In an interview to Bloomberg TV on Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that the company’s music streaming service now has more than 50 million subscribers in all, including those that are trying out the service as part of its three-month free trial period. The company last month announced that it had 40 million paid Apple Music subscribers globally, after reporting 38 million customers at the end of February.
It is worth noting here that even though Apple Music has been growing a fast clip in recent months, it still has a long way to go to catch up with the global leader, Spotify, which has around 160 million subscribers globally, including 75 million who pay at least $9.99 per month for an ad-free experience and has added more premium-like options for free .
On its part, Apple Music is officially available in around 115 countries, and is believed to have around 8 million users who are trialing the service. It is also said to be growing faster than Spotify with a monthly growth-rate of 5 percent as compared to just 2 percent for the Swedish company.
Meanwhile, Cook also told Bloomberg that the company remains ‘very interested’ in the content business, but refused to divulge any real details on the subject just yet. According to him, “We are very interested in the content business. We will be playing in a way that is consistent with our brand. We’re not ready to give any details on it yet. But it’s clearly an area of interest”.
In a freewheeling interview that touched upon a variety of topics, Cook also expressed his disagreement with President Trump’s anti-China stance, saying that creating tariff barriers is not the right approach to fix trade-deficit issue. The company produces most of its products in China, and counts the country among its biggest markets after the US.
