Apple Music reaches 11M trial members after five weeks
After just five weeks of availability, Apple Music has gathered an impressive 11 million trial users, two million of whom opted in to the more expensive multi-user family plan, according to Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue.
In revealing hard numbers to USA Today on Thursday, Cue offered the first real indication of how well Apple's streaming music service is faring after its launch at the end of June.
"We're thrilled with the numbers so far," Cue said.
To put those numbers into perspective, streaming music heavyweight Spotify boasts about 80 million users worldwide, 20 million of whom pay regular monthly fees for access to ad-free, on-demand content. That would put Apple Music at half the capacity of an industry leader if each existing trial member converts their single-user or family plan to a full paying membership. After a free three-month trial, users can continue to use Apple Music for $9.99 per month, or $14.99 per month for access on up to six devices.
The statements line up with an earlier report claiming Apple Music hit 10 million members after four weeks of service.
Recording executive Jimmy Iovine, who joined Apple after his company Beats was purchased for $3 billion, said he is "pleasantly surprised" with Apple Music's swift uptake, but notes there are hurdles to be overcome.
"For many people outside of the U.S. (Apple Music launched in 100 countries), you still have to explain what it is and how it works," Iovine said. "Beyond that, there's still the issue of winning over millennials, who never pay for music, by showing them you're offering something that will improve their lives. And finally, there are people out there who i think understand its value, but we still have to go out and get them."
He went on to tout Apple Music's Connect social network for artists, saying, "I'm hearing a sign of relief, that now finally they have tools they can use to access their fans. To Apple's credit, they move like lightning. You get what you give." It's unclear how many users actually use Connect, however.
Despite strong adoption numbers, Cue acknowledged Apple still has work to do, saying, "we're aware that some users have experienced some issues, and we hate letting them down, but we're releasing updates as fast as we can to address those issues." Shortly after launch, some users began to complain of deleted playlists caused by syncing issues with iCloud Music Library, a feature required offline caching of Apple Music songs.
Related to Apple's digital product services, Cue said July was a record month for the App Store, which notched $1.7 billion in transactions thanks to high activity in China. Since the App Store's launch in 2008, Apple has meted out $33 billion to developers, a figure that stood at $25 billion at the end of 2014.
In revealing hard numbers to USA Today on Thursday, Cue offered the first real indication of how well Apple's streaming music service is faring after its launch at the end of June.
"We're thrilled with the numbers so far," Cue said.
To put those numbers into perspective, streaming music heavyweight Spotify boasts about 80 million users worldwide, 20 million of whom pay regular monthly fees for access to ad-free, on-demand content. That would put Apple Music at half the capacity of an industry leader if each existing trial member converts their single-user or family plan to a full paying membership. After a free three-month trial, users can continue to use Apple Music for $9.99 per month, or $14.99 per month for access on up to six devices.
The statements line up with an earlier report claiming Apple Music hit 10 million members after four weeks of service.
Recording executive Jimmy Iovine, who joined Apple after his company Beats was purchased for $3 billion, said he is "pleasantly surprised" with Apple Music's swift uptake, but notes there are hurdles to be overcome.
"For many people outside of the U.S. (Apple Music launched in 100 countries), you still have to explain what it is and how it works," Iovine said. "Beyond that, there's still the issue of winning over millennials, who never pay for music, by showing them you're offering something that will improve their lives. And finally, there are people out there who i think understand its value, but we still have to go out and get them."
He went on to tout Apple Music's Connect social network for artists, saying, "I'm hearing a sign of relief, that now finally they have tools they can use to access their fans. To Apple's credit, they move like lightning. You get what you give." It's unclear how many users actually use Connect, however.
Despite strong adoption numbers, Cue acknowledged Apple still has work to do, saying, "we're aware that some users have experienced some issues, and we hate letting them down, but we're releasing updates as fast as we can to address those issues." Shortly after launch, some users began to complain of deleted playlists caused by syncing issues with iCloud Music Library, a feature required offline caching of Apple Music songs.
Related to Apple's digital product services, Cue said July was a record month for the App Store, which notched $1.7 billion in transactions thanks to high activity in China. Since the App Store's launch in 2008, Apple has meted out $33 billion to developers, a figure that stood at $25 billion at the end of 2014.
Comments
Exactly. I'd happily cancel my trial right now (rather than let it expire) because I just can't use it without something bad happening. iTunes and iCloud Music Library have mucked things up to the extent that Apple Music is currently unusable for me. And thanks to this I'm sticking with my pre-existing streaming service and keeping iTunes solely for purchased music.
