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For the past three years, Spotify has been the main source for streaming free music. Unlike Pandora where users can only make personalized radio stations, Spotify allows you to not only make personalized radio stations but also listen to full albums or even an artist’s entire discography. However Spotify gained some competition this past January thanks to Beats Music.
As of March, according to leaked subscriber figures, Beats Music has about 111,000 users subscribed: 49,000 individual subscriptions and 61,000 family subscriptions. It’s still not clear what percentage of these figures are paid users since AT&T has offered a 90 day free trial, but the current numbers can be compared to Spotify’s figures at a similar stage. In 2011, Spotify officially launched in the US, and by the end of its first year over three million users had subscribed—20% of them being paid users. That is about 600 000 paid users—considerably more than Beats has at this point.
Only time will tell if Beats Music can become serious competition for Spotify. But as of now Beats Music has a long way to go in order to catch up to Spotify.
