Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) Music has reached 13 million paid subscribers as announced in the quarterly earnings yesterday. In February, the paid subscribers totaled 11 million. Apple Music has gained 2 million subscribers since then.

This service has begun last year in July, priced at $9.99 and has taken off at a tremendous pace. Many believe that due to the number of active iOS products (approximately one billion) that the benchmark should have been a higher number of subscribers at this time.

Along with the collaboration between Apple Music and iTunes, Apple Music is also a beneficiary of unique music. Further elaboration on this, would be that Apple Music has artists who release albums solely on their platform; therefore, enhancing the number of subscribers that are on their platform.

These artists include Future, The 1975, and Drake. It is said that Drake will be launching a new album out on Friday exclusively through the Apple Music platform.

Peer Comparison

To lay context into the progress that Apple Music has made in the industry, we look at its largest rival, Spotify. The Spotify platform now consists of 30 million paid subscribers, 20 million more than that of July.

It seems that Apple Music is outranked. However, it should be taken into account that for the first 10 million users, Spotify took a period of almost six years to grab. Apple Music accomplished the same feat in a mere six months.

Apple Music has one drawback from its competitors; that is the lack of feature updates for the platform throughout its first year. Besides, the occasional bug fixes the platform has remained static. It is, however, predicted that new features will be incorporated at WWDC, this coming June.

It is predicted that within Apple Music’s year anniversary a benchmark of 15 million subscribers is a realistic goal. Throughout the following year, due to the new iPhone refresh cycle, the number base could raise into the 20 million subscriber mark.