The number of Apple Music trial subscribers has reportedly increased by about 36% in just the last six weeks. According to a report in the New York Post, there are now 15 million people subscribed to Apple’s nascent music service, a sizable bump from the 11 million figure Apple quoted in early August.
The report further adds that about half of Apple Music users haven’t turned off the service’s auto-pay toggle, the obvious implication being that Apple may soon have a significant number of paying subscribers.
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By way of comparison, Spotify now has 75 million active users, of which 20 million are paying subscribers. That being the case, if a hypothetical 40% of current Apple Music subscribers decide to stick with the service after their free trial expires, Apple will have 6 million paying members for a service that didn’t even exist three months ago. Coupled with the recent launch of iOS 9, not to mention the impending iPhone 6s launch, it stands to reason that the number of folks opting to give Apple Music a spin will increase quite dramatically in the weeks ahead.
As for the 15 million figure, the Post writes that the number is “said to be a home run for Apple Music execs, whose projected number” of subscribers is about on par with how things have panned out. The report further adds that Apple executives were aware that the Apple Music ramp up might get off to a slow start.
As a final point, both Pandora and Spotify have said that they haven’t noticed any discernible impact to their business from Apple Music. It’ll be interesting to see if and how that changes in the months ahead.
