NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess) — Apple boss Tim Cook touted the company’s streaming music subscriber totals in an interview with Bloomberg Television, telling the broadcaster that Apple now has more than 50 million users on either paid subscriptions or free trials.
That’s a marked improvement over last month when Apple reported that they’d passed 40 million paid subscriptions with 8 million users sampling the service via free trials. However, the Cook’s choice of language appears to be at least partially obfuscating by conflating free subscribers and paying subscribers in the same total. Apple’s user numbers also do not address how many monthly active users the service has – 8 million free trials that go unused are likely to convert to paying accounts after the three months are up.
However, Apple is still lagging behind its rival Spotify Technology SA, which claimed earlier this month that it had more than 75 million paying subscribers.
In the Bloomberg TV interview, Cook also teased Apple’s plan to focus on driving subscription-based service growth by developing other digital content, including streamin video and original TV shows and movies.
“We are very interested in the content business. We will be playing in a way that is consistent with our brand,” Cook told Bloomberg. “We’re not ready to give any details on it yet. But it’s clearly an area of interest.”
