is relatively new to many users, so it’s reasonable to expect that many users who had never considered paying for streaming might take a look around the market after Apple brought their service into the limelight.
Including their free tier, Spotify boasts high numbers of about 75 million active users, and their tie-in with Facebook and other apps is sure to continue propelling their brand as a go-to for streaming. Paid users clock in at around 5 million more than Apple Music’s current 15 million users, around 6.5 million of whom are paying subscribers. (That being said, those numbers are expected to drop somewhat as “accidental” subscribers realize their free trial ended.)
While Spotify has the top position for now, the relatively stable positions of other industry players like Pandora and SoundCloud suggests that the industry will have to become much more saturated before competition between iPhone app developers to provide streaming apps becomes heated. After all, Apple Music means more publicity for the service, and more publicity — at least for now — seems to mean revenue growth for both sides.
Tags: app development, Apple, apple ceo, Apple Music, facebook, free trial app, mobile apps, spotify, spotify vs apple music, streaming music, tech ceo, tim cook