Back in September it was revealed that Apple Music had managed to hit 15 million subscribers, which is well and good given how relatively new the service is, but we suppose the more important question is out of the 15 million, how many are actually paid subscribers? In October Apple’s CEO Tim Cook revealed that they had 6.5 million paid subscribers, but that number has since grown.
A report from the Financial Times (paywall; via MacRumors) has revealed that Apple Music has since managed to hit 10 million paid subscribers in just a little over 6 months. Is this fast? It’s pretty damn fast because let’s get some perspective here: Spotify, which is considered to be one of the largest streaming platforms available reportedly hit 20 million paid subscribers in 2015.
This was after it had launched in the US in 2011, meaning that Apple Music hit around half of their paid subscribers in a fraction of the time. Spotify has yet to update their numbers to reflect how many paid subscribers they have now, but in a statement to The Verge, Spotify’s head of PR Jonathan Prince says, “The last half of 2015 was the fastest subscriber growth in Spotify history.”
That being said, we suppose it does help that Apple Music is by default preinstalled on every iOS device, making it easy for users to get their accounts started without having to download extra apps or sign up for anything, thus lowering the barrier for entry. Will Apple Music catch up to Spotify in the next year or so? Or will Spotify come up with something that will allow them to pull away? What do you guys think?
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