Apple really should consider separating Apple Music from iTunes.
I remember seeing at least 1 person here say this almost verbatim...nice work
1. Fix the bug that causes playlists that I know I save for offline playback to NOT be deleted.
2. Somehow make a UI tweak that lets me know everywhere in Beats which music is available for offline listening and which is not.
So often I go to listen to music offline and it just is. not. there.
Paying $10 a month for me means paying for offline playback. If I can't do that easily, I feel I'm not getting what I paid for.
Frequent outages, buggy. Plus I found the older interface a lot easier to interact with.
I saw a tweet from Benedict Evans that said ?Watch is more polished than Apple Music. Now that I own the Watch I have to agree. I think people would be more forgiving had Apple Music been launched as a beta.
I actually like the service. UI is not great. They need to reinstate the option to see "see only music that is available off-line", and I get skips and sudden stoppages when listening to music off-line. But it has potential and I like the choice and integration with my library.
Still not sure if I not rather spend the $10 per month to buy albums that I can listen to forever. I could buy 250 albums over 20 years with that (and still have TuneIn to listen to Beats 1, aehm, I mean BBC Radio 1).
Nevertheless, 11 million free subscribers from a natively installed base of 800 million? No one can consider that a business success. The number is puny for a global service.
Perhaps with force touch, a more unified method of UI will evolve, so a press calls up a contextual menu and users are not guessing between ellipses, down arrows, hieroglyphics, and hidden options when touching certain screen elements.
Things like "Make Available Offline" and "Add to My Music" can be confusing, and duplicate functions with unnamed icons. Somehow, For You, New, and Radio could have been unified as they are all facets of streaming.
Which brings me to this: The biggest thing I see is most people really don't want to "stream" persay...who wants to pay for additional cellular data to listen to music, especially as a family, and even if you did, continuous reliable cellular and wifi is still not there. I look at this as renting music, and when I rent it in one spot, it should automatically (at least optionally) populate to all my devices on that account so it's available anywhere without wondering if I manually downloaded on every device.
As it is, you have to remember to go to each device to download playlists or songs manually, which of course is impossible to keep track of, and the Music interface doesn't even give you an option to see what songs are online only and not downloaded. I found that I've stopped using For You and New because of this. I shouldn't have to rediscover and rexplore on every device.
They simply should add a slider option in Music settings to auto download My Music choices just like to can auto download purchases made on other devices.
Which brings me to this: The biggest thing I see is most people really don't want to "stream" persay...who wants to pay for additional cellular data to listen to music, especially as a family, and even if you did, continuous reliable cellular and wifi is still not there. I look at this as renting music, and when I rent it in one spot, it should automatically (at least optionally) populate to all my devices on that account so it's available anywhere without wondering if I manually downloaded on every device.
You are spot on. I always said this is not a streaming service but a subscription service. As such, the default should be that the music downloads automatically to all devices, with the option to opt out if you have limited capacity. I can only assume that the record labels allowed for downloading, but required that this feature is not heavily advertised and that the service had to be marketed as a steaming service (which is useless, streaming only works at home, and often not even there).
Great start.
11 million users is huge. AppleMusic has a few querks which Apple will fix. It is by far the best streaming service for iOS users.
800 million installed user base! Why do you think that 11 million of that should be considered huge? 400 million would have been big, 200 million base scenario, and 100 million worst case scenario.
This is not a service that will roll out geographically, or will have a lot more "killer" features added to it, it is already available on 800 million accounts, and it already plays music; so can be considered "mature" with a growth rate now of about 20-30% per year (ie 2-3 million per year).
Assume a generous 20% paid take-up rate and you are looking at 2 million paying customers growing at 200,000 per year. For Apple, that is nothing. Literary, a first decimal rounding error.
If this was from a start-up no one has ever heard of from some small town in Sweden, OK, great job. But Apple, with a 800 m installed base that all they have to do is click a button to sign up? I doubt the City will like that number as Apple Music is key to improve stickiness of the iPhone.
I still like the service and use it daily. Wish others did, too.
Apple does not have 800 million user base.
OK, it may not be available in Polynesia, but 100 countries is pretty much "all countries"..... Anyway, we just a have different opinion, I am surprised so few iPhone users signed up. I really expected at 30-50% of users. Not 1%.
