Apple Music passed a milestone: it has 60 million subscribers worldwide. That’s a 20% increase in just over a year.
This news comes straight from the mouth of Eddy Cue, who heads up Apple’s streaming music efforts.
Cue was talking to the French-language Numerama in the recently-opened Apple Store on the Champs-Élysées.
Clearly, streaming music is a growth area for this company. CEO Tim Cook revealed Apple Music had 50 million subscribers in May 2018.
All of these customers are paying a $9.99 monthly fee for individuals or $14.99 per families.
Apple Music vs. Spotify
Despite its growth, this service is only in second place in the global streaming music market. Spotify, its chief rival, had 100 million paid subscribers at the end of the first quarter of this year.
Still, as of this spring, more Americans pay to listen to Apple Music than Spotify. A bit more than half of Apple’s subscribers are in the US.
Beyond just competing on service, the two rivals are taking their fight to government regulators. This spring, the Swedish company complained to the European Union that Apple’s 15%-to-30% cut of subscription fees is anticompetitive. The European Commission started a formal investigation of its claims last month.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
