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[/blockquote]Apple Music has reached 13 million subscribers, and this was announced by the company CEO Tim Cook at an earnings call. By February this year, the music streaming service had only 11 million subscribers and has picked up around 2 million subscribers since then, a somewhat impressive growth.
This has put Apple at per with Swedish streaming service Spotify in terms of grow-rate. It should be noted that Spotify has been around for 8 years whilst Apple only 10-months-old. Even if Apple made an App for the iOS and Android to target markets that has billions of active users, speculators in the music industry expected Apple Music to be further along by now.
At the same earnings call, Apple posted a year-over-year decline in revenue, and for the first time in over a decade, the company’s failed to grow its business. It brought in $50.6 billion in revenue for the second quarter of 2016, and $10.5 billion in profits. That compares with $58 billion in revenue and $13.6 billion in profits during this period last year, a drop of 13 percent for the revenue. It is projecting another revenue decline for next quarter, a 15 percent year-over-year drop.
Apple’s revenue declined around the globe, including in China, which had been the major engine of growth for the company over the last year and a half. It’s not all bad news, the one bright spot in Apple’s earnings was revenue from Services — a category which includes apps, media, and payments .
