Apple Music now has over 10 million subscribing users

While unofficially announced, the number is nonetheless reported by a publication of considerable repute in the form of the Financial Times, which cites “people familiar with the matter”. Spotify had primed the market for a long time with its free tier and more people had devices and internet access suitable for streaming previous year than when the company first launched its service. Apple Music is also available in countries where Spotify and Google Play Music aren’t, with the service appropriately priced in the regional currency.

The latter would be the best-case scenario: at least Apple and Spotify (and ideally more rivals too) growing the overall streaming market with paying customers, not just free users. And priced at $9.99 for an individual subscription, the company’s streaming service is already generating $100 million in revenue a month. Apple Music includes the Beats 1 radio station, the Connect platform and Radio. Upon launch, Apple Music for Android did not have the Music Videos feature, nor an option for a family membership. Apple acquired the service for $3 billion in 2014.

Music industry analyst Mark Mulligan predicted last month that Apple Music would have 8 million subscribers by the end of 2015. When asked how likely they were to subscribe to a music streaming service in the next six months, only nine percent said they were “very likely” or “somewhat likely”.

The new figures mirror reports that Apple’s music service has surpassed 10 million subscribers just sixth month after its launch.

In a survey conducted on 5,000 Americans, music industry research company MusicWatch discovered that 48% of those who had tested the new online music-streaming service had ceased using it. Nonetheless, Apple stated that the figure is much lower.

What’s most intriguing about this revelation is that Spotify only managed to gain the same number of paying subscribers in six years instead of six months. Apple Music is also slowly starting to integrate with other hardware. 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.