Apple Music has reached 10 million paying subscribers in just its first six months, a milestone that took rival music streaming service Spotify almost six years to accomplish.
Apple itself has not yet announced its accomplishment of the goal, as it was sources who are close to Apple revealed the information to Financial Times.
To place Apple's accomplishment in perspective, Spotify was not able to reach the mark of 10 million paying subscribers until May 2014 after launching in 2006. However, it should be noted that Spotify and its peers in the music streaming industry helped in paving the way for newer services, such as Apple Music, to gain higher user counts in shorter amounts of time.
In 2008, the idea of having to pay a monthly fee to subscribe to a music streaming service did not have such mass appeal. It was not until early 2009 when the service saw its one millionth registered user, and not until March 2011 when Spotify saw its one millionth paying subscriber.
While Apple Music's growth to 10 million paying users happened in a different time period, the accomplishment should still be considered a significant one, with the fledgling music streaming service already having half as many paying users as that of Spotify.
Apple Music only had 6.5 million paying subscribers by the end of October, before Apple finally launched it to Android users in November. Upon launch, Apple Music for Android did not have the Music Videos feature, nor an option for a family membership. Apple Music for Android users also needed to make an Apple ID, but were not able to purchase songs.
Aside from these limitations, Apple Music for Android functioned nearly the same way as for Apple's devices. The launch of the music streaming service to rival Google's mobile operating system could be attributed for the push of the number of paying Apple Music subscribers to 10 million.
When website Tech Insider asked Spotify to comment on the report that Apple Music has achieved 10 million paying subscribers, Spotify did not talk directly about its rival. Instead, Jonathan Prince, the company's head of communications, said that the second half of 2015 saw the fastest subscriber growth for Spotify ever, without revealing its subscriber numbers.
Spotify last revealed how many paying subscribers it had in June 2014, when it said that it has 20 million paying users. If the growth of Spotify was the fastest in the second half of last year, then that would mean it added more than 5 million subscribers. An estimate pegs the number of paying subscribers for Spotify at 25 to 30 million by the end of last year.
This widens the lead that Spotify has over Apple Music, but Apple has the advantage as Apple Music ships as the default music streaming app for all iPhones being sold, which could be another factor stimulating its subscriber growth.
