The end of October marks exactly 4 months since Apple started rolling out its music streaming service, Apple Music. Since then, Apple Music has been on a free 3 month trial for its early adopters. The trial period for most early adopters has elapsed over the last month and users either transitioned to paying for access to the over 30 million song catalogue or ditched the service altogether.
According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, the company has managed to sign up about 15 million users since Apple Music’s debut and 6.5 million of those are already paying for the service with the rest still on their trial subscription. That number is expected to rise when the service is finally made available to users of the biggest mobile platform in the world, Android, before the year ends.
Apple Music is already in a private beta with a few select users getting access to test the service before it becomes available on Google’s platform. Beta testing platform Betabound sent out an invite to its users last month to apply to test drive Apple Music for Android. It looks like the process went through smoothly and the successful applicants are already testing the service. At least that’s the message we are getting from German site MobileGeek which got some exclusive screenshots of Apple Music for Android in action.
We expect Apple Music for Android to go into public beta some time soon before eventually becoming available to all users by the time 2015 wraps up.
The key advantage Apple Music has over competitors like Spotify and others is availability and pricing. Google has recently started offering a family subscription option similar to Apple Music’s but like Spotify, Google Play Music All Access is still limited to a handful of countries while Apple Music is already live in over 100 countries and costs that vary depending with the market. The service just became available in China, Apple’s largest smartphone market. Currently, Android users can only access Apple Music through iTunes on desktop machines.
