SURPRISE! APPLE MUSIC BOASTS 15M USERS—POST

Apple Music has picked up 15m users during its first three months of existence, music industry sources told the New York Post’s Claire Atkinson. That’s substantially more than the 11m figure Apple reported to the labels soon after the June 30 launch of the service.

Around half of those who signed up have not turned off auto-pay, which means they’ll convert from free to paid customers, according to her sources. The initial free three-month trial ends next Wednesday.

If those 7.5 million Apple subscribers stay with the service after the gratis period, the company will have more than a third of Spotify’s 20m paid subscribers.

“If Apple reports between 30m and 50m trialists by year-end, then we can consider it successful,” music industry analyst Mark Mulligan of MIDiA Research told Atkinson. “More than 5m paying subscribers would be a success. Above 7m would be a strong success.”

Mulligan also said that even a 25% conversion rate of free to paid would be positive. He predicts that 35-40% of users might make the first payment (due Oct. 1) and then 20-25% would make a second payment.

In Apple’s favor, the iPhone 6s will come pre-loaded with the Apple Music app, and the iOS 9 update fixed some of the bugs that had plagued the service. More than half of iPhone and iPad users have already downloaded the update, Apple said in a press release.