Spherical derivative of a measure ($D_s\mu (x)={\lim }_{r\downarrow 0}\mu (B(x,r))/{\lambda }_d(B(x,r))$)

The spherical derivative compares the mass of shrinking centered open balls with their Lebesgue measure, when the limit exists. This is a density of one measure relative to Euclidean volume, rather than the relative density of a set within one fixed measure. A singular finite Borel measure has spherical derivative zero Lebesgue almost everywhere.

For a finite singular Borel measure, choose compact subsets of a Lebesgue-null carrier whose omitted mass is arbitrarily small. Outside any such compact subset, sufficiently small balls see only the omitted measure. The uncentered maximal weak-type inequality bounds the volume of points where the omitted measure has large density. Letting its total mass tend to zero shows that the upper spherical density is zero almost everywhere. This argument does not require the null carrier itself to be closed or separated from every point outside it.