Of 15 million Apple Music try-outs, 6.5 million remain

Apple Music lost millions of users when its free trial ran out in late September.

According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, 6.5 million have remained as paying subscribers of the 15 million who tried out the service for three months at its June 30 launch.

Spotify, its main rival, has built up to 20 million subscribers (as of June 2015) and 75 million active users since it began operations in 2008.

After the trial period, users pay $9.99 a month for individual subscriptions or $14.99 for families.

Cook, who revealed the figures at the Wall Street Journal’s global technology conference WSJDLive 2015 conference in Laguna Beach, California, was happy with the click-on numbers, saying, “It’s going well.

His optimism is shared by FBR & Co analyst Daniel Ives who told USA Today that 6.5 million was better than he expected and showed Apple Music is "off to a solid start. Now the goal is for Apple to further spread the gospel to convert more trial customers over the next three to six months while adding unique content and services."

Richard Windsor, an analyst at Edison Investment Research, told the magazine that 6.5 million paying subscribers is worth annual revenues of $780 million for Apple.

"However, how many users have forgotten to cancel the service and will do so after the first month when they receive the bill is unclear. Either way, this is pretty good performance and implies that around 60% of users who trial the service go on to pay for it."

Cook said during the interview, "I'm finding personally that I'm discovering a whole lot of music that I wasn't listening to before. I think it's fabulous, and to have over 15 million on there, and 6.5 million in the paid category, I'm really happy about it. And I think the runway here is really good.

"If we piss a few people off, I think at least they'll say, They made a great product, and I may not agree with this or that, but I respect that they are trying to leave things better than they found it. At least, that's what I hope they say."