Play that Apple Music, boy of unspecified ethnicity!
(Mirror Daily, United States) – Apple is once more in the news, with another record breaking statistic. After claiming their products to break all records regarding holiday sales, the company claimed that Apple Music reached 10 million subscribers in six months.
According to a report from Financial Times, the relatively newly launched Apple Music service has already reached the milestone of 10 million paying customers, in only 6 months of activity. This would mean that the service reached the millstone in half a year, while their rival service Spotify managed to reach it in 6 years.
Of course, skeptics are questioning the truthfulness of the allegation, as it took Spotify 6 years to reach 10 million paying customers, and it’s kind of hard to believe that it took so little for the service to gather so many customers.
Even more suspicious is the fact that Apple CEO Tim Cook claimed in October that at the time, the service had managed to gather 6.5 million paying customers in the 3-4 months after it launched, and now Apple representatives are avoiding answering any questions related to the claim.
Spotify, on the other hand, who has been around since late 2008, and who offers the same services as Apple Music, numbered 20 million paying users in about 8 years of activity, as well as some 75 million free users. They managed to hit the 10 million paying customer mark in the summer of 2014.
Sure, it’s true that the streaming music industry has blown up in the past couple of years, with statistics reporting as much as 145 billion audio streams in 2015, 79% more than in 2014.
And of course, Apple’s service offers more services than just listening to music, like recommendations, a non-stop radio station, as well as the Connect service, which allows artists to communicate with their fans.
However, despite all the features it offers, some are still unsure what to make of Apple’s claim. It’s not necessarily that the figures don’t add up, but it would seem like the company has been employing an over-statement of their profits as a market strategy.
The company has also done that during Christmas, claiming that their devices were the most sold worldwide, and that they broke some records with their sales.
If we are to look at other competitors of the company, the idea that they’re exaggerating their profits as a market ploy only gains more ground.
We might be able to find out whether it’s real or not on the 26th of January, when the company is expected to provide an up to date total customer report for the first quarter of the new fiscal year.
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