Eddy Cue says Apple Music has 60 million subscribers
Apple Music has passed by the 60 million paid subscriber mark, Apple Senior Vice President of Services Eddy Cue advised on Thursday, with Apple's streaming platform hitting the milestone within the first four years of its existence.
The Apple-produced music streaming service has enjoyed considerable growth since its launch, with Cue advising to French media that Apple Music has reached 60 million paid users. The new subscriber level milestone has been reached just five months after Apple confirmed Apple Music had grown to 50 million paid users in its January conference call.
Cue declined to offer details to Numerama about how many users there are on other platforms, such as Android, but said, "In the Apple ecosystem, Apple Music is the number one streaming service."
Apple continues to lag behind main rival Spotify by a considerable margin, with subscribers of Spotify Premium breaking the 100 million subscriber barrier in April. That point was reached at a far slower rate since Spotify Premium launched in 2008, compared to Apple Music's 2015 launch. In April, it was determined that Apple Music was beating Spotify in terms of paid subscribers in the United States, leading at the time with 28 million subscribers to Spotify's 26 million, based on analyst estimates.
One "2019 Brand Intimacy Study" from May suggests Apple Music's brand worth has waned among apps and social platforms, shifting from first place in 2018 to fifth in 2019, overtaken by both Spotify and Pandora in second and third place, respectively.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Cue advised he was pleased with the progress of subscriber figures and Music's "current state," but advised "its next release proves that the service can always be perfected." Referencing features in the iOS 13 version of the app, Cue took a moment to swipe against a recent accusation by Genius that Google was copying their lyrics, saying, "We've entered them for the most part."
On the subject of the splintering of iTunes into separate apps, as confirmed at WWDC, Cue was asked if he would miss iTunes once it's gone, and whether he preferred iTunes or Apple Music.
"I worked so much on iTunes and Apple Music, I'm biased," he admitted, continuing, "Of course I'm fond of iTunes, but I think Apple Music is absolutely better in every way. We have something better now and there is no point in looking back."
One of the reasons for the split was due to the overall complexity of the app, with iTunes gaining more features over time that made it bewildering to some users to discover how to do some tasks.
"We try to solve it by highlighting cards on the homepage to inform users who have not used such and such a function, such as playlists. But the equation is complex; we must keep a simple interface while informing about these features," he said.
Giving one example of not combining Podcasts with Music, "These are two things so different. You do not listen to a podcast, then a piece of music, and then a podcast. Experience has shown us that running in separate applications works great on iOS."
The Apple-produced music streaming service has enjoyed considerable growth since its launch, with Cue advising to French media that Apple Music has reached 60 million paid users. The new subscriber level milestone has been reached just five months after Apple confirmed Apple Music had grown to 50 million paid users in its January conference call.
Cue declined to offer details to Numerama about how many users there are on other platforms, such as Android, but said, "In the Apple ecosystem, Apple Music is the number one streaming service."
Apple continues to lag behind main rival Spotify by a considerable margin, with subscribers of Spotify Premium breaking the 100 million subscriber barrier in April. That point was reached at a far slower rate since Spotify Premium launched in 2008, compared to Apple Music's 2015 launch. In April, it was determined that Apple Music was beating Spotify in terms of paid subscribers in the United States, leading at the time with 28 million subscribers to Spotify's 26 million, based on analyst estimates.
One "2019 Brand Intimacy Study" from May suggests Apple Music's brand worth has waned among apps and social platforms, shifting from first place in 2018 to fifth in 2019, overtaken by both Spotify and Pandora in second and third place, respectively.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Cue advised he was pleased with the progress of subscriber figures and Music's "current state," but advised "its next release proves that the service can always be perfected." Referencing features in the iOS 13 version of the app, Cue took a moment to swipe against a recent accusation by Genius that Google was copying their lyrics, saying, "We've entered them for the most part."
On the subject of the splintering of iTunes into separate apps, as confirmed at WWDC, Cue was asked if he would miss iTunes once it's gone, and whether he preferred iTunes or Apple Music.
