Apple Music has 60 million paid subscribers, according to iTunes chief Eddy Cue. Cue confirmed the new subscriber number with French site Numerama earlier today, and Music Business Worldwide shared details on the report.
Cue said that he's happy with Apple Music's subscriber count, and that the company is continually working on perfecting the platform across various devices. He also said that Beats 1, Apple's radio station, has "tens of millions of listeners."
Cue declined to divulge how many subscribers are outside of the Apple ecosystem. "I know the number, but I can't tell you," said Cue. He did, however, tell Numerama that Apple Music is the number one service used by people in the Apple ecosystem.
On the topic of the elimination of iTunes in favor of standalone TV, Music, and Podcast apps, Cue said that he's fond of iTunes, but "Apple Music is absolutely the best in all respects. We have something better now and it's useless to look back."
Apple Music's new 60 million subscriber milestone comes following a November report suggesting the service was up to 56 million subscribers. 60 million paid subscribers still puts Apple Music below Spotify, which had 100 million premium (aka paid) subscribers worldwide as of April.
Despite the difference in paid subscriber counts, Apple Music in early 2019 surpassed Spotify's paid subscriber total in the United States. Apple Music has somewhere around 28 million U.S. subscribers, compared to Spotify's 26 million.
Top Rated Comments
$600M per month in recurring revenue in the music streaming business and Beats’ hardware division is worth $1B on its own.
Edited for correction
I now prefer the interface over Spotify. It feels more Apple-like to move about (for obvious reasons), and the Watch integration is much better. Spotify still has much better recommendation playlists and algorithms, but Apple Music is getting there.