Apple Music Tops 50M Users, #1 Streamer US, Canada, Japan

Apple Music now has "'well over 50 million listeners," Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed in an earnings call yesterday, which he says makes it the top paid music streaming service in both North America and Japan. Apple Music revenue is up 50%, so far this year.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook, from Q3 2018 earnings call transcript (bold added): 

"In terms of Apple Music, we're well over 50 million listeners now when you add our paid subscribers and the folks in the trial, and so we're moving along at a very, very good rate. It appears to us or in what we've been told is that we took the leadership position in North America during the quarter and we have the leadership position in Japan, and so in some of the markets that we've been in for a long period of time.

"We're doing quite well, but really, the key thing in music is not the competition between companies that are providing music. It's the real challenge is to grow the market, because if you add everyone up that's providing subscription music today or streaming music, it's, outside of China, it's less than 200 million probably around the world. And so it does seem to me there's an extraordinary opportunity in that business to grow the market well and I think if we put our emphasis there, which we're doing, that will be a beneficiary of that as other people will as well. But I like where we are.

Our revenues on Apple Music grew over 50% as I'd mentioned earlier during the quarter, and so some really, really strong results."