The Verge:

The Weeknd’s latest project, My Dear Melancholy, pulled in over 26 million streams in its first 24 hours on Apple Music, with the lead song “Call Out My Name” pulling in 6 million of those streams, the company tells The Verge. That in itself isn’t a record, but Apple Music’s numbers did beat out the single’s performance on Spotify, which pulled in nearly 3.5 million streams in the same period — the largest debut of 2018 on the service — according to Republic Records.

So what? Apple Music beat out Spotify in this one instance. Why is that so odd?

Here’s why:

Spotify has over 120 million more users, had two exclusive music videos from the EP, and it was where The Weeknd pointed his fans to stream the album on social media.

In effect, the deck was stacked in favor of Spotify, well stacked. And yet, somehow, Apple Music pulled more streams.

And this isn’t an anomaly either: this is the third time Apple Music has outperformed Spotify on a major release in the past 13 months.

First-day streams of Drake’s More Life on Apple Music outpaced Spotify by a staggering 28.6 million, and the streaming service dominated first-week streams of Post Malone’s chart-topping single “Rockstar” in the US.

Some kind of secret sauce at Apple Music HQ. Very interesting.