Apple has revealed that, only a month after launch, its music streaming service Apple Music now has 11 million trial members. This is the first official indication of a subscriber number for the service, and suggests that Apple is fast gaining ground on the market leader, Spotify.
The new figure was revealed by Apple executives to USA TODAY, and Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services, Eddy Cue, has said that his company is “thrilled with the numbers so far”. He added that two million of these members are on the family plan permitting up to six people to use a single Apple Music account.
The real test for Apple, however, will be persuading all or many of these subscribers to stay as paying customers once the three-month trial period has expired. Should all of these subscribers indeed so stay come late September, Apple Music would have half as many paid members as Spotify.
Jimmy Iovine, who co-founded Beats Electronics with rapper Dr. Dre and joined Apple when it acquired his company last year, said that he was “pleasantly shocked” by the speedy growth in Apple Music’s membership. The paying membership already looks likely to grow much further than that of its spiritual predecessor, Beats Music, which never reached more than a few hundred thousand.
