Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed during quarterly earnings call on Tuesday that Apple Music now has 13 million subscribers. The music streaming service has added 2 million subscribers since February this year.
During the 10 months of its existence Apple Music has grown remarkably to outmatch the growth rate of Spotify, which is currently the industry-leading music streaming service. It is worth noting that currently Spotify, which has been around for about eight years, has an estimated 30 million paying subscribers, an increase of 10 million since June 2015, Fortune reported.
While Spotify took six years to reach the 10 million subscriber mark, Apple Music achieved the feat in just six months. Considering the 1 billion active iOS devices that are currently in use, several people in the music industry expect Apple Music to grow further and more rapidly.
According to music industry watchers, a few things that worked in favor of Apple Music include some exclusive albums coupled with other content from artists like Drake, The 1975 and Future as well as various celebrity endorsements. Apple Music is installed by default on over 1 billion Apple mobile devices worldwide, besides being integrated with iTunes, Apple Insider reported.
Apple Music has its origin in the Beats Music streaming service, which the Cupertino tech titan acquired along with its parent company for $3 billion in 2014. Eventually, Apple shut down Beats' service and developed the music streaming service as Apple Music.
As the hardware sales, especially the iPhone, of Apple started declining, Cook focused on the tech company's services business, including Apple Music, iTunes, the different App Stores, licensing, iCloud, service parts, and Apple Pay. As a result of this special endeavor, the purchase value of this sector hit a record $9.9 billion in the quarter that ended last March.
Speaking at the earnings call, Cook said the sector witnessed a 37 percent year-over-year growth. Expressing his happiness at the continuous strong revenue growth from the services business, Apple CEO attributed the success to the potency of the Apple ecosystem and their growing base of more than 1 billion active iOS devices.
Watch the video on "Apple Music - Worldwide" below: