Apple Music now boasts more than 10 million paying subscribers

Apple Music’s growth is fuelled by their marketing power, huge customer base, and the fact that tens of millions of iPhones and other Apple devices had the app automatically downloaded on launch of the streaming service. Apple declined to comment on the report. Spotify is now miles ahead with over 2o million paying subscribers, but if Apple Music stays on track it could catch up, as the rate at which it is achieving success is quicker than that of Spotify.

Apple Music now has over 10 million subscribers, reaching the milestone in just six months since its launch in June, Financial Times’ Matthew Garrahan and Tim Bradshaw reported Sunday. “Enhanced/SecCapsule.aspx?c=227956&fid=10233283” target=”_blank”>79.4 million active users in June a year ago.

What’s most intriguing about this revelation is that Spotify only managed to gain the same number of paying subscribers in six years instead of six months. So in about three months time, the total number of Apple Music subscribers has increased by over 50%. Apple has since taken steps to improve the service, with iOS 9 clearing up the interface, and the launch of an Android app pushing the service beyond Apple’s walled garden ecosystem.

Mark Mulligan, a respected music business analyst, recently forecast that Apple Music will get to 20 million subscribers by the end of 2016.

Apple Music indeed seems to be a great success. In order to surpass Spotify this year, Apple Music has to come up with more than 11 million additional subscribers. Spotify has yet to update their numbers to reflect how many paid subscribers they have now, but in a statement to The Verge, Spotify’s head of PR Jonathan Prince says, “The last half of 2015 was the fastest subscriber growth in Spotify history”. “At that time it had 20 million subscribers, up from 10 million a year prior”. Or is that too much to ask from Apple?