Speaking at last night’s inaugural Code Conference, Apple SVP of Internet services Eddy Cue and Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine shared some numbers on their respective music services following yesterday’s major acquisition.
Iovine talked Beats Music, and Cue of course talked iTunes, which have each hit major milestones within the last week. Beats has surpassed the quarter million subscriber mark, and iTunes hit 35 billion digital downloads sold…
From The Verge’s live blog of the event:
Cue: the fact of music sales going away “is way overrated. We just crossed 35 billion songs sold this week.” But: “The rate has leveled off, it’s true.”
Cue says iTunes Radio has 40 million listeners around the world, and subscriptions “are the third thing that we bring to the table.”
Cue says Apple has been thinking about subscriptions for a long time.
Additionally, Iovine adds that Beats Music now has 250,000 subscribers (which again is US-only). Earlier reports pegged the subscriber base around 110,000, but even at a quarter million, it still pales in comparison to the likes of Spotify.
Iovine: We have 250,000 subscribers after three months.
“We’re getting started. We’ve got 5 million people (who) visited.” Iovine says they made a mistake by not offering in-app purchases from the start.
So what are they going to do together? “We’ve got a lot of dreams for the subscription service.” Iovine notes that this is the future of the music business, and “we need to put steroids into this thing.” Apple understands that. And Cue notes that Apple has 800 million active credit cards on file.
It’ll certainly be interesting to see what Apple does with the Beats Music service going forward. It’s already extended the free trial period, and dropped the subscription price, and it’s going to continue to operate Android and Windows Phone clients.