Apple Music Up To 13 Million Subscribers

It looks like all the naysayers were wrong. Apple reported on its recent earnings call that its Apple Music streaming service was now up to 13 million paid subscribers and still growing.

Much of that growth has come recently in fact, as it was reported that 2 million subscribers signed up since February alone.

The present growth looks to be at around 1 million a month, which means that the tech giant should be battling Spotify for the top space in the streaming industry by the end of year.

Spotify claims to have 20 million current subscribers, but many are on a "student discount" tier at half the $9.99 monthly price.

One advantage that Apple Music has over Spotify is that it's available in 58 more countries than Spotify, including Russia, China and Japan. All in all, the service is available in a total of 113 countries, leaving Spotify to play catch-up.

One reason for AM's growth spurt has been albums from Drake, Coldplay, The 1975 and Gwen Stefani, where were releases to AM for a period before Spotify. Having an advert with Taylor Swift was also a big help.

Despite the recent hype around Tidal, it's Apple Music that seems to be making the most headway.

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Apple Music Now In Far More Countries Than Spotify

Apple has done a great job making Apple Music available throughout the world. As a matter of fact, Music Business Worldwide notes that the service is now in 59 more countries than Spotify.

While we haven't received any info lately as to the number of subscribers that's translated into (the last figure was 10 million after 6 months, half that of Spotify), it does give Apple Music a huge leg up over the the competition. It's true that many of the countries have small populations, but it all ads up when the number is as large as it is.

Here's the list of countries where Apple Music has a presence, but Spotify does not.

1. Anguilla
2. Antigua
3. Armenia
4. Azerbaijan
5. Bahrain
6. Barbados
7. Belarus
8. Belize
9. Botswana
10. British Virgin Islands
11. Cambodia
12. Cape Verde
13. Cayman Islands
14. China
15. Dominica
16. Egypt
17. Fiji
18. Gambia
19. Ghana
20. Grenada
21. Guinea-Bissau
22. India
23. Indonesia
24. Japan
25. Jordan
26. Kazakhstan
27. Kenya
28. Kyrgyzstan
29. Laos
30. Lebanon
31. Macau
32. Mauritius
33. Micronesia
34. Moldova
35. Mongolia
36. Nepal
37. Niger
38. Nigeria
39. Oman
40. Papa New Guinea
41. Romania
42. Russia
43. St Kitts & Nevis
44. Saudi Arabia
45. Slovenia
46. South Africa
47. Sri Lanka
48. Swaziland
49. Tajikistan
50. Thailand
51. Trinidad & Tobago
52. Turkmenistan
53. Uganda
54. Ukraine
55. UAE
56. Uzbekistan
57. Venezuela
58. Vietnam
59. Zimbabwe

This is good news if you're an artist, since Apple Music is more likely to get a paying subscriber than just about any other service, thanks to the fact that they already have credit cards on file.

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Apple To Charge For iTunes Radio

I you like listening to iTunes Radio, it's going to cost you soon. Apple just announced that as of January 28th, the service will become part of Apple Music and will no longer be free.

The upside to this is that it will also become commercial-free, even though it didn't run many commercials in its free form at only 1 per 30 minutes or so.

This makes sense for Apple for a couple of reasons. First, it consolidates almost all of its programming under one a single Apple Music banner. Secondly, since the platform is beginning to gain some traction with paid subscribers, why give it away for free if people are willing to pay?

Of course this might have been the plan all along, with a merge of the free and paid services 6 months or so after Apple Music's launch (iTunes Radio has been around for a couple of years).

And artists, bands, songwriters, labels and publishers will rejoice as another free service bits the dust.

All that being said, Beats 1, it's ambitious world-wide radio station, will still remain free of charge.

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Spotify Launches A New Backstory Feature

Spotify has teamed up with a company called Genius in an effort to try to take using the platform to the next level.

G enius provides annotated song lyrics, backstory and commentary that pops up as you stream a track via special "Behind The Lyrics" playlists.

The commentary comes from the artists and is not crowd-sourced or user generated. This allows artists to stay more connected with their audience without having the work required of a social platform.

The feature is just being rolled out, with the "Behind The Lyrics (Hip Hop)" as the first playlist.

What's especially interesting is that the feature will be available to both free and premium users, which seems to show that Spotify is a bit insecure with its current top position in the streaming world.

