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As Spotify skyrockets to 40 million subscribers, Apple Music is still crawling

Published Sep 14th, 2016 11:00PM EDT

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During Apple’s recent iPhone 7 media event, Tim Cook relayed that Apple Music now has more than 17 million subscribers. That’s a respectable figure, to be sure, but Apple’s streaming music service has a long ways to go before it comes anywhere close to catching up with Spotify.

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According to subtly cryptic tweet sent out by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek earlier today, Apple Music’s main rival now boasts more than 40 million paying subscribers.

This is rather astounding because last we heard, Spotify had 30 million paying subscribers as of March 2016. In other words, Spotify added 10 million new subscribers in just six months time. Even more impressive is that Spotify’s subscriber base has skyrocketed by 100% over the last 15 months, jumping from 20 million in June of 2015 to 40 million today.

Apple Music, meanwhile, is growing at a much slower clip. As a quick illustration, Apple Music over the last seven months grew from 13 million to 17 million paid subscribers. While that’s nothing to scoff at, it appears that Apple’s obsession with securing music exclusives from the likes of Frank Ocean and Beyonce isn’t having quite the impact some would have otherwise anticipated.

Meanwhile, the new Apple Music overhaul appears to be a Windows Phone-inspired jumbled mess. Without question, Spotify’s UI still runs circles around Apple Music.

Yoni Heisler Contributing Writer

Yoni Heisler has been writing about Apple and the tech industry at large with over 15 years of experience. A life long expert Mac user and Apple expert, his writing has appeared in Edible Apple, Network World, MacLife, Macworld UK, and TUAW.

When not analyzing the latest happenings with Apple, Yoni enjoys catching Improv shows in Chicago, playing soccer, and cultivating new TV show addictions.