Apple Music Now Has Over 30M Paid Subscribers, Up from 27M in June

[MacRumors]

In an interview with Billboard posted today, Apple Music executive Jimmy Iovine has discussed a number of topics related to the streaming music service's "long game," including its growth over the past three months. At WWDC in June, Apple mentioned that Apple Music had 27 million paid subscribers, and today the company confirmed to Billboard that it has now reached "well over" 30 million.

Iovine was enthusiastic about Apple Music's growth, but admitted that simply adding more subscribers, launching entire back catalogues through record label deals, and staying on the forefront of new hits isn't enough to maintain Apple's presence in the streaming music market. "I just don't think streaming is enough as it is," he said.

"I believe we're in the right place, we have the right people and the right attitude to not settle for what exists right now." But ultimately? "Just because we're adding millions of subscribers and the old catalog numbers are going up, that's not the trick. That's just not going to hold."

"I just don't think streaming is enough as it is. I don't agree that all things are going to be OK [just] because Apple came into streaming and the numbers went up. Look at the catalog: It's a matter of time before the '60s become the '50s and the '50s become the '40s. The people that are listening to the '60s will die -- I'm one of them. Life goes on. So you have to help the artists create new stuff that they would never be able to do on their own."

Apple Music's main rival remains Spotify, which counted 60 million paid subscribers in July. Spotify has continued to grow faster than Apple Music thanks to the former streaming service's free tier that allows users to listen to music interspersed with advertisements, which Apple Music does not have.

Apple's offer for new users is a three-month free trial to test out the service before deciding to pay the $9.99/month price point. In May, Iovine said that if Apple Music did have a free tier, "it would have 400 million people on it" and make his job easier, but he and Apple believe in focusing everything into creating a quality experience for the people who are paid subscribers, making them "feel special" in the process.

Check out Billboard's full interview with Jimmy Iovine, Zane Lowe, and Larry Jackson right here. Other topics discussed include how the Apple Music team discovers new artists, Spotify's plan to go public, and Iovine's belief that while Apple Music is good where it's at, the company is "not even close" to being done with iterating and adding onto its features.

Article Link: Apple Music Now Has Over 30M Paid Subscribers, Up from 27M in June

 

[dannyyankou]

Impressive growth. That’s a pace of 12 million a year

 

[unobtainium]

30m people have never tried Spotify.

 

[RWil85]

Impressive growth. That’s a pace of 12 million a year

delete.

you fixed your math before I could.

 

[richb330]

30M subscribers at an average of 9.99pm is £3.5B pa....
if my maths is right..?

that's impressive for an initiative that's what, just over 2 years old?

 

[dannyyankou]

delete.

you fixed your math before I could.

Yep, haha. I’m not a morning person.

 

[Shirasaki]

This shows the sheer size of Apple fan base or streaming lover base or both.
Wonder how many people will join Apple train next year.
Oh, Apple Music library is still not large enough to cover my merely 2800 songs currently available in my iTunes library.

 

[pat500000]

Wow. That many people does subscription?

 

[LordQ]

30m people have never tried Spotify.

I tried it, didn't like it. Simple.

 

[Dreamer2go]

yeah it's the convenience.
I have both Apple Music and Spotify

If I want music in a playlist, I'll choose Spotify
If i want to find an individual song (especially having a listen to the full track before buying), and live radio (e.g. Eric Prydz's show), Apple Music all the way.

I get best of both worlds!

 

[AppleFan91]

30m people have never tried Spotify.

But...I had Spotify premium before Apple Music came out and I prefer Apple Music now

I prefer AM because it’s built into my Mac, iPhone and AW. Plus it’s integrated into Siri as well.

 

[KazKam]

Which only leaves the other 470,000,000 Apple ID users with a ****** music app and experience. Nice job, Apple!

 

[CarpalMac]

This is why Apple is not the ghost of its past. People say about confused product lines or lack of refreshed devices. The fact is, from this and the App store income alone - it is a tremendously solid money printing machine.

 

[norbinhouston]

Man reading the first few responses, people just hate anything to do with Apple. lol.

 

[jonnysods]

Not me man, I love Spotify. It reads my mind! (and probably all my private info, but my Daily Mix is pretty killer)

 

[DanielDD]

30m people have never tried Spotify.

I use both, and there is a reason why I'm sticking with Apple Music. It's the only service in which I can add songs into my library from albums I bought, and they behave like songs from Apple Music (they sync, there are ready to stream or download in any of my devices). Plus, it is the only service that allows you to edit songs' metadata (changing genres, albums cover art).

If you listen to playlists all the time, go with Spotify. If you truly care about your library, go with Apple Music.

Plus, My Chill Mix has spot on suggestions for me. They are actually better than those I had with My Daily Mix on Spotify.