With Apple Music's recent leak about its 10 million paid users and Pandora's pending purchase of Rdio's infrastructure out of bankruptcy, this seems to be a pre-emptive strike to either keep its current users from thinking about another platform, or lure some new users away from the others. Either way, Spotify wants to keep as many eyeballs, free or paid, glued to the service as possible, and the connection with Genius is another step in doing so.

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Apple Music Has 10 Million Subscribers

It looks like Apple Music has beaten the predictions by making it to 10 million subscribers much faster than anticipated. Although no official announcement has been made, the Financial Times has confirmed that Apple has achieved that number, proving that the 90 day trial period for the service appears to have worked.

In contrast, it took Spotify 6 years to get to that number, although that was well before streaming became a common practice.

Speaking of Spotify, rumors are that its paid subscriber numbers have risen to 25 million users as well.

All this spells great news for artists, bands, labels and publishers. Just from those 2 services, there are more than 15 million more paid subscribers than last year at this time, which would be about a 30% increase.

Of course, we've yet to hear about YouTube Red's subscriber numbers yet, the $9.95 per month service that eliminates adverts from your videos. That could also give those subscriber numbers a boost, although the feeling is that if the numbers were actually that good the company would be boasting about it already.

Regardless, it looks like streaming has at least turned a small corner as more and more people are finding value in paying for their music than getting it for free.

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Apple Music App Is Now Bigger Than Spotify

Apple Music may be lagging behind the other streaming networks in subscribers, but it's mobile app appears to be doing just fine. According to Nielsen, the Apple Music app is the 9th largest smartphone app with 54.5 million unique users.

This number may be deceiving, however. Nielsen calls them "active" users, but many users auto-downloaded the app and don't even realize that it's on their device.

The other apps on the list are pretty much as expected, with Facebook, YouTube, and various Google apps (Search, Play, Maps, Gmail) all higher than Apple Music.

That said, Apple Music is ahead of both Spotify and Pandora, both with far more subscribers.

So apps don't equal users, and as we all know, having an app on your phone or tablet doesn't necessarily mean that you're using it frequently or at all.

How many apps do you have that you don't use? Are you an Apple Music subscriber?

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The Beatles Finally Coming To Streaming

All signs are pointing to one of the last major remaining holdouts, The Beatles, finally coming to a streaming network near you. Billboard, MBW, and Hits Daily Double all report that the Fab 4 will finally be available on either Apple Music or Spotify (or both) on Christmas Eve.

There's also some speculation that The Beatles music might be the first available only on Spotify's Premium tier. Last month CEO and founder Daniel Eck seemed to indicate that the company was softening its stance on making certain superstar artists available only on the paid tier and not on the free one.

This seems like a good strategy that may not only get more people to upgrade their accounts (which pay much higher royalties to artists, publishers and labels), but to appease the music industry as well.

The music business has long been railing against giving away music for free, although money is still generated via advertising, just at a lower rate.

The Beatles haven't been absent from streaming altogether though. They've been on Pandora for some time because of a more encompassing license for the non-interactive format.

Just as a point of reference, the band has sold 178 million albums in the US to date, according to the , and their music has been available on iTunes since 2008.

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Spotify Still Leads In Paid Streaming Customers

It looks like Spotify is still in the lead in terms of paying customers, if this chart from Statista is any indication.

The chart shows that Spotify has a handy lead over Apple Music at the moment, although it's yet to be seen just how many people buy into the YouTube's new Red service, which could change the balance of power here.

A couple things to keep in mind when looking at this chart.

1. There are only a bit more than 40 million paying customers for streaming at the moment, so there's a lot of room for growth.

2. The chart only looks at Western services, and doesn't include any from Asia, where people have been used to paying for music for some time.

You will find more statistics at Statista

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Apple Music Now Available For Android, But Will Anyone Care?

Apple is finally letting the other half of the world in on Apple Music. A few days ago the company announced that the streaming service is now available to Android smartphone users. This now puts the service within reach of about 52 percent of the market  (that's about 1.2 billion users, according to Google) that couldn’t previously experience the streaming music app when it was relegated only to the iOS platform. The real question is, how many of those Android users are really interested in trying Apple Music?

Actually Apple Music Android can still be considered in beta, with two of its features, the family membership plan and Apple Connect videos, currently not available. Other than that, the app is same as what’s found in the iOS version. It’s currently available in over 100 countries, except for China, where the largest group of Android users happen to live.

