A recent report in the Wall Street Journal claimed that Apple Music was on pace to surpass Spotify in subscribers. That sounds amazing! But it’s not quite so simple. The calculation was made by looking at Apple Music’s current number of paying subscribers (about 36 million), comparing it to Spotify’s paid subscribers (about 70 million), and noting that with Apple Music’s current 5 percent growth rate it will overtake Spotify, which has a 2 percent growth rate, this summer.
There are a couple of important catches. First, it ignores Spotify’s free tier, which stands at over 140 million. Apple Music doesn't have a free tier. Second, it assumes that the growth rate of these two services doesn’t change. As Apple Music gets bigger, its growth rate is likely to taper off, but who knows when that will happen.
