Apple lost millions of Music users when trial ended; 6.5M remain
Apple lost millions of Music users when trial ended; 6.5M
remain
By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY 10:27 a.m. EDT October 20,
2015
LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. — Apple Music has convinced 6.5
million users to pay for the service, Apple CEO Tim Cook said late Monday.
Those paying subscribers are just a slice of the users
who agreed to try out the service on a trial base starting June 30, suggesting
millions weren't sold by the time the first three-month trial ended in late
September.
But it's continued to get more of the curious to test the
service. It now has 15 million total users of the service, said Cook at the
Wall Street Journal’s WSJ.D Live. Besides paying listeners, the rest of that
total are those using the free trial. Rival Spotify, in business since 2008,
has 20 million paying subscribers.
Cook said he's happy with the results. "It's going
well."
Apple Music launched in June as a $9.99 monthly service
offering unlimited access to the world's music, competing with the likes of
Spotify and Rdio. A month after launch, in early August, Apple said it had
locked in 11 million trial members.
Daniel Ives, an analyst with FBR & Co., said the 6.5
million paid subscribers is better than he had expected and shows that Apple
Music is "off to a solid start.
"Now the goal is for Apple to further spread the
gospel to/convert more trial customers over the next three to six months while
adding unique content and services."
Richard Windsor, an analyst at Edison Investment Research
said 6.5 million paying subscribers is worth annual revenues of $780 million
for Apple.
"However, how many users have forgotten to cancel
the service and will do so after the first month when they receive the bill is
unclear. Either way, this is pretty good performance and implies that around
60% of users who trial the service go on to pay for it."
Meanwhile, Apple has been mum about its plans to design
an electric, self-driving car, despite many press reports joining Apple with
companies like Tesla, Google and others who are exploring this new frontier.
At the session, Cook declined to talk about its plans,
but for the first time, spoke at length about changes the automobile industry.
"When I look at the automobile, I see that software
becomes an incredibly important component of the car," he said. "In
the future, you see autonomous driving becoming important in the future. So a
lot of the major technologies in the car shift from today's combustion engine
centric kind of focus, and so it would seem like there will be massive change
in that industry."
Turning to current products, Cook announced that
pre-sales for the revamped Apple TV begins Monday, and that the $149 product
will be available the following week.
The set-top box will bring apps to TV viewing, and offer
voice control search via Apple’s Siri personal digital assistant. The current
Apple TV sells for $69.
Cook said the new Apple TV is a platform that could
change the way people find the shows they want to watch.
"Linear TV is going," he said. "The
channel watching experience is going away."
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