The big question mark over Apple Music has been how many customers would choose to try it out, and – crucially – how many of them would be willing to pay for the service once the free trial ended. Tim Cook answered both questions yesterday, revealing that the service currently has 15M subscribers, of whom 6.5M are paying customers.

There are still plenty of unknowns, of course. We don’t know the split between individual and family subscriptions, and we don’t know how subscribers map out across the countries – both of which we’d need to know to accurately calculate how much Apple is earning from the service.

But if we do a back-of-an-envelope guesstimate and say that the split between solo and family accounts reaches 50/50 and that the costlier countries like those in Europe cancel out the cheaper ones like India, then a monthly subscription of $12.50 times 6.5M customers gives us $81M a month. Multiply that by 12 months, and we can say that Apple Music is likely to be bringing in somewhere around a billion dollars a year … 

That’s a small business in Apple terms, of course. But not a totally insignificant one. Again, let’s do some approximations …

Apple unfortunately doesn’t disclose its revenue from music sales – it tucks that number away inside the $20B a year business called ‘Services,’ which includes all other iTunes sales (apps, movies, etc) as well as Apple Pay, AppleCare and a bunch of other miscellany.

But I very much doubt that music downloads amount for more than half of that revenue – and probably substantially less. So at best, music downloads are worth $10B a year. Already, streaming music is worth 10% of that. That’s a very impressive start.

And it is just the start. The relative trajectories – music downloads falling while streaming music grows – has been a visible trend for years now. Billboard suggested a couple of years ago that 2012 may have been ‘peak iTunes‘ – a theory supported by later numbers.

Apple Music will of course be significantly accelerating that trend. I know that I haven’t bought a single track since I signed up to Apple Music – I’ve merely used the ‘Add to my music’ option to add streamed albums and playlists to my music library without purchasing it. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. So that ~$10B will be falling even as I write.

It doesn’t take too much imagination to see a point – some years down the road – when Apple Music subscriptions will exceed revenue from iTunes downloads.

Ok, so Apple Music is doing well at a time when streaming music is taking off, but how well is Apple doing against the competition? Again, I suggest the answer is: rather well.

Let’s compare Apple Music to the streaming music market leader, Spotify. Sure, Spotify currently has over 20M paid subscribers – three times as many as Apple – but it’s taken the company seven years to get there.

Spotify took almost four years to hit 4M paid subscribers; Apple comfortably beat that in as many months.

We do, of course, need to throw in a few provisos. Apple has, after all, taken just a single monthly payment so far, and I’m already extrapolating that to full-year revenues.

The biggest unknown is how many free trialists simply forgot to cancel their subscription before Apple started charging them. Personally, I’m organized about these things. Any time I sign up to a free trial, I immediately add a note to Calendar a few days before the first payment is due. That alerts me to make a decision so that I have time to cancel if I don’t want to pay. But not everyone is that organized: there will undoubtedly be a bunch of people who saw that first payment leave their account, muttered something under their breath and then cancelled.

But this has been a high-profile launch, with a well-advertised three-month trial. I think the vast majority of people will have decided long before the trial ended whether or not it was worthwhile.

I wasn’t an easy convert for Apple. I have a relatively large library of my own music, and I was happy with Spotify. My first impressions of Apple Music weren’t great – though they had improved somewhat within the first week of use. But by the time I needed to make a decision, I was sold.

From our poll at that time, I was far from alone: more than half of you, some 58%, had decided to hand over the cash.

And remember that there is one crucial difference between Apple Music and Spotify: with Apple Music, you don’t have the option of remaining a free subscriber for longer than three months. So the 8.5M people who are still trialling Apple Music have yet to reach the deadline. Given that all the evidence so far is that a significant chunk of trialists opt to stay on as paid subscribers, Apple is going to end up with way more than 6.5M customers in the course of the next month or two.

Cook said yesterday that he was “really happy about it, and I think the runway here is really good.” It’s hard to disagree with that assessment.

Filed under: AAPL Company, Apple Music Tagged: Apple, Apple Music, iTunes, Music, streaming, subscriptions, Tim Cook

Continue reading more about AAPL Company, Apple, and iTunes at 9to5Mac.

