WSJ says Apple Music has more U.S. subscribers than Spotify

Apple Music may have outpaced Spotify in paid subscription listeners in the United States. That’s the latest report from the Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources familiar with the figures. The sources told WSJ that in the U.S., Apple has been adding subscribers at a monthly growth rate of between 2.6% and 3%, compared with between 1.5% and 2% for Spotify. Globally, they claimed Apple Music’s subscriber growth rate has been between 2.4% and 2.8% and Spotify’s has fallen between 2% and 2.3%.

Even if the numbers cited by WSJ are accurate, Spotify’s total footprint is still larger than Apple’s in the United States and on a global scale. Spotify had at least 200 million monthly active users at the start of 2019 and at least 87 million subscribers. Apple Music said it had 50 million paying users in January; the only free access to Apple is through its free trial period.

Anna Washenko