Apple Music had a record-breaking year in 2025. But…

January 13, 2026 Alan Cross 0 Comments 0 min read

Eddy Cue, one of the big executives at Apple, has a new blog post in which he talks about the company’s growth in the services sector, which includes Apple Music. Here’s what he wrote: “Apple Music reached all-time highs in both listenership and new subscribers.”

Great. Fine. But what about hard, real numbers. Nope. We have to rely on Midia Research for some estimates. They put the number of subscribers to Apple Music somewhere north of 100 million. If true, that’s less than Spotify’s 276 million subscribers and YouTube Music’s 125 million (but probably more) paying customers.

What’s the moral here? If Apple can’t be number one, they won’t release numbers. At the same time, it looks like the streaming business continues to grow.

Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

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