In late November, Spotify announced it’s hosting its very own music awards for the first time. The Spotify Awards will go down on March 5 in Mexico City, the company’s biggest market, and winners will be based solely on user-generated streaming data.
Apple got wind of this and said, nuh-uh! If you’re having music awards, we’re also going to do our own music awards, like, tomorrow.
So they summoned Billie Eilish, Lizzo, and Lil Nas X to the Death Star…
For a Wednesday evening performance, that is.
Billie Eilish’s Album of the Year and Lil Nas X’s Song of the Year wins were based on Apple’s streaming data. The other winners — Billie Eilish for Global Artist of the Year, Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas for Songwriter of the Year, and Lizzo for Breakthrough Artist of the Year — were crowned by Apple Music’s editorial team.
Apple awarded the winners’ trophies made from, in Apple’s words, “the same chips which power the devices that put the world’s music at your fingertips.” Not-so-covert code for, suck it, Spotify!
This is the latest gimmick in the Apple vs. Spotify streaming wars…
Apple and Spotify are in a race to gain market share in the US and beyond. Globally, Spotify has more than 100m paid subscribers, compared to Apple’s roughly 60m.
But the WSJ reported in April that Apple surpassed Spotify in paid US subscriptions and that Apple Music is growing slightly faster than Spotify.