Apple Music Up To 13 Million Subscribers

It looks like all the naysayers were wrong. Apple reported on its recent earnings call that its Apple Music streaming service was now up to 13 million paid subscribers and still growing.

Much of that growth has come recently in fact, as it was reported that 2 million subscribers signed up since February alone.

The present growth looks to be at around 1 million a month, which means that the tech giant should be battling Spotify for the top space in the streaming industry by the end of year.

Spotify claims to have 20 million current subscribers, but many are on a "student discount" tier at half the $9.99 monthly price.

One advantage that Apple Music has over Spotify is that it's available in 58 more countries than Spotify, including Russia, China and Japan. All in all, the service is available in a total of 113 countries, leaving Spotify to play catch-up.

One reason for AM's growth spurt has been albums from Drake, Coldplay, The 1975 and Gwen Stefani, where were releases to AM for a period before Spotify. Having an advert with Taylor Swift was also a big help.

Despite the recent hype around Tidal, it's Apple Music that seems to be making the most headway.

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Spotify Up To 28 Million Paid Subscribers

The music industry received some good news recently when Spotify announced that it had surpassed 28 million paid subscribers at the end of 2015. In June it announced that it was up to 20 million, so a jump that steep in only 6 months shows that consumers are indeed onboard with paying to have their music streamed.

Last week Apple also announced that it was up to 11 million paid subscribers, which means that the industry has recently made great strides towards the 100 million goal that so many industry experts perceive as the point where streaming music begins to overtake the erosion of revenue from falling CD and download sales.

One of the reasons that Spotify's numbers have increased may be because of its educational tier, which charges students just $4.95 per month instead of the normal $9.95.

Many in the industry have long thought that $5 was the magic price point for consumers, but the major record labels have been reluctant to allow that during their licensing negotiations.

Regardless of the price, it's good to hear that paid streaming is finally catching on in a big way. This can be nothing but good for artists and songwriters in the long run, even though it might seem that the payouts are low now.

And by the way, streaming has just about totally killed piracy, which again, is a giant plus for the industry.

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Apple Music Now In Far More Countries Than Spotify

Apple has done a great job making Apple Music available throughout the world. As a matter of fact, Music Business Worldwide notes that the service is now in 59 more countries than Spotify.

While we haven't received any info lately as to the number of subscribers that's translated into (the last figure was 10 million after 6 months, half that of Spotify), it does give Apple Music a huge leg up over the the competition. It's true that many of the countries have small populations, but it all ads up when the number is as large as it is.

Here's the list of countries where Apple Music has a presence, but Spotify does not.

1. Anguilla
2. Antigua
3. Armenia
4. Azerbaijan
5. Bahrain
6. Barbados
7. Belarus
8. Belize
9. Botswana
10. British Virgin Islands
11. Cambodia
12. Cape Verde
13. Cayman Islands
14. China
15. Dominica
16. Egypt
17. Fiji
18. Gambia
19. Ghana
20. Grenada
21. Guinea-Bissau
22. India
23. Indonesia
24. Japan
25. Jordan
26. Kazakhstan
27. Kenya
28. Kyrgyzstan
29. Laos
30. Lebanon
31. Macau
32. Mauritius
33. Micronesia
34. Moldova
35. Mongolia
36. Nepal
37. Niger
38. Nigeria
39. Oman
40. Papa New Guinea
41. Romania
42. Russia
43. St Kitts & Nevis
44. Saudi Arabia
45. Slovenia
46. South Africa
47. Sri Lanka
48. Swaziland
49. Tajikistan
50. Thailand
51. Trinidad & Tobago
52. Turkmenistan
53. Uganda
54. Ukraine
55. UAE
56. Uzbekistan
57. Venezuela
58. Vietnam
59. Zimbabwe

This is good news if you're an artist, since Apple Music is more likely to get a paying subscriber than just about any other service, thanks to the fact that they already have credit cards on file.

