After Spotify reportedly took the world by storm acquiring 100 million premium subscribers as on Q1, 2019, Apple Music has something to offer as well. According to Eddy Cue who is an SVP in charge of services at Apple, Apple Music has surpassed the figure of 60 million premium subscribers just a week after Spotify revealed its big milestone.
Eddy was present at an Apple Store in France where he spoke to the folks at Numerama where he listed a few things that have happened on Apple Music after it was introduced four years ago as a first-party app on Apple devices to compete against bigwigs such as Gaana, JioSaavn, Spotify, and others across the globe.
Historically, Apple Music was able to hit its first milestone in just six months after its release where it managed to attract 10 million premium subscribers. Fast forward to December 2016, the figure doubled and by the end of April 2018, the number almost quadruple hitting a figure of 40 million premium subscribers including both paying customers and those using the premium services under a trial period.
Last year in July, Apple Music shocked everyone by revealing that it has more premium subscribers in the U.S. than Spotify although the Swedish music-streaming service is way beyond in terms of users count i.e. more than 215 million as of now including paid and free ad-supported service.
Apple Music gets preference over other services since it is first-party which means it can throw extrinsic discounts towards the users while other services are required to jack up their pricing due to the distribution fee that Apple charges on a per user on yearly basis. Eddy also added Beats 1, Apple’s first-party radio station, has also reached a figure of tens of millions of listeners during this tenure.
Apple rolled out the first public beta for iOS 13 which captures a feature that showcases lyrics on the screen at real-time. Instead of contracting third-party companies to procure the lyrics which Genius pointed out against Google, Apple is doing its own lyrics which will actually let it off the hook against any copyright claims. The iOS 13 is slated to roll out officially next month or so while we wait for Apple iPhone 11/XI or whatever the company calls it slated to launch in September this year.