Apple has claimed a major victory in its ongoing war with rival Spotify.
Apple Music has reportedly overtaken the Swedish streaming firm in terms of paid US subscriptions by around 2 million subscribers.
That’s according to The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter.
The WSJ’s sources say that Spotify is adding subscribers at a monthly growth rate of about 1.5% to 2%, compared to about 2.6% to 3% for Apple Music, which had 28m subscribers in the US as of February.
Spotify had 26m paid US subscribers at the end of February.
As noted by the WSJ, Spotify still has more users than Apple Music overall in the US (including ad-supported users).
Spotify ended last year with 207m Monthly Active Users (MAU) around the world in total (including both paying and free customers) and finished 2018 with 96m paying subscribers around the world, up by 25m year-on-year.
The WSJ adds, citing ‘people familiar with the numbers’, that Apple Music is also growing at a rate of 2.4% to 2.8% globally compared with Spotify, which is growing 2% to 2.3%.
Both Spotify and Apple Music have been upping their attempts to acquire more users in recent months.
In March, Spotify expanded its previously announced Hulu partnership in what the two companies are calling a ‘first-of-its-kind entertainment bundle’, while Apple Music is now available on Amazon’s Echo devices in the UK and the US.Music Business Worldwide
