Music streaming is becoming an unwieldily crowded field. While Spotify still stands as the world’s number-one streaming service, others are trying their best to topple its reign; Deezer, Google Play, Tidal, Pandora, Rhapsody, SoundCloud, and even the giant Amazon are among those currently scrambling for market share.
And let’s certainly not forget about Apple Music, which announced 10 million subscribers last month after launching last June, hitting a milestone that took Spotify six whole years to reach. Now the nascent service is threatening its nine-year-old competitor in a whole new way: expansion.
Following the launch of Apple Music in Turkey and Taiwan last week, Music Business Worldwide took a look at the availability of the service around the world as it compares to Spotify. It found Apple Music is available in 113 countries; Spotify, in just 59.
Significant, too, are some of the specific markets in which Apple Music has an exclusive hold—China, India, Japan, Russia, and a solid chunk of Africa. These are big areas, bursting with music listeners.
Of course, Apple Music’s backing by one of the wealthiest companies on the planet makes it much easier for it to expand internationally than its smaller and not-yet-public rival, but it’s nonetheless important that the service has managed to balloon so rapidly in such a short period of time.
For streaming services, growth and popularity are the two main metrics of success. So if Apple Music already has one of these locked down, Spotify better hope it isn’t able to take over the other as well.