In a Wall Street Journal technology conference on Monday, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed when the new Apple TV will start shipping, plus paid and unpaid subscriber numbers for Apple Music.
Apple has long indicated that the fourth generation Apple TV will become available in October – and, according to CNET, Cook revealed at the conference in California that orders will open on October 26, before Apple starts shipping the home entertainment hub by the end of next week.
He also revealed that Apple Music has made great progress, currently having 6.5 million users paying $10 monthly for the service and another 8.5 million subscribers on the 90-day free trial. Cook cited the total subscriber number as “over 15 million”, a noticeable and impressive increase on the 11 million figure revealed by Apple in August, before the earliest free trials had expired.
Cook reported feeling “really happy about it” – unsurprising considering that Apple Music is speedily gaining ground on the much longer-established Spotify, which has 20 million paying users. It also means that the Apple offering is the second most popular music streaming service – just ahead of Deezer, with 6.3 million subscribers. This does not account for the likes of Google Play Music and Rdio, for which subscriber numbers have not been officially revealed.