Apple Music closing in on Spotify, announces 27m subscribers

Apple Music is fast closing in on Spoitify:it now has 27 million paying subscribers, up from 20 million last December.

The announcement was made at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) held this week in San Jose.

Apple Music reached this target within two years of launch.

In comparison, Spotify took nine years to reach 30 million subscribers in 2016. Spotify, though, hit the 50 million subscriber mark in March and 100 million users.

Its subscriber count was 20 million in March 2016, so the Swedish company is also travelling in the fast lane.

Attributed to the sharp sponsorship take-up is Apple Music’s pre-installation on iPhones and its three-month free trial period, compared to Spotify’s one month.

Apple’s SVP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, told the conference delegates: “Last fall, we introduced an all new design for Apple Music which brought greater clarity and simplicity to the Apple Music experience.

“We now have 27 million customers who really enjoy the curation as well as the personalisation of Apple Music.”

Apple Music is also counting on more subscribers by content outside its music streaming. Coming exclusively on August 8 is Carpool Karaoke: The Series, the spinoff to James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke.

At the conference, among its new products unveiled was MusicKit API that allows greater integration with the service by developers and allowing users to play their playlisted songs in full on other apps, and Sonos-style multiroom audio playback, and the breakthrough voice-controlled HomePod speaker system set to take on Amazon and Google in the home entertainment market.

Australia will be one of the first three countries to get HomePod, alongside the US and the UK.