Apple Music reaches 20 million subscribers
Apple Music has gone 20 times platinum.
In an interview with Billboard, Apple revealed that it now has over 20 million subscribers, adding 3 million users to its paid subscription since it announced that it had 17 million members in September.
Reaching 20 million paid subscribers is an impressive number for Apple, which launched the service last summer. Pricing for the music service ranges from $9.99 per month for a single subscription to $14.99 for a family plan allowing up to six listeners. A student option is also available for $4.99 per month.
Apple still trails Swedish rival Spotify, who announced in September that it had reached 40 million paid subscribers. Unlike Apple Music, however, Spotify also has a free, ad-supported tier, giving the service 100 million total users.
In the interview with Billboard, Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of software and products, also provided some insights into the type of customer Apple Music was attracting. Cue said that 60% of the customers using Apple Music had not made an iTunes Music Store purchase in the past 12 months, with the "vast majority" of new subscribers being new users.
Cue also disclosed that over 50% of Apple Music subscribers do not live in the U.S. The service is now live in over 100 countries including Canada, China, Russia, Brazil, and India.
The music streaming space is only getting more crowded. In addition to Apple and Spotify, Amazon, Microsoft and Google all have similar streaming offerings and Pandora and iHeartRadio recently announced their own respective competing services just in the past two weeks.
Still, Cue doesn't seem to be concerned, noting that there is still plenty of room for growth.
"We can’t forget that, as an industry, we still have very few music subscribers," said the executive. "There are billions of people listening to music and we haven’t even hit 100 million subscribers. There's a lot of growth opportunity."
"If they drive more people to pay and buy music," Cue told the magazine. "Then that's a good thing for all of us."