MUSIC, MATH
& MISHIGAS

Industry insiders tipped the Wall Street Journal that Apple Music would top Spotify in U.S. users this summer, a calculation that has us flummoxed. Meanwhile, Music Business Worldwide reports that building those numbers comes at a cost.

The Journal reports Apple’s paid subscriber-account base in the U.S. has been growing about 5% monthly, while Spotify is at 2%. From what we’ve been told, the U.S. share of Apple’s 36m users is 55%, or just under 20m; 45%—31.5m—of Spotify’s 70m subscribers are in the U.S.

If those rates of growth hold steady, by our math, we’re a good 15 months away from Apple pulling up even with Spotify. The two will have about 43m subscribers each come May 2019.

A lot of this is conjecture, of course. When the two companies chose to talk numbers, and that’s rare, they prefer to speak globally. Jimmy Iovine said Apple Music had more than 30m subscribers a little less than five months ago, and The Journal reports that number has grown to 36m. That’s a rate of 1.2m every four weeks, which trails Spotify’s average of 2m new subscribers per month.

Now, while that looks like the streaming pot just continues to overflow with newfound gold, MBW notes that not everyone is forking over a sawbuck monthly for music.

Different territories pay different prices—Spotify is in 61 territories, Apple Music in 115—and discounted packages are helping to bulk up subscriber numbers. With student and family prices, not to mention trial subscriptions, the average spend is far below the $120 most are spending; it was down around $60 per user in 2016.