According to Apple's numbers, there are over 800 million Apple ID accounts and over 1 billion (fyi that's 9 zeros!!!) iOS devices out there. So, technically, you're right, it doesn't have 800 million user base, more like 1 billion!
So many complaints. My wife and I must have been lucky. Little problems for us.
My only request is to have the power to 'force' upload songs, so that they don't get replaced in the cloud with iTunes Store tracks. This has affected a handful of alternative recordings, such as rarities and bootlegs.
The tracks stay as they are on my Mac (as long as I keep the files there), but on my iPhone some are replaced after being 'matched.'
Really? 30-50%? That is a ridiculous expectation.
Spotify/Pandora/ect all have free tiers or trial periods. Do you expect those services to have 30-50% conversion rates? What planet are YOU living on! Even more so since AppleMusic is NOT a free service.
11 million in a few weeks is AMAZING. Thats a revenue stream of $1.3 billion created in a few weeks that will keep growing.
What percentage of iPhone users use it to listen to music? What percentage of iPhone owners have an iTunes account? I would consider those appropriate benchmarks.I think a take-up rate of 30-50% from an installed user base, to sign up to a free (trial) service add-on, on a core app (Music!), from the most famous company in the world, that is heavily advertised, is not crazy at all.
Assuming a 100% conversion rate from free trial users to paid users on the other hand may be..... As is comparing it to start ups of 3 people in a basement.
Nope. 30-50% is unrealistic. Especially in countries like China/India/Russia where $9.99 a month is a FULL DAY SALARY.
You need to compare AppleMusic to Spotify/Pandora. Just because its core app does not mean people will be willing to sign up for the trial that switches to a paid subscription. It took a decade for Spotify/Pandora to get 11 million users. And you expect Apple to get 300,000,000 subscribers in a month? WTF are you smoking son.
Apple manages to upgrade people to new iOS at that rate. Another relevant benchmark, in my view.
Anyway, no need to discuss. The product is good, I am happy to wait for improvements and bug-fixes. As a business, I am not sure if I'd be that happy but then again, we'll never know what their expectation were, I have never heard of a business plan being leaked out of Apple.
Apple Music may be the best subscription service, but subscription is not the best music service. Can we have our iPod App back, please?
Completely agree.
Somehow our purchased music becomes attached to iCloud. Best friend tried Music for a week then unsubscribed. All his music is gone, and he still hasn't gotten it all back. Music unhelpfully told him to connect to a wifi network while he was on the train to try and recover it all.
I really wish Apple had kept the new options in a separate app!
WTF dude.
You are comparing a subscription service that cost $9.99 that is TOTALLY OPTIONAL to updating your OS which is FREE?
What are you SMOKING.
Lets take your numbers and see if they are reasonable.
800,000,000 users x 50% rate = 400,000,000 AppleMusic trial users in 1 month
800,000,000 x 50% conversion rate x $120 a year = $48 billion in revenue.
WTF dude.
WTF dude.
Do you realize how much $48 billion in revenue is!!!! That almost as much revenue as GOOGLEs entire revenue for a YEAR!
$48 billion is more revenue that Mac+iPad yearly revenue combined!!!
And you expected Apple to make that much with AppleMusic in ONE FRICKEN MONTH!!!
Your expectations are totally EXTREME.
A target of 11 m is ridiculous for a firm like Apple, why would they care to go through so much trouble to address such a tiny market? Especially if, even assuming a 50% conversion rate, that drops to 6m? The whole point of this is to increase stickiness into the Apple Eco-system, so they secured 1%: 6m clients out of 600mn (as per Sog35)?
But maybe you are right. Maybe everyone in the world except me thinks 11m is incredible. Well done Apple, added 1/2% revenue. Bravo. 10M bonus for the man that added 50c to the share price.
But maybe the earlier guy is right: the world is not ready for subscriptions. When it is, Apple will be there.
Anyway, we are just speculating.
Yeah I tried looking for actual figures of accounts, but they're not readily available. I guess by your (great!) analysis, the numbers would be even lower as family packs combine individual users?
Even so, I'm not really impressed with Apple Music. The way the music we have bought and collected over the decades is now replaced automatically, or deleted completely, and with the reduced functionality in the new Music app to use my own collections. Once the free time limit comes, I do expect the 11M will drop.
Do you remember when iTunes first came to Windows? 'Remove library' actually meant 'delete every song from iTunes and your computer with no way to get it back'. Having de ja vu!
I really think this service would be more successful if it was separated from people's personal collections, and conveyed value without impacting personal music libraries.