and abroad is said to top Spotify's, which should concern Spotify even as its subscriber base is still roughly twice as large. Apple's monthly subscriber growth rate in the U.S.
SPOTIFY FAMILY PLAN GOOGLE HOME MINI SERIES
Apple was expected to accomplish that sooner, but Spotify was able to delay losing leadership with a series of promotions like the Google Home Mini deal. The Mac maker's music-streaming service overtook Spotify in the important U.S. More broadly, aggressive promotional activity has been key to Spotify defending against Apple Music. Story continues Fending off Apple with promotions Spotify's biggest rival, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), does not support Apple Music on Google Home Mini, for instance, although that could potentially change soon Apple has been increasingly open to cross-platform strategies lately amid its ongoing services push. By wooing individual accounts more aggressively, Spotify can potentially bolster its overall ARPU while improving retention among individual accounts. Family plans enjoy much higher retention, but also lower average revenue per user (ARPU), since family plans can include up to six accounts. Opening up the offer to individual account holders is also notable for a couple of reasons. Spotify also added that it believes that "home voice speakers are a critical area of growth." "Outperformance was largely attributable to better than expected intake from our Google Home promotion and annual Holiday campaign," Spotify said in its February shareholder letter. promotion hurt gross margin in the fourth quarter by about 50 basis points, and later credited its outperformance in subscriber growth in part to the offer. The company had previously estimated that the U.S.