A Look Inside The Numbers
On the surface, this looks to be a good move for increasing user numbers for the streaming service. Apple Music currently has 6.5 million paying subscribers a little more than 4 months after its launch. That’s good enough for second place behind Spotify’s 20 million paying customers, and that’s with being available to less than half of the available audience.

That said, the 6.5 million number may be deceiving, since many of those may have forgotten to turn off their subscriptions at the end of the three month trial period. This means that we won’t know the true number of iOS subscribers for some time yet.

The user number still may not get a huge bounce even with the release of the Android version though, since the new version won’t have the marketing momentum of the original launch. This may result in far fewer opt-ins to the 90 day trial period than might have otherwise been possible with a day and date launch on both platforms. Read more on Forbes.

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Facebook Launches Music Stories Post Format

Facebook has launched a new feature that helps users share and discover new music called "Music Stories."

Music Stories is a new post format that allows people to listen to a 30 second preview of a shared song. The preview is streamed from either Apple Music or Spotify, and can be either purchased from or saved to the streaming service.

The previews are available directly from Facebook, but if you want to hear more you can click through to the streaming service.

To use the feature, just copy the link to the song or album, then post it to your status update box. This creates a preview that others can interact with. An animated spinning record with a pause button shows as the track is played.

This is a great way for artists and bands to get their music in front of their Facebook fans, and is a tool that can be especially valuable on an artist's profile page.

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Which Gets The Most Google Searches: Apple Music Or Spotify?

One way to measure the popularity of just about anything these days is the number of Google searches the topic has.

Music Business Worldwide looked at the number of searches for Spotify and Apple Music and found that Spotify beats Apple Music handily.

Except for a sharp spike around the time it was launched, Spotify (the blue line on the chart) has far more searches on a continuing basis than Apple Music (the red line).

That said, iTunes (the yellow line) beats them both, showing that the service still has plenty of life left.

Keep in mind that Apple Music is only 4 months old, and rumor has it that Apple is gearing up for a massive holiday ad blitz, which should raise the service's visibility significantly.

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People Still Not Willing To Pay For Music Subscriptions

Despite all the hype over the entry of Apple Music into the streaming music arena, people are still hesitant to spend money not only on Apple Music, but any streaming service. That’s the conclusion of the latest edition of Nielsen’s annual Music 360 report.

While every day there are new articles regarding the growth of streaming music, it turns out that good old fashioned radio not only refuses to die but is actually growing in importance in regards to consumers discovering new music. Music 360 found that 61% of people say they discover music that way, which is up from 57% in 2014. 

On the other hand, only 27% of consumers said they discovered new music via a music streaming service (and that includes YouTube).

This shows that the much talked about migration to subscription music isn’t the exactly the flood that was expected by now.

One of the major reasons for the slow start is price, an opinion that industry analysts have long held and was born out again in Music 360. According to the study, the top three reasons that consumers gave for not subscribing was that services are too expensive (46%), they can stream music for free elsewhere (42%), and they didn’t think they’d use a service enough to justify the spend (38%).

Although the current $9.99 per month seems like an ideal number in terms of the music industry’s wants and needs, that figure doesn’t seem to correspond to what consumers have in mind.

The general feeling among industry analysts is that $3.99 to $4.99 is a much better ballpark for a monthly price. It’s an easier psychological barrier to breach, and addresses two of the three objections sited in the report. You might feel that your 10 bucks a month is being spent unwisely if you only listen for a few hours during that time period, but it doesn’t hurt nearly as much at half that price. 

The chances of getting just about any music licensing body to sign off on a $4.99 per month price seems to be somewhere between slim and none at the moment though. Even the mighty Apple couldn’t negotiate a reported $7.99 per month price, which signals that it’s going to take some time before a continued low adoption rate causes a re-think of that position. Read more on Forbes.

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Artists Not Buying In To Apple Connect

3 Artists on Apple Music Connect

Connect is a social feature of Apple Music that gives artists another place to engage with their fans. The problem is that few are doing so.

Music Alley took a close look at Connect and came up with a number of interesting facts. For instance:

• Artists that do post only post weekly, if that.

• Many posts are just recycled Twitter, Instagram or Facebook posts.

• Social maven Taylor Swift (who's seemingly everywhere) doesn't even have a Connect presence yet.

Here's a list of the top 20 Facebook music artists and their presence on Connect. The number of times they've posted is in parenthesis.