What do you think? Discuss “Opinion: As a $1B business, Apple Music appears to be off to an impressive start” with our community.

AgileBits has promised to beef up the security of 1Password after a Microsoft software engineer discovered that details of which websites you visit are unencrypted and indexed by Google if you use the 1PasswordAnywhere feature. Dale Myers said that he discovered this by chance after a sync problem led him to investigate the files used to store the metadata.

It turns out that your metadata isn’t encrypted [allowing someone to] go through and find out exactly what shady sites I have accounts on, what software I have licences for, the bank card and accounts I hold, the titles of any secure notes I have, any anything else I’ve decided to store in there.

While passwords remain secure, privacy is placed at risk and the data obtained could, says Myers, be used in a phishing attempt.

Thanks to people having links for easy access to their keychain on their websites, Google has indexed some of these. A simple search brings up results. By looking at one of these it was a simple matter to identify the owner of the keychain and where he lived. I know what his job is. I even know the names of his wife and children. If I was malicious, it would be easy to convince someone that I had compromised their account and had access to all of their credentials.

AgileBits said that the decision not to encrypt metadata was taken back in 2008, when decryption on mobile devices involved significant performance and battery-drain issues, and that it introduced a secure file format in 2012, but that it didn’t want to break compatibility with older versions by making that format the default.

The company said that work on making the secure file format the default was already in hand.

We’ve already started making changes to use OPVault as the default format. In fact, the latest beta of 1Password for Windows does this already. Similar changes are coming to Mac and iOS soon, and we’re planning on using the new format in Android in the future. Once all of these things are complete, we will add an automatic migration for all 1Password users.

For those who don’t want to wait, the company has posted instructions for manually migrating to the new format.

The 1Password iOS app was updated last month with a new design, new password-generation features and iOS 9 features. If you’re not yet using a password manager, check out our how-to guide.

Via Engadget

Filed under: Apps Tagged: 1Password, 1Password iOS app, 1Password Mac app, 1Password vulnerability, Encryption

Continue reading more about Apps, 1Password, and Encryption at 9to5Mac.

What do you think? Discuss “PSA: Beware 1Password web features can leak your browsing history, may show up in Google search” with our community.

Facebook has told Gizmodo that it is working on a fix after complaints that its iOS app is continuing to account for high battery usage even when the app is supposed to be sleeping.

We’re looking into this and hope to have a fix in place soon.

The company responded after a Medium post by product developer Matt Galligan, who noted that the app was continuing to draw significant amounts of power despite having background app refresh disabled. Others  then chipped in on the issue, prompting Facebook’s response.

It had been suggested that the high battery drain might be due to the Facebook app continuing to use Location Services in the background, but the company told Motherboard‘s Jordan Pearson that this is not the case.

A Facebook spokesperson emailed over the weekend to say that the battery drain issue “is not caused by improper background location collection,” and that the team continues to investigate the issue. “We are not collecting background location on iOS unless Location Access is set to Always on your device and you have enabled Location History in the Facebook app.”

Federico Viticci over at MacStories noted that the app had been showing high levels of background audio usage, even with background app refresh off, linking to others who had spotted the same thing.

On my girlfriend’s iPhone, for instance, iOS 9 reports 5 hours of on-screen usage for the last 7 days, and another 11 hours of background audio usage with Background App Refresh turned off.

My guess is that Facebook is hijacking audio sessions on iOS by keeping silent audio in the background whenever a video plays in the app.

Facebook has not commented, beyond its confirmation that Location Services are not the culprit. The company recently updated the app to support 3D Touch Quick Actions for status updates and photos on the iPhone 6s/Plus.

Screengrab: MacObserver

Filed under: Apps Tagged: Facebook, Facebook app battery drain, Facebook app battery usage, Facebook iOS app, Facebook iPhone app, iOS, iPhone

For more information about Apps, iPhone, and iOS continue reading at 9to5Mac.

What do you think? Discuss “High battery usage by iOS Facebook app may be due to background audio usage; company promising a fix” with our community.

