Spotify Grows to 108M Paid Subscribers Compared to Apple Music's 60M

A gap of 48 million between Apple music and Spotify.

Last year this time the gap was 43 million.

So the gap is growing

But you know, rather then report that, let’s fudge it and just talk about how Apple has a larger market share in the US.

One of the reason I like Spotify is because the app is separate from the operating system. I can download music and create playlists without any cloud support.
Also they support older iOS devices and macOS all the way back to PowerPC.

Apple Music requires iCloud music to download and create playlists. That's fine as long as you don't have any music or playlists in iTunes. If you have nested playlists folders iCloud music removes them and places the folders back into the root directory messing up your custom settings.
My friend has gigabytes of custom music and copywrite music and it was trying to upload all that to his iCloud account. He had to turn iCloud music off and restore his iPhone from a backup to restore his playlists. So now he just streams from Apple Music, that's all.

Spotify had a multi year lead and is the primary choice of customers hundreds of Android phones while Apple Music is sold primarily to people on iPhones. Apple Music is doing phenomenal by that metic. Not bad at all.

I think that Apple Music has positioned itself to take the lead in the near term. If my prediction is correct and there’s an + one subscription for Music and TV, then AppleTV+ will help push AppleMusic over Spotify. While Spotify focuses on podcasts and doesn’t have the resources to produce TV, Apple will have top tier TV productions for their subscribers.

Apple Music IS also available on Android so your argument is moot on that point.
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I wonder if Spotify’s “paid-subscriber” metric includes those who sign up for a free trial, or are they considered non-paid subscribers?

Well considering the words ‘paid subscribers’ are mentioned several times in this story I’d take it that it means paid subscribers?

108M paid subscribers and they still teeter on the edge of profitability?

One of the reason I like Spotify is because the app is separate from the operating system. I can download music and create playlists without any cloud support.
Also they support older iOS devices and macOS all the way back to PowerPC.

Apple Music requires iCloud music to download and create playlists. That's fine as long as you don't have any music or playlists in iTunes. If you have nested playlists folders iCloud music removes them and places the folders back into the root directory messing up your custom settings.
My friend has gigabytes of custom music and copywrite music and it was trying to upload all that to his iCloud account. He had to turn iCloud music off and restore his iPhone from a backup to restore his playlists. So now he just streams from Apple Music, that's all.

I agree totally here. One of the reasons I dropped Apple Music so quickly was because it basically forces a full cloud+local database at the same time. So my local stuff with custom naming/artwork etc was messed around with...
Spotify being cloud only (and you can choose specifically the albums or playlists you want to save for offline) just works perfectly.
Apple Music was a disaster.

Been a Spotify User for 7 yrs. Love them. Their interface is easy and their user based playlists are 2nd to none. I can always find a playlist for any mood I’m in. Even weird obscure things. I watch Happy Days and boom there’s a Happy Days Playlist.

I LOATHE Apple Music. Itunes Match destroyed my music library twice! When i tried Apple Music it did it Again! What’s worse it REPLACED my DRM free music which I PAID apple to remove yrs ago with DRM because whenever you downloaded music it Overwrote my own personal music. My music collection is so destroyed I basically no longer have a Collection thanks to Apple!

Just one of the many reasons I’m getting out of this severely broken “eco-system” in the fall.