Apple Music has gained two million subscribers in just a month, taking its total to 38 million

Apple Music has acquired two million new paid subscribers in the past month, Apple’s senior vice president for internet software and services, Eddy Cue, has revealed.

Speaking at SXSW festival, which runs until Saturday 17 March, Cue said Apple’s music streaming service now has 38 million users, up from 36 million in February. He also revealed that the company has eight million users taking part in its three-month free trial.

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For comparison, when Spotify filed for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange last month, it had 71 million paid users and a further 159 million who use the free, ad-supported service.

Apple Music and Spotify Premium both cost £9.99 a month in the UK, although Apple only offers a three-month free trial to entice customers to upgrade, while Spotify’s customers can use its ad-supported service for as long as they want.

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Apple’s excellent-sounding HomePod, which only supports Apple Music and not rival services such as Spotify and Amazon Music, could have something to do with the recent boost in paid subscriptions, but Cue is confident that there’s still plenty of room to acquire more users.

He claimed there are around two billion potential music streaming customers in the world who have both access and the means to pay for a premium service. Currently, Spotify and Apple Music have around 110 million users, and Amazon is the third-largest music-streaming service with around 16 million paid users across Amazon Prime Music and Music Unlimited (as of last October).

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Even accounting for the market share held by competitors including Tidal, Deezer and Google Play Music, there’s a long way to go before this number is reached. However, Apple has a monumental task on its hands if it’s to overtake Spotify, which currently has 33 million more paid users.