Apple Music is the second most used music streaming service – but still far behind Spotify

MIDiA Research on Wednesday published a new report with global figures for the music streaming services market based on the second quarter of 2021. While Apple Music is the second most used music platform, it is still far behind Spotify.

According to the research, the number of people who subscribe to music streaming services continues to grow quickly. By the second quarter of 2021, there were 523.9 million people who subscribed to one of these platforms, which is a 26.4% increase from the same period in 2020.

Apple Music accounts for 15% of global music platform subscriptions, which means that it has already surpassed 78 million paid subscribers. However, these numbers still don’t put it anywhere close to Spotify, which unsurprisingly is still in first place in the global ranking.

Apple’s main competitor had over 160 million paid subscribers by Q2 2021 – which is twice as much as Apple Music had. However, the research company notes that Spotify’s market share dropped from 34% in 2019 to 33% in 2020 and now 31% in 2021. While there’s no risk of Spotify losing its leading position at this point, the competition has certainly been taking some of its users.

Amazon Music comes in right behind Apple Music with 13% market share, but MIDiA Research points out that YouTube Music is the fastest growing service for the second year in a row – now with 8% market share.

Another thing to keep in mind is that while the overall number of music streaming service subscribers has grown in 2021, this doesn’t mean that the companies’ revenue is significantly higher. That’s because some subscribers pay less due to family plans, special bundles (like Apple One), or reduced prices in emerging markets, as MIDiA explained.

The standard Apple Music subscription costs $9.99 in the United States, but there are special prices for families, students, and Apple One subscribers. More details about the research can be found here.