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Apple Music Has 10 Million Subscribers

It looks like Apple Music has beaten the predictions by making it to 10 million subscribers much faster than anticipated. Although no official announcement has been made, the Financial Times has confirmed that Apple has achieved that number, proving that the 90 day trial period for the service appears to have worked.

In contrast, it took Spotify 6 years to get to that number, although that was well before streaming became a common practice.

Speaking of Spotify, rumors are that its paid subscriber numbers have risen to 25 million users as well.

All this spells great news for artists, bands, labels and publishers. Just from those 2 services, there are more than 15 million more paid subscribers than last year at this time, which would be about a 30% increase.

Of course, we've yet to hear about YouTube Red's subscriber numbers yet, the $9.95 per month service that eliminates adverts from your videos. That could also give those subscriber numbers a boost, although the feeling is that if the numbers were actually that good the company would be boasting about it already.

Regardless, it looks like streaming has at least turned a small corner as more and more people are finding value in paying for their music than getting it for free.

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Streaming Music Up, Everything Else Down According To The RIAA

The RIAA mid-year report is out and it's filled with good news and bad news. The good news is that digital revenues grew 6.3 percent to $2.32 billion as streaming revenues grew 23.2 percent to $1.03 billion.

That said, digital downloads dropped 9.4 percent, although digital album sales rose by a surprising 4.2 percent (this category had been declining rapidly).

As expected, physical sales declined 17.3 percent to $748 million, with CD sales dropping by 31.5 percent to $494.8 million.

The one bright spot in physical sales continues to be vinyl sales, which grew 51.3 percent to $226 million.

The major takeaway continues to be the growth of paid subscriptions from services like Spotify, as the category was up almost 25% over the same time last year. The RIAA estimates that there was a slight growth of subscribers, up to 8.1 million in the United States.

What this shows is that physical product (except for vinyl) is falling fast, and digital revenue is just barely keeping up.

Although more and more people are signing up for streaming, not enough are convinced that it's worth it to spend 10 bucks a month on yet.

Pricing seems to be a big issue here, but until the labels and publishers come to grips with this issue, we won't see the dramatic growth in streaming subscriptions that everyone has been expecting.

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What’s Really Behind Pandora’s Ad-Free Day

Pandora has announced that it will celebrate it’s 10th anniversary on Wednesday September 9th with a day that’s free of ads for its freemium tier. While many will look at what’s being called “Listener Love Day” as a nice gesture to celebrate a decade in business, there may be more to it than meets the eye.

While a day without ads might give Pandora’s freemium listeners (who make up 95% of its active users) a sample of what the premium paid-subscriber tier is like, it can also be viewed as an all-out effort to get at least some of those users to finally buy in.

Pandora currently has about 250 million subscribers but only 80 million are active, according to the company’s own numbers. Of those, just around 4 million, or 5%, have chosen the $4.99 per month ad-free premium tier (and many of them subscribed at the previous $3.99 level). This ratio has been surprisingly steady throughout its history, and the service hasn’t proven that it has the ability to up the conversion rate.

What’s even more out of balance is that those 5% of paid subscribers are responsible for just over 20% of Pandora’s revenue for the first half of 2015, according to the company’s Q2 financial statement.

In comparison, Spotify has around 75 million users and about 20 million are subscribed to the paid tier, which is more than 26% of active users. Those subscribers are also willing to pay twice as much at $9.99 per month. Read more on Forbes.

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A Soundcloud Subscription Tier Is Coming

It's been rumored for months, but it looks like a subscription tier for Soundcloud will soon be a reality, as the company CTO recently confirmed.

While the exact details haven't been revealed yet, it's believed that the service will offer a free tier with a capped number of streams and downloads per month, and a paid tier where both are unlimited.

One of the challenges is changing current users into paid subscribers, since the service has long touted itself as a free service. In fact, Soundcloud has used that as a selling point from the beginning.

The company is currently under pressure both from investors to make money, and from the major labels pay royalties, however, so it looks like this will be changing soon.

That said, Soundcloud hasn't been entirely free for some time, as it offers both Pro ($6 per month) and Pro Unlimited ($15 per month) tiers for creators that want increased storage and analytics.

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