 

[Mad.Whack]

If you listen to playlists all the time, go with Spotify. If you truly care about your library, go with Apple Music.

Bravo, what a sensible thing to say!
That's so rare on the Macrumors forums I had to create account.
Usually it's just a cesspool of confirmation bias and just a giant echo chamber.

edit: I'm a playlist guy. I created now several giant playlists with 2-3 genres and as they grow I break them down into small playlists.

 

[nhoj_z]

I use both, and there is a reason why I'm sticking with Apple Music. It's the only service in which I can add songs into my library from albums I bought, and they behave like songs from Apple Music (they sync, there are ready to stream or download in any of my devices). Plus, it is the only service that allows you to edit songs' metadata (changing genres, albums cover art).

If you listen to playlists all the time, go with Spotify. If you truly care about your library, go with Apple Music.

Plus, My Chill Mix has spot on suggestions for me. They are actually better than those I had with My Daily Mix on Spotify.

Yea before I invested into streaming services, I had like 5,000 songs with huge amounts of full albums & then Spotify freemium for playlists and songs I didn't really want to buy on iTunes/torrent. Then I tried AM when it came out with the free 3 months and really couldn't get away from it. It really integrates nicely with my prior music collection. Only thing I hate about Am is that sometimes it screws up some tracks on the iCloud library, gets annoying if you find some like that. But overall Im really happy with it. Love Time Crisis and the convenience to add music to my library. And I like editing song info and album covers, cant do that on Spotify. Just wish more of my friends used it, its hard sharing music between my friends who solely use Spotify

 

[Strelok]

I use both, and there is a reason why I'm sticking with Apple Music. It's the only service in which I can add songs into my library from albums I bought, and they behave like songs from Apple Music (they sync, there are ready to stream or download in any of my devices). Plus, it is the only service that allows you to edit songs' metadata (changing genres, albums cover art).

If you listen to playlists all the time, go with Spotify. If you truly care about your library, go with Apple Music.

Plus, My Chill Mix has spot on suggestions for me. They are actually better than those I had with My Daily Mix on Spotify.

You can add songs to Spotify too.

 

[tkermit]

You can add songs to Spotify too.

At least until you reach the 10000 song limit... (I've already added more than that on Apple Music)

Seriously though, added songs on Apple Music behave almost exactly like files you actually own, enabling the use of all of the often under-appreciated management functionality that iTunes offers, including scripting functionality. It's very convenient.

 

[Strelok]

At least until you get to the 10000 song limit... (I've already added more than that on Apple Music)

Seriously though, added songs on Apple Music behave almost exactly like files you actually own, enabling the use of all of the often under-appreciated management functionality that iTunes offers, including scripting functionality. It's very convenient.

There are definitely pros and cons to each. For me, who doesn't have a ton of music on hand, Spotify works fine. I mainly check out the Top 50 lists and most of the songs I used to listen to are on Spotify already. I could see it being inconvenient if you have a huge library and Spotify doesn't have them though!

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Plus, My Chill Mix has spot on suggestions for me. They are actually better than those I had with My Daily Mix on Spotify.

I haven't had much luck with "My Daily Mix" on Spotify, but Discover Weekly on Spotify is phenomenal.

 

[cliffster82]

Which only leaves the other 470,000,000 Apple ID users with a ****** music app and experience. Nice job, Apple!

This is a good point; I don't ever think about this since I have the service. I'm curious why it's crap now?

 

[swingerofbirch]

I just find Apple Music/iTunes/Music app baffling from a software perspective.

iTunes would have been more sticky to me had they synced my meta-data all along (just a listing of the songs I had in my library). I have no idea where all my MP3s are I imported going back to the late 90s. It's been 20 some years I've been into digital music, enough time to not keep track of where libraries have gone over many broken Apple computers. That's why I like Spotify. Even if I stopped paying, all the playlists are there, from any place I log in. My MacBook Pro breaks and I send it in for repair, and I can log into Spotify on the web on my Chromebook and all my music is still there. You can't do that with Apple Music. You need another Apple device that is only used by you.

I've been paying for Spotify Premium for as long as I've had it, and I didn't mind paying 9.99 per month. But I recently got the student promotion which includes Hulu as well for 4.99. Quite a deal.

 

[nrose101]

30m people have never tried Spotify.

Don't you mean 30m people want better sounding audio and switched to Apple Music?
[doublepost=1506610163][/doublepost]

Bravo, what a sensible thing to say!
That's so rare on the Macrumors forums I had to create account.
Usually it's just a cesspool of confirmation bias and just a giant echo chamber.

edit: I'm a playlist guy. I created now several giant playlists with 2-3 genres and as they grow I break them down into small playlists.

Playlists work great on Apple Music. Spotify is horrible sound quality. Even paid. They use mp3. The audio spectrum for that codec is horrible compared to AAC.