Apple Music Officially Passes 60 Million Subscribers
Apple Music officially has more than 60 million subscribers, according to an announcement the company made the last week of June. Senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue, confirmed this milestone with French tech/culture news site Numerama.
Initially, Numerama reported that Apple’s subscription count was paying subscribers. Apple has since cleared up this misunderstanding, saying that the figure includes users on a free trial. Apple proudly added that its Beats 1 digital radio service now has “tens of millions of listeners”.
2019 Music Business Predictions
At the end of 2018, Forbes contributor Bobby Owsinkski shared his 2019 predictions for the music industry. After considering the trends over the past year, he predicted that Apple Music would nearly catch Spotify – so far, his prediction has been correct.
Without a doubt, Spotify is still king when it comes to streaming, boasting 83 million paid subscribers. However, Apple Music was working on closing the gap with a strong 57 million at years end. Owsinkski was confident that this gap would close even more moving into 2019. Thus far, Spotify has reached 100 million premium users, with Apple Music sitting at 60 million.
Where will Apple go from here? Since it’s launch in 2015, the company has experienced steady growth. It reached 10 million subscribers in its first six months and managed to climb another 10 million by December 2016. A little over a year ago, the company had 40 million subscribers. And this upward trend shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.
The big question is: how long will it take for Apple Music to close the gap between the two streaming powerhouses?
Merchant Services for the Music Industry
Evolving technology may change users preferences, but one thing is for sure. There will always be a desire for music. If your company is searching for merchant services that will appeal to users, consider the options an alternative provider like EMerchantBroker has to offer, like continuity subscription merchant account.
This type of account helps continuity/subscription merchants avoid becoming a victim to continuity billing scams, manage and prevent chargebacks and stop fraud. As a respectable high risk processor, EMB is able to offer the most reliable merchant services for subscription-based businesses like yours.
Author Bio: Electronic payments expert Blair Thomas is the co-founder of high risk payment processing company eMerchantBroker. He’s just as passionate about his business as he is with traveling and spending time with his dog Cooper.