Shakira (2)

Eminem (6)

Rihanna (not on Connect)

Michael Jackson (not on Connect)

Bob Marley (1)

Justin Bieber (6)

Taylor Swift (not on Connect)

Katy Perry (not on Connect)

Beyoncé (not on Connect)

Linkin Park (10)

Lady Gaga (11)

Adele (not on Connect)

Pitbull (22)

Bruno Mars (not on Connect)

Selena Gomez (6)

David Guetta (12)

Avril Lavigne (3)

Akon (not on Connect)

Lil Wayne (not on Connect)

Enrique Iglesias (9)

Apple doesn't do social well and it looks like Connect is headed the way of Ping (if you remember that). One problem is that artists and their social media managers have their hands full with too many options already. They don't need another one.

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Why Ian Roger’s Departure From Apple Music Puts It In A Bad Place

It’s been reported today that Apple Music executive Ian Rogers has left the company to pursue other interests in an “unrelated industry.” That bodes ill for Apple as Rogers was the operational brains behind both Beats Music and its transition to Apple Music.

Rogers has been a long-time digital music insider, having run Beats Music, Topspin (a direct to consumer marketplace for artists and bands) and Yahoo Music. He’s also one of the smartest and level-headed guys in an industry with a dearth of those attributes.

It’s been long speculated that Rogers was a key ingredient in Apple’s acquisition of Beats. Jimmy Iovine may be a vaunted music exec, but he’s been compared to a New York street hustler by many that have done business with him through the years. Dr. Dre is great producer, but he’s seen as a marketing foil for Iovine. Together they were able to turn some cheap Chinese headphones into gold thanks to a licensing deal with Monster Cable, then flip it for a huge profit to Apple.

Rogers was the guy behind the scenes that quietly created the Beats Music service, which was always going to be limited because of the Beats brand and its tie-in with the headphones. He had his finger on the market and the down-in-the-trenches everyday music consumer much more so than Iovine or Dre ever did, and that’s one of the reasons why Apple bought the company. He was just the kind of guy they needed to run the next iteration of iTunes.

I had the pleasure of hearing Rogers speak many times and even interviewed him for a previous edition of my book Music 4.0: A Survival Guide For Making Music In The Internet Age. I always came away much more enlightened than before, both in local and global views of the music market. Ian knew his customers very well, the tools they were using, and the music they were listening to. Read more on Forbes. 

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Most Played Artists On Beats 1 During Its First Month

There's been some grumbling about the music being played on Apple Music's vaunted Beats 1 global radio station after the first month. For one thing, it appears that the music is repeated in 12 hour blocks so it's not truly a 24 hour station.

Secondly, it's hardly global in that almost all of the songs played are from English speaking countries. Finally, the tastes of the DJs seem to lean heavily towards hip-hop and alternative.

Here's a list of the top Beats 1 artists and how many times they were played in the first month of the station.

You can find a lot more interesting data about the Beats 1 playlist in the Quartz article.

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Apple Music Up To 11 Million Users

The initial figures are in and after about a month, the number of Apple Music subscribers is up to 11 million, according to Apple.

While this may seem like a prodigious start to the service, that figure may be moot since all users are still within the 90 day trial period. The number that actually sign up for service after the trial ends will determine its success.

That said, industry insiders predict that the service will end up with around 20 million paying customers by the end of the year by virtue of the fact that iTunes already has 850 million accounts, complete with credit cards, and many of these are fans that automatically sign on to the latest offerings from the company.

Another reason is that Apple makes the service difficult to miss, as it's registration is front and center upon an operating system update if you've not already subscribed.

Apple Music's $15 a month Family Plan may be its greatest feature however, and while no official figures have been given, it's been reported that around 2 million have already signed up. The Family Plan provides separate accounts for up to 6 family members under the same $15 per month fee.

All that being said, Spotify continues to roll along with 75 million users, 20 million of which subscribe to the $9.95 per month premium tier.

Can Apple Music get people to change from Spotify or any of the other services? Industry pundits say that's difficult, as once a user has made a choice of services they're not likely to try another. Apple Music offers features the like Beats 1 global radio station that other services don't have though, so the logic of the past doesn't necessarily apply going forward.

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Have Apple And Spotify Already Lost The Chinese Music Market?

Most Western music streaming companies look at China as sort of a golden goose. It’s not laying any eggs at the moment, but you think that one might come at any time. That goose may be stolen even before it makes its first deposit though, as the Chinese mega-company Alibaba recently announced that it will combine two of its music properties, Tiantian and Xiami, into a new as-of-yet unnamed music service.

