Apple Music Surpasses the 30 Million Subscriber Milestone

In a recent interview with Billboard Magazine, veteran record executive Jimmy Iovine, one of the masterminds behind Apple Music as well as Apple’s Beats headphones line, has revealed that Apple’s music streaming service has surpassed the 30 million subscriber milestone, adding 10 million subscribers since December, and 3 million since WWDC back in June.

As compared to Spotify, which has been racking up an average of 20 million subscribers each year for the past two years, Apple Music has managed to attract an average of 15 million subscribers per year. However, Iovine realizes that it will be tough for Apple to catch up with Spotify at this rate.

“Just because we’re adding millions of subscribers and the old catalog numbers are going up, that’s not the trick. That’s just not going to hold,” he told Billboard.

“I believe we’re in the right place, we have the right people and the right attitude to not settle for what exists right now.”

The 64-year-old Iovine, whose ­expansive career was chronicled in HBO’s recent four-part documentary series The Defiant Ones, is an unlikely bear in a bull market — he says the Goldman Sachs report “just doesn’t work for me.” The ­forecast, he claims, fails to properly account for the easy money that older ­catalog music currently pulls in, not to ­mention the ­competition from free ­platforms like YouTube, a problem that video ­subscription service Netflix doesn’t face.

Apple is now attempting to use the service to build closer relationships between artists and their fans using content like exclusive documentaries and interviews.