 Mike Epstein tweeted, interesting that Apple Music has no songs that reached one billion all time streams. There has not been a song, period, that's reached a billion streams on Apple. The closest song is Ed Sheeran's Shape of You with 930 million streams. Comparatively, Miley Cyrus' Flowers is the fastest song to ever reach one billion streams on Spotify in just four months. Alright, so Apple Music only has 98 million users worldwide. Now, I know that sounds like a big number to say only, but you compare that to Spotify, there's 515 million users worldwide. So you can have everybody on the platform just stream the song twice and bam, there you go, you had a million people have to stream 10 times on Apple to hit a billion. I mean, not a million a billion, but let's get into the details of how you can use this as an artist, this information, because it's not as cut and dry as it looks on the service at the same time. Number one, let's think about business model because when you think about business model and you understand the numbers, it lets you know maybe what platform you should focus on and then also how you think about the platform. Spotify, 515 million users worldwide, 210 million of those are premium users. So people who are actually paying. That's a part of why Apple doesn't have as many users. They don't have a free tier. And where did Apple Music get most of their users from? They got it from iPhone users. People who are already in the ecosystem, let me just get this thing. Spotify is another thing, another user experience. That's some of the basic numbers, but then you can't just look at the overall, you also have to look at the demographics. The US, that looks different when we talk about Apple Music users in the US versus the rest of the world. And we have people, clients that most of their streams occur on Apple Music, not Spotify. So what is your demographic? You have to pay attention to what the people who listen to you like the most, what platforms they use the most, and then that'll inform you on how to focus, right? So let's look at some of these excuses. People talk about things like what is bots an issue for Spotify? That could add to it. Like, come on. It's probably at least 10%, on why they get billions, right? But then you have Apple heavily centralized in the US and more fragmented elsewhere, right? They say more than 33 million people subscribe to Apple Music in the United States. That's a third basically of their users. It takes the leading position among music platforms in the country. It's number one in the United States over Spotify. I actually didn't know that. See that? So around 27% of the digital music consumers in the country use the platform. So if you're trying to get to a billy and you're trying to be global, you know, Mr. Worldwide, like Pitbull, then you need to be on Spotify. But if you're in the US and you're just trying to hit as many specifically in the US, Apple Music might be the better platform still for you in terms of focus. Yeah, that's crazy. I actually never thought about that. And then Spotify too is making a lot of initiatives to build in different countries. So it's probably just going to get worse over time. Yeah. You know, and I think the other point too, and I guess this probably kind of goes into the box, but Spotify is the official scoreboard of the music industry. So, you know, people are always going to try to game and drive most of their attention to the platform that everybody is looking at, right? Like, and I always wondered if that's a conscious decision Apple made to not do that. You know what I'm saying? Like, they're like, no, we stand out this race. You know what I'm saying? Like, we just want to be all about the music. But it is something to think about, right? Like, if I know that, you know, this platform is going to drive 80% of my visibility and it's the platform where people are going to come to publicly judge me. They're like, yeah, I'm going to put most of my resources to make sure, like, this thing looks big, you know, or bigger than the others. So I get it. Actually, what this makes me think about too, it's kind of crazy because I will always see it with like certain campaigns we would do right. What I would notice is that like, whenever we were having an ad campaign that was going well, where it was converting mostly to Apple, a lot of those people will also go buy this song on iTunes, right? Because they're connected to each other. They're in that same Apple store, whatever, or iTunes store. So I learned really early on, like, man, like Apple music uses a wooden to spend money. You know what I'm saying? Like, even if it's a little bit of a little bit of amount, right? Like they're at least willing to pay that 69 cents or nine, whatever the single price is on that. Yeah, it kept being where it got made like $1,000 on iTunes sales, right? Yeah, it was on Kailin. Well, no, maybe not Kailin. No, see, you're right. Yeah, we had a guy, you know, he made like a band off of it. And then we had like five or six of them where they broke even on that. Oh, damn, they're broke even on that ad spend. Because I don't know if we're still working on it, but it's awesome. We're working on making that a part of the ad break even funnel, right? Like, yo, like, we keep driving these iTunes sales. Like, a lot of our clients are at least making 80% to 100% of the ad return back. Not saying that's the case for everybody running ads to