Apple Music was launched to the public back in June of last year, bringing in a new way to stream music. By October, it was revealed by Tim Cook that the service boasted 6.5 million paying users. And now, a report from the Financial Times is claiming that it has now over 10 million subscribers.
It was also mentioned that it only took the service six months to achieve such a milestone, while it took years for rival Spotify to reach the same number.
“It’s good news that Apple is making streaming work but it is also going to accelerate the decline of downloads,” according to Mark Mulligan, music industry analyst with Midia Research, in an interview with the Financial Times. He also mentions that with the rapid growth being experienced compared to Spotify, it has the potential to become the leading music subscription service sometime in 2017.
As the report says, streaming is now becoming the top form of music consumption, with Spotify and Apple Music being the top 2 apps, while on the other hand, download sales have been declining.
Back in August, it was reported that Apple Music had taken in over 11 million people to try out the service since its launch. By October, that number had gone down to 8.5 million. While it can be assumed that this decline can be attributed to users finally subscribing to the service, it is also interesting to know how many have ditched it for other services like Spotify.
Back in November, Apple Music was released for Android, in order to gather more customers for the service.
Source: Financial Times via ZDNet