The Apple Music app has been installed on 40 million Android devices

Though extremely Apple-centric, Apple Music has been installed by over 40 million Android users worldwide, new research estimates suggest.

Most of those installations were in the U.S., about 28 percent, analytics firm SensorTower said on Tuesday. India was a distant second at 7 percent, followed by Great Britain, Brazil, and Russia and 6, 5, and 4 percent respectively.

Although quarterly installs declined from 3.3 million in the Sept. 2017 quarter to 2.3 million by the June 2018 quarter, they have since been on the rebound, climbing back to 3.3 million in the Dec. 2019 period. Current forecasts for the March quarter call for an all-time high of 3.8 million.

Installs are not the same as subscriptions. By default the app offers a free three-month trial, and it's possible or even likely that many Android phone and tablet owners are simply canceling before they can be billed.

In late January Apple said that it had surpassed 50 million subscribers. Given that Apple Music is best on first-party devices, which have the service natively installed and integrated with Siri, it's probable that most of those subscribers have an iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

Apple has also been accused of being relatively slow to bring Apple Music updates to Android. It did however bring its streamlined Browse tab to Android on Monday, just a week after a similar iOS update was pushed. The service now also has native Chromebook support.

11 Comments

rotateleftbyte 1630 comments · 12 Years

About 5 years ago

And how many of those have used it more than once? twice? tossed it aside after one week?

ihatescreennames 1971 comments · 19 Years

I’d be interested to know how many of those installs are for someone who specifically wanted to sign up for Apple Music and how many are in households where there was a family plan to Apple Music but some people had Android devices. I know a few mixed device households where the latter situation would be entirely possible.

gatorguy 24609 comments · 13 Years

rotateleftbyte said:

And how many of those have used it more than once? twice? tossed it aside after one week?

I used it for a few weeks, tho not every time I played music. I'm no longer using it but not because it's a subpar service, it isn't.

To be fair the recommendations weren't as good for me as with a couple of other services, Tidal being a bit better than Google Music IMHO. I also very much like the one-click ease of the "thumbs up" playlist and the one-click link from "what's this song" to playing it on Google Play Music.

Native apps and/or apps using default platform services generally have the advantage. It's like running certain Google services on iOS where Apple requires they use Siri or Safari for background support. By design they can't perform as cleanly and directly as Apple's own services.

winston2010 98 comments · 9 Years

I can see Apple is getting more revenue from subscription services. In a few years, I see TV+, News+ on Android.

genovelle 1481 comments · 16 Years

winston2010 said:

I can see Apple is getting more revenue from subscription services. In a few years, I see TV+, News+ on Android.

With just 1/4th of these signing up it’s a billion dollars a year. How crazy is it that in a world where there are people who don’t have a dollar to their name, but a company bringing in a billion dollars from an offshoot of a service they are not even the leader of the market might be considered a failure.