OFFICIAL: Apple Music Has 6.5 Million Paid Subscribers

[UPDATED] If music industry pundits from Bob Lefsetz to yours truly had a betting pool, odds would have been strongly against Apple ever "officially" revealing official subscriber and user numbers for its Apple Music service. But Apple's Tim Cook surprised us all with an announcement yesterday.

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Apple chief Tim Cook today took the stage at the Wall Street Journal Digital Live conference Monday afternoon for an interview that included several surprised announcements.

Apple Music has 6.5 million paying subscribers and 15 million total users, revealed Cook. By comparison, Spotify has 20 million paid subscribers. Nevertheless, its a strong start for a service that launched just 4 months ago.

Cook claims that users love the human curation aspect of the platform, and that he had been in a rut before Apple Music launched. “I'm finding personally that I'm discovering a whole lot of music that I wasn't listening to before,” said Cook . “I think it's fabulous, and to have over 15 million on and 6.5 million in the paid category, I'm really happy about it. And I think the runway here is really good.”

Cook also shared that a new Apple TV available next Monday, Oct. 26; and that Apple is placing a renewed focus on CarPlay, in part because the auto industry is at an “inflection point for massive change.”

H/T 9to5Mac