iTunes, but we were seeing it will probably like, I will argue, like one out of every like four or five campaigns, somebody would get that result. Like we learned really early on, like, hey, man, these Apple music users down spend some money, you know what I'm saying? Like they down to at least spend, like I said, that 69 cents to 9.99 depending on how they feel versus Spotify. Spotify is a SoundCloud 2.0, man. I'm sorry to say it. In many ways. Yeah, it's a SoundCloud 2.0. Look, they got a free tier. They're not spending money on Spotify. So yeah. And then we talk about like 60% of your platform is free users. That means 60% of the users aren't even willing to spend money on the thing they love. That damn should not spend money on you. You know what I'm saying? I hate to say it, there's always exceptions to the rule, but maybe you got to take the little signs where they are. 60% of the people you are marketing to don't even want to pay for the thing they use to listen to that music. You know, not to bash those people, but it paints a very clear picture of what you're working with when you own that platform. Again, I mean that information, I guess we haven't really spoken too much about the break in, even following how we had people making money or breaking even these on their ads while getting streams because of Apple iTunes purchases. But even beyond that, again, what's your demographic? Josh talked about in the UK, Apple still having a decent presence, particularly the iPhone. Yeah, UK iOS is 50%. Android is 48%. I mean, that's that's a heavy stronghold as well. I wonder what the Apple music usage is over there. Let's see. July 26, 2022, it says according to the report of the iMore.com report, there are 39 million monthly active users in the UK streaming 138 billion songs a month. I think they're just saying that wrong. Not 138 billion songs. I think they're saying amount to 38 billion streams a month because that would be like crazy. Okay. Yeah, I think it might be that like the collected amount of songs they're all streaming is 138 billion. Not like there's 138 billion like on it. Exactly. Exactly. That right there is crazy because that means the Apple music is bigger in the UK than in the US. Crazy. It's already our number one. Yeah, exactly. But that goes to show you a lot about those two marketplaces as well and what platforms you use. And we had to get really deep into this when we were working with a lot of artists who had international strategies or they didn't just have an international strategy. They were international artists or we're finding out about all these other streaming services. Like, oh yeah, they don't even use Apple music like that. I mean, in Russia, right? They didn't have what? Yeah, Russia was like VK. I think they got Spotify now. But at the time when we were like really big and pushing like Eastern Europe and Red Light, they didn't have Spotify. So what's the other platforms? VK, YouTube? Yep. You know what I'm saying? What we did? A lot of our like, it's like different parts of like Africa, you know, campaigns for different people in different parts of Africa, like you see boom play and Apple music and Deezer and what's the other one? Audio Mac, you know what I'm saying? Like, so yeah, we learned a lot about how different platforms play a part in the local ecosystems of the place's music industry. Because yeah, like I said, like you might be thinking like, man, I'm going to run my Spotify numbers up in Russia. And then you're wondering why your shit ain't doing well. And all the people in Russia looking at it, she's like Spotify, fuck it up. Exactly. So understand your demographic, understand where they go to listen to music. And it's not all the same. We just keep hearing about Spotify and Apple as defaults. But it really does bust down a little bit more granular than you think. And even though generally speaking, we just said Apple music dominates in the US, Apple music dominates in the UK. Your niche, it might not necessarily be the same. So yeah, figure out what that looks like. Got any other thoughts on that? No, not really already said. Like I said, like you there's a room to grow outside the big three Spotify, Apple, YouTube, but it takes a lot of research and geographical breakdown. But if you want to do it, it's a good investment. Right. Right. But you could be messing around running ads in the country that don't got your platform to your point that you said earlier, and you're wasting money, you wondering why your conversions are so slow, so low. Or you don't have one of their primary platforms as an option. So now you're missing out. Because you're using my name and me on that platform and distributed on that platform. So you're wondering why your conversions aren't as low as they should be. Man, they said conversions are low in that country. And it's like, nah, but you only have two through the main ones. The main ones and their biggest one you don't have as an option. So yeah, we've seen that before. I remember running the campaign to France and I remember like it was it was going okay. And then we added like these or two and it jumped up like 15%. Yeah, one of the niggas is one of their platform. You know, that's it. Yeah, keep it in mind. That is yet another clip from No Lakers Necessary. This is Brayme Shain. I'll call you. Go watch another clip. We out. All right. Yeah, we're gonna do this. Spotify. So I just thought about it from a hook standpoint. Okay.