Apple Music breaks through to 30 million subscribers
Apple Music has topped 30 million paid subscribers, Apple confirmed on Thursday, supplying background for an interview with executives Jimmy Iovine and Larry Jackson, and Beats 1 DJ Zane Lowe.
The service hit the 27 million milestone around the time of June's Worldwide Developers Conference, suggesting growth of roughly 1 million people per month since. In reality that growth has likely been uneven, perhaps surging around the release of new products such as 10.5- and 12.9-inch iPad Pros, and more recently the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus.
Apple's growth still leaves it well behind the leader in on-demand streaming, Spotify, which broke the 60 million paid barrier in July. Still more listeners are believed to be on the company's ad-supported free tier.
"I don't believe that what exists right now is enough," Iovine said in the Billboard interview. "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. 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," he commented.
Iovine has previously complained that artists aren't being paid well enough by services with free tiers, like Spotify and Pandora. In the Billboard interview, he noted that streaming services are often riding on money from older music catalogs -- which can be cheaper to license -- while simultaneously faced with competition from free platforms like YouTube.
"I just don't think streaming is enough as it is," he elaborated. "I don't agree that all things are going to be OK 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 has focused heavily on offering exclusives, including videos and albums, though the latter are usually just temporary before they come to other platforms. It's not yet known if Apple will bring its slate of TV dramas to the service, or air them elsewhere.
The service hit the 27 million milestone around the time of June's Worldwide Developers Conference, suggesting growth of roughly 1 million people per month since. In reality that growth has likely been uneven, perhaps surging around the release of new products such as 10.5- and 12.9-inch iPad Pros, and more recently the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus.
Apple's growth still leaves it well behind the leader in on-demand streaming, Spotify, which broke the 60 million paid barrier in July. Still more listeners are believed to be on the company's ad-supported free tier.
"I don't believe that what exists right now is enough," Iovine said in the Billboard interview. "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. 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," he commented.
Iovine has previously complained that artists aren't being paid well enough by services with free tiers, like Spotify and Pandora. In the Billboard interview, he noted that streaming services are often riding on money from older music catalogs -- which can be cheaper to license -- while simultaneously faced with competition from free platforms like YouTube.
"I just don't think streaming is enough as it is," he elaborated. "I don't agree that all things are going to be OK 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 has focused heavily on offering exclusives, including videos and albums, though the latter are usually just temporary before they come to other platforms. It's not yet known if Apple will bring its slate of TV dramas to the service, or air them elsewhere.
Comments
Jimmy isn’t satisfied because he sees Apple Music much bigger than it is now and he will take it there.
Dr. Dre is also a ridiculously hard worker. He created 3 of the most iconic record labels in a row. I just don’t know what the hell he’s doing at Apple outside of his radio show.
2) I wonder if this will become an antitrust issue.
i wonder what the state of Apple Music is on Android? The reason why the iPod and iTunes became such a monster was because Edie Cue and Phil Schiller had that big argument with Jobs about pushing it to Windows, which Jobs thought was a bad idea. I remember that the biography related that he said to them when he finally agreed was that: “it’s on your heads”.
good thing. But Windows users have more open minds about this kind of thing (most all iPhone and iPad owners are Windows users) than Android users do.
I certainly agree with the assertion that streaming music isn’t profitable. This is something I’ve been saying for many years, since Apple was almost denounced, early on, for not going into it. Though, Jobs made a statement early in the 2000’s when asked if Apple would do it. He said that Apple’s customers wanted to own their music, but that if their customers demanded it, Apple would do it. And, well, here we are!
while Spotify is now much bigger than they were, last quarterly report still had them losing money. Pandora loses a lot of money, which is why it went around trying to sell itself. Tidal still has a very small customer base, and so sold a third of itself to Sprint.
most all other streaming services over the years went out of business directly, or were bought, and were later closed down. My opinion on this is that in the end, only companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, maybe Microsoft, if they’re really interested, Facebook, and just a very few others, can pull this off. The problem is that with costs being what they are, $9.95 a month isn’t enough. Companies tried $14.95, but customers wouldn’t pay that much.
My guess is that Apple is overall profitable in Apple Music on its own (though perhaps margins are very slim), given the Apple Music share of advertising and sales expenses (out of Apple's total pie) is likely low. Outsiders will never know for certain of course.
gross is not profit. I know that sometimes it’s called profit, but it’s not. Profit is net, not gross, and not operating. Apple makes net profits of about 20-21%. That’s actual profit.
That’s an interesting question that I wonder about myself, as Spotify has also been getting huge amounts of money in investments to make up for their losses and to allow for expansion. Google has Google Music. I don’t know how well that’s doing. Amazon has their own music service. Facebook would look as though it could be a great match, if they’re interested. They do have a billion, or more, people on their service every day. I can see them playing music from the service too. Microsoft has music as well.
i don’t know. It’s hard to say. If there is a service already, and it’s doing ok, a company may not be interested, if it’s growing, but if a company doesn’t, or theirs is stagnant, then I can see them going for it. Look at Samsung, for example. They really want to get away from Google. I mean, really. They have no ecosystem of their own though. So they duplicate Google’s apps on their own phones hoping people will use them instead. They have TouchWiz, hoping people will like it better. And several years ago, they had a music service called, of all things “Milk”. It failed, and they closed it down. But, if they’re still interested, they could buy one of these, and restart. It would be a beginning. Tizen hasn’t been a rousing success, just being on some of their watches, two cheap phones in India, and in their TVs, which isn’t quite the same thing.
so, maybe they would be interested, if they still don’t feel too burned by their first experience. But whatever happens, it’s got to be a company that’s making really big sales and profits, for which this is a gateway to their other products.
just stop talking about gross “profits”. First of all it’s not “massive” and secondly, it’s not profit. Again, only “net” is profit. Read the link below. You’ll notice that their revenue from subscriptions is minuscule, and most all of it comes from advertising. Then you’ll also notice that their net=profit or loss, is a big loss, again. No profits there. Gross is not profit, only net.
http://investor.pandora.com/file/Index?KeyFile=389688848
The term "gross profit" is misapplied - perhaps what is meant is "gross margin" (revenue of goods sold - cost of goods to produce).