Despite the launch of Apple Music, which recently reached 13 million paid subscribers, rival service Spotify told Reuters that it has experienced a faster pace of growth since last June than beforehand.
"It's great that Apple is in the game. They are definitely raising the profile of streaming. It is hard to build an industry on your own," Jonathan Forster, a vice president and one of its first employees, told Reuters in an interview.
"Since Apple Music started we've been growing quicker and adding more users than before."
Spotify recently announced that it has 30 million paying customers, compared to around 20 million paid subscribers last June, while its total active user base has grown to nearly 100 million from 75 million a year ago.
Apple has not recently disclosed how many users it has on a three-month trial for an overall comparison, but Spotify remains over 2x to 2.5x larger than Apple Music in terms of paid subscribers worldwide.