Apple Music May Have Just Unseated Spotify In The US

Apple Music may have arrived a little late to the party when it launched back in 2015, but it seems to be giving Spotify, the reigning king of music streaming, a run for its money nonetheless. A new report is claiming that for the first time, the number of Apple Music subscribers has surpassed Spotify Premium subscribers in the US. That's no small task, though Apple Music still has a long way to go if it wants to catch up globally.

This report comes from Digital Music News, which cites an unnamed major music distributor in the US as the source of these claims. We don't have specific user numbers, but that distributor says that both Apple Music and Spotify now have more than 20 million subscribers in the US, with Apple Music slightly in the lead. These numbers don't include users who are on a trail membership, so these users are all paying monthly for each service.

That Apple has managed to eek ahead of Spotify in the US isn't a very big surprise. Earlier in the year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple Music's growth was outpacing that of Spotify, with Apple Music growing at a rate around 5% compared to Spotify's 2%.

While Apple Music might have moved ahead of Spotify in the US, it still has some work to do if wants to beat Spotify on a worldwide scale. Last time we checked in, Apple said that it had 50 million subscribers around the world, while Spotify claimed 75 million paying customers and 160 million total users. Apple doesn't offer a free membership, so it probably won't catch up to Spotify in terms of total users anytime soon.

At the end of the day, though, it's the paying subscribers that matter most, and Apple definitely seems to be catching up to Spotify in that regard. If Apple can keep user engagement high, there might be a day in the not-too-distant future where it surpasses Spotify in terms of total subscriber numbers. Time will tell, but Spotify should definitely be a little nervous about this report.