Daniel Eran Dilger
Apple's new Apple Music streaming service has reportedly exceeded 10 million subscribers in its first six months, a feat that took established Swedish rival Spotify six years to achieve in 2014.
Cafe Flore, San Francisco
According to a report citing unnamed sources by Matthew Garrahan and Tim Bradshaw of the Financial Times, Apple grew past 10 million less than three months after Apple officially reported having reached 6.5 million paid users in October.
The report cited music industry analyst Mark Mulligan of Midia Research as saying that Apple had "the potential to be the leading music subscription service sometime in 2017," given its rapid growth rate. However, streaming also comes at the cost of downloads.
Total album sales in the U.S. had already fallen by 9 percent in 2014, while individual track downloads had dropped by 12 percent, according to Nielsen Music, while streaming had increased by more than 50 percent.
Apple entered the music streaming subscription business with the announcemnet of Apple Music last June, a new service featuring access to Apple's extensive iTunes catalog, human-curated playlists, Beats 1 radio and iTunes Connect social networking for artists.
Apple Music went live on June 30 alongside iOS 8.4 and new iTunes software for Macs and PCs. Monthly fees start at $9.99 for single users, while a $14.99 family plan grants access for up to six people. Apple added an Android app in November.
This year, Apple is said to be developing a new Hi-Res Audio format featuring an expanded 96kHz, 24bit sampling rate for its Apple Music subscribers, leveraging the higher fidelity audio output capabilities of Lightning ports.
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53 Comments
Impressive.
I am a paid subscriber and I love it.
Apple have ironed out a lot of the early bugs with the service and I don't really have any complaints about it anymore.
One suggestion for any Apple staff who are reading this is to put a bit more emphasis on social sharing of playlists. I don't personally need it (as I don't care what other people are listening to, LOL!) but friends who are still using Spotify constantly cite this as a reason for them staying with Spot.
Isn't lightning port only capable of outputting 48kHz @ 24 bit? If that is true then how will it leverage 96 kHz sampling rate that apple is working on?
I expect Apple Music to follow a similar trajectory to Apple Maps: starting as the underdog with some UI problems, but continuing to improve steadily and capturing a large % of market share. Just as there will always be people who prefer Google Maps (legitimately, in some geographies), there will always be people who prefer Spotify or other streaming services. That's the beauty of a competitive marketplace.