[oisino]

The fact Apple Music has 1/3 of the paying customers that Spotify has already shows you the power of distribution. The ability for them to build it into their on boarding flow for all new iphone purchases gives them an amazing edge especially in upcoming markets like China.

[dchuk]

Apple Music has literally no paying customers yet, as they are all on free trial. I'm sure they will see a considerable churn from current numbers once people start getting charged and canceling.

[donarb]

All of Apple's previously paying Beats customers are in the 3 month free trial. Once that trial ends I'll bet those customers continue paying. I know I will.

[dchuk]

When Apple acquired Beats Music, it was "believed to count just 300,000 paying subscribers."[1] That's about 3% of the current total Apple Music subscribers.

[1] http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/12/apples-beats-music...

[donarb]

Yea, those were the reported numbers up to the end of December. I'll bet that their subscriber numbers started going up after that as users joined following Apple's acquisition, I know I did.

[dchuk]

Why would Apple acquiring them incite an uptick in subscribers?

[noir_lord]

I think you misspelled 'amazing edge' it's correctly spelled 'anti-trust case'

At least in the EU ;).

[ajtaylor]

To be more precise, Apple Music has a bunch of people on the free trial. The more interesting metric will to see how many of those people convert to active, paying accounts after 3 months.

[psbp]

How is that possible? Are people volunteering to pay before the free trial is up?