Apple Music: 6.5m paying subscribers

According to the latest figures, Apple has retained 60% of its users since the three month free trial of Apple Music expired, with over 15m total users including 6.5m paying subscribers and 8.5m who are still in the free trial period.

The figures were announced by Apple CEO Tim Cook at The Wall St Journal Tech conference yesterday as reported by Music Business Worldwide.

Cook said: “I think it’s fabulous, and to have over 15 million on there, and 6.5 million in the paid category, I’m really happy about it. And I think the runway here is really good”.

Digging into the figures with some inevitable comparisons, 6.5m is less than a third of Spotify’s official paying subscriber numbers of 20m, with 75m total Spotify users reported several months ago- five times that of Apple.

Apple’s figures comfortably surpass Deezer’s total user base of 6.3m, half of which are reportedly inactive.

Of course, this also means that 40% of users chose to not renew the service after the trial, with inevitably more apples to fall after people forgot to cancel the auto renewal in the first month of paid subscription.

However, Apple will finish the year as the second largest paid for streaming service, just four months out of the gate.

In related news, Spotify this month posted a £1.2m loss in the UK in 2014, with revenues rising by 21% as reported by Music Week.