The National Music Publishers Association: in February 2023, Spotify had 44.4M US subscribers, Apple Music had 32.6M, Amazon Music had 29.3M, YouTube had 8.5M
Murray Stassen / Music Business Worldwide : Bluesky: @mranthropology.bsky.social and @alexwilhelm.bsky.social . Twitter: @c0up See also Mediagazer Bluesky: Rich Stroffolino / @mranthropology.bsky.social : Amazon has got to be the surprising figure here. Considering how many pushes Google has given to music on YouTube, shocking to see them as a distant fourth. Also notable that globally Spotify holds a much firmer #1 spot. [embedded post] Alex / @alexwilhelm.bsky.social : How tf is that Amazon number real [embedded post] Twitter: @c0up : Crazy that Amazon is 3x YouTube Music 🤯 https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
The NMPA's February 2023 snapshot closes a five-year arc that once looked very different: in early 2018 Apple Music was growing fast enough that sources expected it to overtake Spotify in the US within months, and by mid-2018 it had come within roughly a million subscribers (21.5M vs. Spotify's 22.5M). Instead, Spotify rebuilt its lead while Amazon Music Unlimited compounded at ~70% a year through 2019 to become the quiet number three.
The other long-running storyline is Google's: its paid music services were already far behind Apple and Spotify in 2019 (15M subs vs. 50M+ and 100M+), and the NMPA figure of 8.5M for YouTube confirms that pattern hardened rather than reversed. For publishers, these counts are negotiating ammunition — they quantify exactly where the royalty money sits.
First-order effects
- Publishers now have an official ranking showing Spotify controls a US paid base larger than Apple Music and Amazon Music individually, sharpening its hand in licensing talks where per-subscriber economics are set.
- YouTube Music's 8.5M US subscribers — roughly a third of Amazon's total despite Google's bundling pushes — confirm its paid tier has failed to convert YouTube's audience at anywhere near rival rates.
Second-order effects
- Amazon sitting just 3.3M behind Apple Music turns the real contest into second place, pressuring Apple to defend its position without the free-tier funnel both Spotify and Amazon can exploit.
- Google faces a choice between doubling down on bundle-led conversion or accepting a permanent fourth-place paid position and monetizing music through ads instead — either path reshapes what it offers licensors.
Third-order effects
- With global subscriber growth already decelerating (MIDiA found Spotify's worldwide share slipping from 33% to 31% by mid-2021), competition shifts from raw sign-ups to pricing, bundles, and free-tier funnels — advantages that favor Spotify and Amazon over Apple's premium-only model.
- If the gap between the top three and YouTube holds, music licensing negotiations increasingly price the market as a three-player oligopoly with Google as a marginal buyer, concentrating bargaining power further.
The trend: Music streaming is moving from a subscriber land-grab to a maturity phase where free-tier funnels and bundle economics, not headline growth rates, decide who holds pricing power with rights holders.