Report claims Apple Music has surpassed Spotify in terms of paid subscriber count in the US

A recent report from Digital Music News claims Apple Music has overtaken Spotify when it comes to paid subscribers in the US. The story cites an anonymous source from a major US-based distributor who shared a report of a subscriber tally for different music streaming services like Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, and Sirius XM. Both Apple Music and Spotify now have over 20 million subscribers with the former just “a hair ahead” at “20 million plus” members. The new information claims Apple Music is set to widen this distance in the coming months. At the moment, Sirius XM Satellite Radio, which operates in North America exclusively, is leading at over 33 million subscribers.

This report follows up a story in The Wall Street Journal back in February that claims Apple Music’s growth rate was on paced to eventually pass Spotify in the US. Apple’s growth rate was pegged at five percent, compared to Spotify’s two percent. Based on these figures, Apple Music would surpass Spotify in the summer.

Spotify tests out new Lite app in Brazil

A stripped down version of Spotify’s app is currently being tested in Brazil. Spotify Lite will let users put a cap on the data used to listening to songs and the app itself is just 15MB (instead of the 100MB size of the full app). But there are a few caveats to this. It doesn’t have offline listening or high-quality playback, no Spotify Connect support (so no linking to your home speakers), and is currently available for Android users. You also can’t pick songs to play, everything is in shuffle, which as Tech Radar points out means the app might not be designed for premium account users. No word yet when it’ll make its way out of testing or out of Brazil.

Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition will soon support Spotify

If you’ve made a kid-friendly playlist for your child, you can soon stream that through their Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition. Amazon will soon let parents pair their kids’ devices with their Spotify account. This integration will automatically filter out any songs with explicit language, which parents can toggle off in Amazon’s FreeTime dashboard. But now, at least your child can listen to his or her favorite song without needing you to play it for them.

On top of this, the Echo Dot Kids Edition is getting new Disney content, such as character alarms and an updated “Disney Dailies.” The latter is a skill that lets kids listen to jokes and other content from familiar Disney characters. Amazon is set to roll out the update this week.

Source: The Verge

Drake shatters first day release records on Spotify and Apple Music

On the first day of release of Drake’s Scorpion album over the weekend, it has broken a number of streaming records already. According to SpotifyCharts.com, the album’s individual track totaled 132,450,203 streams on the first day, which was 50,000,000 more than the previous record set by Post Malone’s recent album Beerbongs & Bentleys. Spotify has confirmed that the record has been broken by a large measure but isn’t confirming the numbers officially, saying SpotifyChart’s numbers may not be fully accurate. If the album numbers continue to at this rate, it could easily reach a billion streams within the first week. Post Malone also currently holds the record with 236,500,546 streams in the U.S. and 411,816,710 globally in its first week. Drake was also the one who previously held that first-week record for 22-track mixtape More Life, which set the record at 385 million streams.

For Apple Music, he’s also broken the single-day record as well with over 170 million streams, which the Canadian superstar previously held for 2017 release, More Life. That mixtape was streamed 89.9 million times on the first day.

Source: Variety