Tim Cook lifts the lid on Apple Music’s subscriber numbers

Apple Music currently has 6.5-million paid subscribers, with another 8.5-million using the free three month trial. Those were the key numbers revealed by Apple CEO Tim Cook at the Wall Street Journal’s Live event on Monday.

If accurate, the numbers suggest that the Cupertino-based tech giant hasn’t done a bad job when it comes to retaining subscribers once their initial free trial comes to an end. Not so long ago, it reported having around 11-million people on the free trial. It is worth mentioning however that at least some of those are bound to be people who forgot to turn off the automatic subscription option at the end of the trial period.

While those 6.5-million users are a fair way off from Spotify’s 20-million paid subscribers, it’s worth remembering that the Swedish company has had significantly longer to build up its user base.

Read more: Can Apple Music crack China’s fragmented streaming market?

But unlike Spotify, Apple Music doesn’t have a free ad-supported version. On the one hand that means it misses out on the chance to grab people who might take longer than three months to decide to take the paid option, but on the other it means it has a guaranteed, solid revenue base that it can concentrate on.

At the event, Cook was also asked about the Apple Watch but refused to reveal any solid user numbers:

Apple CEO @tim_cook mum on Apple Watch sales numbers. "We don't want to give information to competitors". #WSJDLive pic.twitter.com/glbyMB6MaB

— Yun-Hee Kim (@yunheekim22) October 20, 2015

He wouldn’t be drawn on a potential Apple Car either, but did say that the company was trying to mirror the iPhone experience in its cars with its CarPlay offering.