Apple reported 10 millions registered users (of its 800 millions iTunes accounts) for its Music service following the first month (June 30 to end of July). We can suppose there were additional 5 millions registrations in August, then 3 millions in September, and 2 millions the first half of September. This could then match with Apple’s announce mid October stating their were 15 millions still opened Music accounts (and 6.5 millions paid accounts among these).
Apple offered an option to disable automatic renewal of Music subscription, then many users diddn’t wait the 3 months trial ending to cancel (or not) their subscription, they just let it stop by itself in case they wouldn’t renew. Did Apple take into account the users that left the automatic renewal on for its 6.5 paid accounts ?
On one hand their may be 100% of early “subscribers” (the about 5 millions ones that entered trial bewteen June 30 and mid July) that let their subscription stop by mid October, that could explain the 15 millions active accounts (from 20 millions total trials) reported at that time.
On another hand there should have been at least the same amount that would have renewed their subscription to reach the stated 6.5 paid accounts (most of them would have choosed to renew a few days to one week before trial ending, that is early to mid October). Apple offered an option to initially extend and pay for many months, however few users may have opted for this. Then these same users couldn’t both have renewed and let stop their subscription.
Apple then may have taken into account users that let the automatic renewal option enabled. There shouldn’t be more than 2 millions users that did renew their subscription for some months, that is only 10% of users that entered the trial (and 0.25% of Apple’s iTunes users).
Considering the deceiving quality of the service (iTunes Store is much better and many songs or artists weren’t present in Music service), Apple should lower the price, replace the service by access to the full ITMS catalog, and provide songs in lossless format (a new HD audio format is expected by Apple early 2016).
Also many would have used the trial to copy most of songs (using Soundflower), then Apple shouldn’t provide a Trial (as users still can try iTunes Store by listening to long tracks samples).
Cjed Audio 