When we talk about streaming music services, The first name that comes to mind for the vast majority is Spotify., Sure. And it’s normal because he is their dean after all. Over the years, however, other services, primarily Apple Music and Amazon Music, but also Deezer, YouTube Music, Tidal, etc., have tried to fight for the gold medal in a competition that is getting a little tougher every day.

In this regard, Apple was of course the best cards in this competition, and it is true that Apple Music is a much newer service because SPotify was launched in 2008, while Apple Music only saw the light of day in June 2015, seven years later. However, Apple’s relationship with the music industry began more than a decade earlier. Specifically, this relationship became official on April 28, 2003, with the launch of the iTunes Music Store, a digital music store that revolutionized the market and contributed to (and benefited from) the colossal success of the iPod.

So for a long time, one of Spotify’s main strengths was the size of its catalog, which for many years was the largest of any in existence at the time. However, some time ago, according to data provided by individual companies, Spotify lost the first position in this regard, to which Apple’s service rose. And now, as we can read on Softpedia, Apple Music marks a new milestone as it reaches 100 million songs on the service.

For comparison, today Spotify claims to have a total of 80 million songs, of which just over four million are podcasts, so we’re talking about just under 76 million music tracks. This tells us that Apple has four songs to every three from Spotify. Of course, if we understand that the data provided by those from Cupertino on Apple Music, i.e. the 100 million tracks, refers exclusively to music tracks, not to the sum of music and podcasts, as Spotify does.

Be that as it may, it is clear Apple has been able to play up its long-distance relationships with the music industry, to negotiate the presence of their catalogs in their services, to which we must add operations such as the purchase of Primerphonic. Now, of course, it’s Spotify’s turn to try to regain its position. However, given the huge difficulties the company would go through in launching its HiFi music service, announced more than a year and a half ago and still without a planned debut date, we can’t be too optimistic.