APPLE Music already has a total of 15 million subscribers, of which about 40 percent — 6.5 million — are paying for the service. Another 8.5 million users are on a three-month free trial.

The figures were announced by Apple CEO Tim Cook at the Wall Street Journal’s WSDJLive 2015 conference. Cook told the conference that “people love the human curation” of the streaming service, which launched on the 30 June, although the feature is hardly unique to Apple Music.

Apple’s subscriber numbers are impressive for a service in just its fourth month of operation. They also indicate that AppleMusic has retained around 60 percent of its original 11 million free subscribers.

By comparison, market leader Spotify’s current figures indicate that it has over 20 million paid subscribers and more than 75 million total users of its service. However, sources speaking to Music Business Worldwide claimed Spotify now has around 100 million total users and as many as 26 million paying subscribers.

Apple might not be about to beat Spotify at its own game quite yet, but it’s already overtaken Deezer’s six million total subscribers and Rhapsody/Napster’s three million paid users.

Apple Music’s close integration with the rest of the Apple ecosystem is something its rivals will be hard pressed to match, but Swedish rival Spotify continues to have the widest third-party support for its service. Apple has yet to release its Music app for Android.

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