Apple Music surpasses 20 million paying users

On June 30, 2015, the streaming music service Apple Music was officially launched in dozens of countries and now, after only a year and a half of existence, already has exceeded 20 million paying subscribers Well, remember, the service does not have any type of free option beyond the first three months of testing for new users.

There is no doubt that it is a spectacular growth, not only because of the speed at which it has been produced, but also because it is facing powerful and consolidated competitors such as Spotify, with a much wider user base, or because of the numerous criticisms that Apple Music had in relation to its interface user, accused of not being intuitive. Now, Eddy Cue speaks about the success of Apple Music on Billboard, granting a determining importance to the exclusive so criticized by some of the major record labels.

Apple Music: 20 million, and counting

Apple has released the latest figures for its streaming music service revealing that Apple Music has already passed the 20 million subscriber line in just 18 months, the same that the platform has had since it was launched on June 30, 2015. Thus, growth seems to have accelerated and, in any case, it is taking place at an impressive rate since Apple Music has grown by 15% over the last three months, since the company announced 17 million subscribers in early September, during the iPhone 7 launch event.

On the other hand, the Cupertino company has shown that Apple Music and iTunes become incompatible as 60% of Apple Music subscribers have not purchased music content on iTunes in the last 12 months. In addition, "the vast majority are new customers," says Vice President of Internet Products and Services Eddy Cue to Billboard.

Right now, Apple Music is available in more than a hundred countries, and more than half of the subscribers live outside the United States, in markets such as Canada, China, South Africa, Japan, Russia, Brazil and India.

"It's been a year," says Cue. “We were excited to see that we could take [the artists'] passions and take them to the top spot. Chance the Rapper, which we placed exclusively on Apple Music, made it to the top 10 on the Billboard charts [based on streaming views only], and I don't recall doing it before. "

Exclusives will continue "where appropriate"

And despite the mandate of the president of Universal Music Group, Lucian Grainge, trying to prohibit the signing of exclusive releases to all record labels that are part of this group, Cue points out that exclusives will continue in the near future "where appropriate" because "They work very well for everyone concerned, they are great for the label [record company], they work for the artist and for us." Despite these statements, there does not appear to be a general policy at Apple regarding these exclusive releases: "It's really about throwing things," says Cue. Sometimes it makes sense to do that.

A huge impact on hip-hop

From Billboard they point out that in the case of hip-hop artists, "Apple is clearly the leader of the streaming load and helps influence traditional radio." It's not something to be surprising having Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine at the helm, but Cue adds that Apple has long tried to give this genre more visibility, even though the company has traditionally been more aligned with the genre. rock, as is the case with U2 or Cue's favorite Bruce Springsteen. "We've always thought hip-hop was underrepresented on both iTunes and streaming, and more people are listening to hip-hop than ever, so we've done a lot of work in that area."

In short, despite various criticisms and opinions, It is unquestionable that Apple Music is exceeding the expectations that many of us had, and that it is being a great success both in terms of users and impact on the music scene. And now with Apple Music Student exported to more countries, sure that it takes another good number of subscribers.