"I worked so much on iTunes and Apple Music, I'm biased," he admitted, continuing, "Of course I'm fond of iTunes, but I think Apple Music is absolutely better in every way. We have something better now and there is no point in looking back."
One of the reasons for the split was due to the overall complexity of the app, with iTunes gaining more features over time that made it bewildering to some users to discover how to do some tasks.
"We try to solve it by highlighting cards on the homepage to inform users who have not used such and such a function, such as playlists. But the equation is complex; we must keep a simple interface while informing about these features," he said.
Giving one example of not combining Podcasts with Music, "These are two things so different. You do not listen to a podcast, then a piece of music, and then a podcast. Experience has shown us that running in separate applications works great on iOS."
Comments
I found it gave me a better variety of suggestions. Lots of eclectic items. Less horizontal scrolling!
Google stealing? I'm shocked! /s
Apple has a deal with genius. I wouldn't mind seeing genius' lyric meanings somehow integrated in Apple Music.
Just how old are you and what do you consider "Hard Rock"?
I don't see a problem with The White Stripes being played on a "Hard Rock" station. Granted not all their music is "Hard Rock", but they have more than a few songs that fall into that category.
I own my music and prefer ALAC local files to the lossy stuff that Apple streams for your $10 a month.
Since there were better than 800 million active iTunes accounts at the time they wasted $3 Billion on Beats and they have given anybody who wanted a free trial for years, that number of subscribers looks like an abject failure.
10% (and growing) of 800 million is not too bad.
Consider that you don't need one or the other but can still use both.
Wow! Good for you! Don't we all just love to hate SO much that we lack the ability to understand why someone else might not! If Love is blind, then hatred must be blind, deaf, dumb, and mute all rolled into one. Ok. Definitely not mute, that's for sure. People love to let others know how much they hate things. Especially on the WWW.
And I'm sure Apple must really be kicking themselves, regretting wasting that $3B, as they collect 600M a month ($7.2 billion a year) from those people who are torturing themselves doing all things you hate about music streaming services.
Speaking of spoon fed promotions: Other services such as Spotify also do these, e.g. Spotify is currently free for 6 months with the latest Galaxy device.
Between Apple Music, Pandora, Spotify, Google Music, Amazon Music etc. All of these services largely sell identical content, and other than colour-schemes their interfaces, features and algorithms all share wide similarities. So when one reads a passionate reaction to hating one service, but loving another - it's natural to believe these opinions to lack credibility.
He was just trying to bash Apple.
Spotify has way more subscriber promotions than Apple Music such as carrier deals and free with Hulu.
It was a truly historic event but the tapes of the concert were lost for decades. But, when they were finally found a 2 CD set of the live concert was published -- scratches and all. Apple has that 2 CD set on Apple Music but: THE SONGS ARE NOT SONGS FROM THE CONCERT! Apple replaced them with later, studio recordings performed by different people! And, they are totally different.
I guess to Apple Music a song is a song is a song -- and it doesn't matter what arrangement it is or who performed it. "They all look alike to me!"
That leads me to my other complaint: Apple replaced my music library with their versions of the same songs -- IF they even had that song in their library (if not they simply deleted it from mine). Apple could easily correct both problems by letting me keep my library (which would include the REAL Benny Goodman concert). But they won't. It's an "either/or" situation - you can either have your library or Apple Music -- but not both.
One genre could be "christmas music". Come December I like to be able just listen to Christmas music without picking it out song by song -- but I don't want to hear those same songs in July.
Perhaps your issue is with “music match” selecting the wrong tracks to match songs ripped from your CD. Sometimes that happens.
The Apple Music library, on the other hand, has whatever tracks are supplied by the record label. In this case, they have the 1938 live album from Columbia Records, now owned by Sony.
If if you have both the Music Match service and Apple Music, look not in ‘your library,’ but search AM for Benny Goodman, and you’ll find that album under ‘live albums,’ and it’ll have the correct tracks.
P.S. I thought I’d made a mismatch mistake myself, but the BG concert in question was definitely 1938, not 1932. And the correct recordings are there in Apple Music.