Apple has a lot of work to do if it hopes to turn Beats Music into a music streaming powerhouse in the same league as Pandora or Spotify. The Guardian reports that newly leaked documents show that Beats Music had only 111,000 paying subscribers at the end of March, which needless to say puts it far, far, far behind other popular music streaming services. Spotify, in contrast, has 6 million paying subscribers and 24 million monthly active users while a survey conducted earlier this year showed that Pandora is still by far the most used music streaming service on the web. Obviously, integrating Beats Music into Apple’s iTunes Store and giving it a default app on the iPhone and iPad will greatly help raise its profile and give it more subscribers. But from the looks of things, it seems as though Apple will be practically be building a subscriber base from scratch when it comes to Beats’ music streaming business.
Apple’s newest acquisition won’t be ‘killing’ Pandora or Spotify anytime soon
Published May 13th, 2014 9:45PM EDT
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Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.
