Apple Music is reportedly off to a strong start, if newly-surfaced figures turn out to be accurate.
The music streaming market is on the rise, competition is already fierce, and the recently-launched Apple Music service is shaping up as a heavy player. The new service stirred lots of interest upon its debut, but so far it remained unclear just how successful it is.
Music site Hits Daily Double, however, now claims that Apple Music raked in more than 10 million subscribers in its first month on the market. The publication claims the information comes from "inside sources at some of the major labels."
Apple doesn't share its figures publicly, but it reportedly shared the good news with the music labels. The report further notes that the whopping success of Apple Music in its first four weeks on the market took even the music labels by surprise.
Moreover, the publication points out that the streaming figures for some songs are along the same lines with those of Spotify, which has a massive user base of roughly 75 million subscribers. Those tracks reportedly include some "cutting-edge hip-hop titles."
If Apple Music keeps it up and gains more subscribers, it could have a chance to dethrone Spotify. On the other hand, although 10 million subscribers in the first month is an important milestone, the figure may no longer seem so impressive considering that Apple Music made its debut as a free service along with iOS 8.4.
This means that iPhone owners across the world, in 100 countries, got a taste of the new service as soon as they shifted to the latest iOS 8.4 and opened the Music app. Apple Music also suffered some outages and issues that marred the experience for early adopters, which makes one wonder whether adoption figures would now be even more impressive if everything went smoothly.
Either way, the music site also notes that some music labels are encouraging Apple to publish the figures. The labels reportedly believe this could lure more customers into the trial and further boost adoption rates for Apple Music.
The service is still fresh on the market, however, and the true challenge will be turning Apple Music trial users into paid subscribers.