The Chinese music market is potentially huge, with an estimated 471 million people currently listening to music online already. That said, the revenue is relatively minuscule at only $91 million last year compared to $3.5 billion in the U.S, according to the IFPI.

The reason is that Chinese consumers are used to getting their music for free, thanks to over a hundred pirate sites in the territory. Yet in a country of nearly 1.4 billion people, it wouldn’t take a significant portion to really make a difference in the music industry’s bottom line if they indeed did pay for their music.

Western companies know that, of course, and eye China as the final frontier of music distribution. That’s easier said than done though.

For instance, Spotify is available in over 50 countries, but it’s still not officially available on the Chinese mainland (it is in Hong Kong). Some premium tier users who have subscribed to the service elsewhere say that coverage around the country is spotty at best, with speculation that it may be due to government censorship. Even the recently launched Apple Music is available just about everywhere in the world except China at the moment. 

Although you can almost hear the corporate wheels turning in board rooms of streaming countries everywhere in the West, China remains a tough market to crack, and with Alibaba entering the picture, it just got tougher. Read more on Forbes.

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Will YouTube’s Music Key Streaming Service Be A Hit Or A Miss?

Now that the Apple Music launch has come and gone the next shoe to drop in the ongoing music streaming wars may be the one swinging the heaviest hammer. That’s Google’s YouTube Music Key, which has been hinting at a launch for months now with very little solid information about its final form forthcoming.

Until last week when YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki spoke about it at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech event, the silence around Music Key had been so deafening that you get the feeling that Google (which owns YouTube) was waiting to see what would happen with Apple Music before it committed itself to a launch. If ever there was a strategic pause, we’ve just seen it, as the company could only be sure of the hand that Apple was playing by watching Apple Music’s actual entry into the market.

Now that all of Apple Music’s features are out in the open, YouTube is free to tweak its service to either take a different approach from the rest of the competition or attempt to do some of the same things.

Music Key has been in a limited beta since late last year at an introductory price of $8 per month, but we’ve already been told that the final price will be more in line with the rest of the streaming industry at $9.99. That’s not Google’s choice (nor was it Apple’s) even as the general feeling in the tech industry is that $5 per month is actually the ideal price point.

Five bucks won’t fly with the major labels though, and the streaming services can’t distribute something that they don’t own the rights to, so Google, like Apple, will be forced to toe the line and charge $10 per month when Music Key is finally introduced. The place where it can make a difference in price however is with a “family plan” that extends additional subscriptions to family members. Read more on Forbes.

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A Look At The Crowded Streaming Marketplace

Apple Music launch this week moves it into an already crowded streaming marketplace. This Edison Research survey (the chart was put together by Statista) shows that Pandora has a commanding lead in the US over all other streaming services.

It's important to remember that Pandora isn't available in most of the rest of the world, so Spotify basically has matched its user numbers if you look at it globally.

Apple Music hopes to be at the top of the food chain within a year though, and actually has a shot at it despite the tepid launch thanks to its hardware user base and the 850 million credit cards currently on file.

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Apple Music’s Beats 1 Radio Pros And Cons

Now that Apple’s new streaming music service Apple Music has officially launched, perhaps the biggest question remaining is how much the Beats 1 global radio station will add to it. If you haven’t checked it out yet (and you probably haven’t since it just live yesterday), Beats 1 operates 24/7 from Los Angeles, New York and London and is said to eschew the commonly used radio consultant data used by just about every terrestrial radio station these days in favor of the tastes of the DJs playing the music.

So what does that mean exactly? If we look at the big picture for the success of the station there are a number of possible pros and cons.

Beats 1 Pros

• Both terrestrial and online playlists are so tightly controlled today that you basically hear the same songs anywhere you go. Beats 1 can break this logjam with some fresh new music that can make listening to radio an adventure again as it was before consultants ruled.

• Beats 1 is free and available to everyone. You don’t have to be an Apple Music “member” to access the station, which is great for both exposure and an introduction to potential new customers for the service.

• It differentiates Music from the rest of the streaming pack. At least at the moment, there is no other streaming service that offers a similar feature.

Beats 1 Cons

• The big one is actually more of question as it’s the great unknown - Do people really care about curated content and music discovery from a non-interactive stream? And, do they care enough about it to make a difference? Read more on Forbes.

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