We’re big fans of the Ultimate Ears lineup of speakers from the $89 Roll (review), to the $199 Boom 2 (review) and the huge $299 Megaboom (review). Today the company announced a new firmware and software update feature which allows multiple iPhones and Android apps to share music on one speaker or a set of paired speakers. Called ‘Block Party”, it seems like a great way to let party goers share their music on one device. I’ve had a working speaker and apps for about 24 hours and the feature seems to work in a simulated environment (hard to get a party going on a Monday afternoon).

Losing control of your speaker seems like the only downside to this new feature from Ultimate Ears which will roll out on 3 of their devices today.  Press release follows:

Filed under: AAPL Company Tagged: Block party, UE, Ultimate Ears

Continue reading more about AAPL Company, Ultimate Ears, and UE at 9to5Mac.

What do you think? Discuss “Popular Ultimate Ears (UE) Bluetooth speakers get new ‘Block Party’ sharing feature” with our community.

As expected, Tim Cook today took the stage at the Wall Street Journal Digital Live conference for an interview. During his time on stage, Cook discussed a variety of topics, ranging from iPhone to Apple Watch and to Apple Music. The main points are below:

1. New Apple TV available next Monday, Oct. 26, shipping later that week
2. 6.5 million paying Apple Music customers, 15 million total subscribers
3. A focus on CarPlay in the short-term, but the car industry is at an “inflection point for massive change”

First up, Cook was asked about Apple Watch sales. Apple has notoriously not officially offered up any sales numbers when it comes to the device, and when asked if it ever would, Cook said he doesn’t plan on it, saying the numbers would help competitors:

“We are not announcing the numbers. This is competitive information,” Cook said. “I don’t want to help the competition. We shipped a lot the first quarter, then last quarter we shipped even more.  I can predict this quarter we will ship even more.”

Regarding the future of Apple Watch, Cook said that perhaps the biggest area of growth for the device is the health aspect. “People love the health and fitness aspect of Watch,” Cook explained. “That’s certainly been true for me. The health aspect of the watch has a long product road map ahead of it.”

More interestingly, Cook was asked if there would ever be a Watch that doesn’t have to be connected to an iPhone. In his typical fashion, however, Cook only said, “I don’t want to tell you that.”

Regarding the iPhone, Cook was asked how Apple can speed up its innovation and if it feels like it needs to move away from the “S” release cycle. Cook responded, however, by saying the iPhone 6s has just as many innovations as the iPhone 6 did and that Apple feels pressure to innovate every year.

The interview then shifted focus to Apple Music. Cook announced that Apple Music has 6.5 million paying customers, a far cry from the 20 million Spotify has. Nevertheless, Cook said that people love the human curation aspect of the platform. For himself, Cook said that he was in a rut, listening to the same songs over and over before Apple Music was launched.

Next up, Cook discussed Apple TV. Most notably, the Apple executive revealed that the fourth-generation model will be available next week. Orders will start on Monday with the device shipping later that week. Cook called the current TV industry “terrible and broken” and explained that it has to be “brought up and modernized.” He went on to say that “the starting gun has been fired,” thanks to Apple.

The Apple executive was then asked about cars, a market that the company is rumored to be entering before the end of the decade. Cook didn’t delve into too much detail, however, and rather focused on Apple’s existing CarPlay platform.

“When I look at the automobile, what I see is that software becomes an increasingly important part of the car of the future. You see that autonomous driving becomes much more important. It seems like there will be massive change in that industry. We want people to have an iPhone experience in their car. We look at a lot of things. Our model is to reduce that list to a few. We will see what we do in the future. I do think that industry is at an inflection point for massive change, not just evolutionary change.”

Cook was then asked about privacy and Apple’s relationship with the government. Cook explained that Apple will not make trade-offs in customer experience to save costs when it comes to privacy. He also noted, however, that Apple’s strong commitment to privacy holds it back when it comes to features like predicting locations and analyzing photos.

“We are not making a trade-off with customer experience. Our view is that you can have both. We think encryption is a must in today’s world. No back door is a must. You can’t have a backdoor that’s only for the good guys. Any backdoor is a door bad guys can exploit. No one should have to decide privacy or security. We should be smart enough to do both.”

