Change of Tune: Once Enemies of Record Labels, Spotify and Apple are Now Spinning Profits for Them
Since Spotify and Apple have close to two-thirds of the world’s nearly 90m paying subscribers to streaming services, they are the ones shaping the future.
If Spotify acquires SoundCloud, a mostly free service that claims to have 175m monthly listeners, its position would be stronger still. Last month Daniel Ek, the co-founder and chief executive of Spotify, tweeted that his company had surpassed 40m subscribers — adding 20m since June 2015, as many as it had acquired in its first seven years in operation. Spotify reached this milestone despite intense competition from Apple Music, which has won 17m subscribers since its start in 2015. The smaller firm hands over close to 70% of its revenues to the music business in royalties, says an industry executive.
Source: The Economist