Pandora & Spotify Beat Beats Music As Top Ranking And Earning Music Apps

Yesterday morning, app analytics company App Annie released it's newest list of top performing apps in the Google Play store and Apple's App store. Pandora and Spotify were ranked first and second in the report coming in well  above Apple's Beats Music in both revenue generated and user downloads. After Apple's $3 billion dollar acquisition on Beats, this may read a bit surprising, but a closer look reveals that perhaps the lackluster ratings are indicative of a broadening of horizons for Apple's Beats Music. 

In downloads, Beats landed in 9th place to Pandora and Spotify's first and second. Unlike their competitors, Beats has no free ad-supported model. It is a pay to use service. Period. In App Annie's analysis of payments made to download the app as well as within the app, Beats placed much more impressively in revenue, coming in right under Spotify to snag third place. 

Marcos Sanchez, VP of Global Corporate Communications for App Annie confirms the observation of Apple-related apps being successful revenue drivers elsewhere. "We have seen consistently in the US for sure that folks on the Apple platform tend to monetize better," he said. "It's a premium product, it's not cheap. You're probably going to have a demographic with more to spend."

There is chatter of Beats taking new form in 2015 as an integral part of Apple's iTunes – if true, it could prove to be a game changing integration.