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Spotify hits 30 million subscribers

Spotify hits 30 million subscribers

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The streaming service isn't slowing down

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Spotify has 30 million paid subscribers, CEO Daniel Ek announced today in a tweet. This is the first subscriber update Spotify has given out since it announced it had 20 million subscribers days before Apple Music hit the market last June, and shows the increased competition has had little to no effect on Spotify’s growth.

In the nine months that Apple Music has been available, the service has picked up 11 million subscribers. Spotify has added 10 million paid subscribers in the same time.

The Swedish streaming service is now adding an average of 10 million paid customers a year — it only had 10 million subscribers total in 2014— a growth rate it will need to maintain as it goes up against Apple Music and its substantial marketing war chest.

What’s also notable is the flood of exclusive content put out by Apple Music and Tidal over the past few months seemingly hasn’t harmed Spotify’s user retention. Although the lack of release day albums from major artists like Adele, Coldplay, Drake, Future, Rihanna, The 1975, and Kanye West may have upset some Spotify users, Apple Music and Tidal apparently haven’t been able to pull a substantial number of users away from the service or convince new customers to avoid Spotify.

While the music streaming industry may be over a decade old, the race for dominance has really only just begun. Spotify's numbers and recent iOS charts show that streaming music is becoming one of the most lucrative businesses on mobile devices.

Apple Music will likely receive some big updates this fall as part of iOS 10, Pandora is prepping its first on-demand streaming service, and industry sources say the launch of YouTube Red has gone well. For now Spotify is the biggest game in on demand streaming, and it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon.