We still have a few weeks to go before Apple releases its music streaming service on Android, but Apple Music has already accumulated more than 11 million users. This isn’t all that surprising considering how the company offers Apple Music for free for the first three months, so the real test will come once the free trial expires for the first batch of users. Will they move on to another service or stick with Apple Music and pay $9.99/month?
In its first few weeks, Apple Music has managed to snag 11 million users. But can Apple keep them? As part of the launch of Apple’s streaming music subscription service, it offered customers a three-month free trial to sample its wares. That includes access to its catalog of 30 million songs, saving music for offline listening, content recommendations and more. After the free ride comes to a halt, individuals will have to shell out $9.99 a month or $14.99 for a family plan that supports up to six users. There are two ways to look at Apple Music’s current user base. “More than 100 million people bought music from iTunes last year, so only 10 percent of them have converted to a trial,” said Mark Mulligan, analyst at Midia Research. “Apple Music was part of the 8.4 iOS upgrade — Apple has a very high success rate of iOS updates with the majority of its users updating early. So we can assume that the vast majority of consumers that updated to 8.4 did not take up the trial.”
