Despite ongoing competition from Apple Inc., Spotify AB continues to thrive with the company announcing Wednesday that it had hit 40 million paying subscribers.

The figure is up a full 10 million from when Spotify announced it had hit 30 million paying subscribers in late March, slightly less than 6 months ago. Interestingly, that follows an announcement from the company in June where it said that it had hit 100 million active users but its growth in paying subscribers was flat.

Spotify Chief Executive Officer Daniel Ek’s made the announcement by tweeting simply that “40 is the new 30. Million.”

40 is the new 30.
Million. ?

— Daniel Ek (@eldsjal) September 14, 2016

The figure follows Apple’s announcement Sept. 7 that it had hit 17 million paying subscribers, a reasonable figure given that it has been in existence for a far shorter time that Spotify has been.

Good fight

Spotify’s continued growth comes despite various attempts to stymy the company, including allegations that Apple was preventing Spotify from updating its app.

In a letter sent to Apple, Spotify alleged that Apple was refusing to let it update its iOS app as a “weapon” to prevent competitors of Apple Music from getting ahead, that the app update was “causing grave harm to Spotify and its customers,” and that the rejection raised serious concerns under competition law. Apple refuted the claim, saying that Spotify is asking for exemptions to App Store rules that are applied equally to everyone.

Also continuing to conspire against Spotify are major artists like Adele, Coldplay, Drake, Future, Taylor Swift Rihanna, The 1975, and Kanye West, who have previously refused to, or delayed the release of their music on the service. Some chose to give exclusives to others services, Apple in the case of Swift, and the surprisingly still operating Tidal, which is owned by a group of musicians who amusingly think they know how to run a music streaming service.

The overall streaming market continues to grow so it may not be a matter of Spotify competing with Apple Music versus them trying to capture new subscribers as they enter the market. Some predict the market could grow to $2.7 billion by 2019, a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.5 percent per year.

Image credit: Jon Åslund/Wikimedia Commons/CC by 2.0