Apple Music surpasses 13M paid subscribers on strong services growth

During Apple's quarterly earnings conference call on Tuesday, CEO Tim Cook revealed Apple Music now serves more than 13 million paying subscribers, adding two million customers in as many months.

Apple last announced Apple Music figures in February, when iTunes chief Eddy Cue said the product hit 11 million subscribers, up from 10 million two weeks prior. The growth figure was one of the high points in today's conference call that announced Apple's first quarterly revenue decline since 2003.

With flagging hardware sales, especially iPhone, Cook concentrated on Apple's services business, which includes Apple Music, iTunes, the various App Stores, licensing, service parts, iCloud and Apple Pay. The sector's purchase value hit a record $9.9 billion in the recent March quarter, a number up 37 percent year-over-year, Cook said.

"We are very happy with the continued strong growth in revenue from Services, thanks to the incredible strength of the Apple ecosystem and our growing base of over one billion active devices," Cook said.

Backed by a massive installed user base in iPhone and iTunes, Apple Music has quickly become one of the largest streaming music platforms in the world. The product still lags behind more mature competitors like Spotify, which is estimated to have about 30 million subscribers.