By Stefanie Flamm

Streaming isn’t going away anytime soon, and it seems like all of our store partners have been stepping up their game to better accommodate the rapidly-evolving music streaming industry:

• Spotify shatters previous streaming records with 40 million active subscribers.
• Apple Music gets a makeover in the wake of the iPhone 7 and iOS 10 launches.
• Pop stars come in droves to perform at iHeartRadio’s Music Festival in Las Vegas.

Spotify celebrates the end of their third quarter with a massive 40 million subscribers.

Spotify broke both a personal and global record earlier this month by racking up an active subscriber count of 40 million users.

On September 14th, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek tweeted a cool, “40 is the new 30. Million. (smiley face emoji)” to announce the good news officially. The “30” he’s referring to is the 30 million active subscribers they announced back in March of this year, meaning they’ve increased their listenership by a whopping 25% in six months.

These seriously impressive numbers can be attributed to a number of factors. While Spotify may not have the leg-up on exclusive content that Apple Music and TIDAL have, Spotify’s Discovery algorithm has become the bread-and-butter of their streaming service since they launched it in summer 2015. Acknowledging their immediate popularity, Spotify’s next move was to increase the accessibility for new music recommendations, and now users can add similar tracks to an existing playlist, or even immediately create a similar version of a complete playlist.

Competitors have been jumping on the bandwagon, each offering their own brand of new music discovery. But the numbers make it obvious that, for now, users prefer Spotify’s experience to some of their other competitors. Apple Music is currently boasting a listenership of 17 million, with TIDAL far behind at 3 million active listeners as of March 2016.

A huge congratulations to Spotify!

Apple Music gets some major touch-ups on iOS 10, including competitive algorithms for new music recommendations.

Tech gurus, developers, and especially owners of the 1 billion active Apple products worldwide have come to expect a big show every September at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Since the launch of the iMac in 1998, Apple has treated the WWDC like a tech-savvy Christmas, rolling out the newest versions of their products, and convincing the world that we all need the latest and greatest products that Apple has to offer. So it should come as no surprise that this year’s WWDC brought some major changes to the future of the iPhone and Apple Music listener experience.

Apple introduced a total external overhaul of the iPhone, with the iPhone 7 devoid of a headphone jack (welcome to a future of losing Airpods!). In addition to giving users an excuse to finally buy the bluetooth Beats headphones they’ve been eyeing, Apple Music got a makeover to improve user experience.

Jumping on the success of Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlists, Apple Music for iOS 10 includes a My New Music playlist that will update with fresh recommendations every week. Unlike Spotify, which updates every Monday, Apple Music’s My New Music will update on Fridays to coincide with New Music Friday. Where Spotify has Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlists, My New Music should kill two birds with one stone and offer users a playlist packed with new music.

Apple Music will also offer a My Favorites Mix, updated every Wednesday, complete with a blend of the user’s most-streamed songs, side-by-side with new music similar to the aforementioned tracks. My Favorites Mix was designed as a gentler way to ease into new music, versus digesting a playlist comprised entirely of unfamiliar songs.

It’s too early to see if this update will bring more users into the Apple Music camp, but it’s certainly a cool update for existing Apple Music subscribers.

iHeartRadio packs their La Vegas Music Festival with some of the top music acts, including Britney Spears and Ariana Grande.

Las Vegas was abound with pop stars last weekend for the iHeartRadio Music Festival, a two-day festival bringing together some of the most popular musicians in the US for a power-packed weekend.

90’s nostalgic millennials were in heaven with performances from both Backstreet Boys, who who used the festival to announce their Las Vegas residency, and a blowout set by Britney Spears. Both groups performed a combination of throwback favorites, as well as some newer music. Usher, Lil Jon, and Ludacris also came out for a performance of “Yeah” that left the crowd wanting more of their favorite early 2000’s goodness.

The lineup didn’t stop there, as sets from Miley Cyrus, Drake, Sia, and Ariana Grande filled the two-day event at the T-Mobile Arena. Performing alongside Billy Idol, Miley told the audience, “It’s f**king good to be back.”

Christina Grimmie, who was shot and killed at her own concert earlier this year, was remembered in a memorial on the second night of the festival.

With the service’s recent five year anniversary, their reaching 90 millions registered users, and a potential Spotify-rival in the works, 2016 has turned out to be an excellent year for iHeartRadio, and the music festival seems like the perfect way to celebrate their success this year.

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Tags: apple music daniel ek digital music stores featuring iheartradio indie music streaming online music store spotify tunecore