Cook and the interviewer, Gerard Baker, then got into a debate over the possibility of a backdoor being a way to stop all crime. Baker argued that should there be a backdoor, crime would be greatly reduced. Cook, on the other hand, wasn’t buying it and defended his position that there is no reason for a backdoor. “If there was a way to expose only ‘bad’ people … that would be a great thing. But this is not the world,” said Cook. Baker even referenced 9/11, saying that had the FBI been able to construct a panopticon with total access to all information, it very well could have been prevented.

The final topic of the night was centered around Apple’s role in the public life. Cook explained the company’s role in the environment, human rights issues, education, and more. One reason Cook cited for wanting to take a role in public issue is that “government isn’t working well.”

“We’re a global company, so I think we have a responsibility to be a great global citizen. Each generation struggles with treating people with basic, proper human respect. It’s so bizarre, I think. I’ve seen this growing up. I’ve seen in today. I’d love to help be able to push the ball over the line. Because I think the world would be so much a better place if we just treated people well and treated them with basic human respect. We want to give back. Our culture is to leave the world better than we found it.”

Cook cited Steve Jobs as his main inspiration for wanting to improve public life.

Filed under: AAPL Company, Apple TV Tagged: Apple, Apple TV, interview, privacy, Tim Cook

Check out 9to5Mac for more breaking coverage of AAPL Company, Apple, and Tim Cook.

What do you think? Discuss “Tim Cook says new Apple TV coming next week, reveals 6.5m paying Apple Music subscribers” with our community.

The Paulson Institute today announced that Apple CEO Tim Cook is joining its CEO Council for Sustainable Urbanization, run in conjunction with the China Center for International Economic Exchanges. The Council for Sustainable Urbanization was initially formed nearly a year ago and includes 17 CEOs from various companies around the world.

The main effort of the CEO Council is to advance China’s green transformation and to help the country hit all of its climate goals. In a statement, Cook reiterated Apple’s ongoing goal to run its global operations on 100 percent renewable energy:

“Apple is committed to running our global operations on 100 percent renewable energy and we’re working hard to reduce emissions throughout our global supply chain. We look forward to participating in the CEO Council’s effort to advance China’s green transformation and hope to do our part in helping China reach its climate goals.”

Other notable figures on the CEO Council include IBM CEO Virginia Rometty, Alibaba chairman Jack Ma Yun, Walmart CEO Dough McMillion, GM CEO Mary Barra, and Honeywell CEO David Cote.

The CEO Council will hold its second annual meeting in Beijing on October 22nd and it’s likely that Cook will be in attendance. This year’s goals include focusing on projects to scale clean energy technologies in China. The meeting later this week will allow for all of the members to discuss ways to advance that project in a timely manner.

Earlier this year, Tim Cook and Lisa Jackson attended President Obama’s Chinese State Dinner, sitting at the President’s table with other tech heads like Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, and Bob Iger. Climate change and America’s efforts to help China were hot topics at the dinner, likely lending hand to Cook joining the CEO Council today.

Filed under: AAPL Company Tagged: Apple, china, environment, Tim Cook

Visit 9to5Mac to find more special coverage of AAPL Company, Apple, and Tim Cook.

What do you think? Discuss “Tim Cook joins Council for Sustainable Urbanization to fight climate change in China” with our community.

Korea might be home base for Samsung (and LG), Apple’s biggest competitor in the smartphone world, but the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus have been well received in the country as local reports indicate all major carriers have sold out of both models after officially launching in the country earlier today..

Yonhap News Agency reports that all three major carriers in the region including SK Telecom Co., KT Corp. and LG Uplus Inc have sold out of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus after they began accepting preorders yesterday ahead of an official launch. The device officially went on sale in the country today following Apple’s second wave of launch countries earlier this month.

KT said preorders surpassed 10,000 within the first one minute after it opened the online site, and it closed the applications less than 10 minutes later as the first 50,000 units set aside for preorders were all sold out… KT began its second round of online purchase reservations from 10:30 a.m., the company said, adding that it’s also selling them at offline stores.

Samsung and LG notably dropped prices on their flagship devices ahead of Apple’s planned launch of the iPhone 6s this month in South Korea, and Samsung late last week announced a new pink gold color for the Galaxy Note 5, a move thought to be an attempt to combat sales of Apple’s new similarly colored iPhone 6s.

Earlier this month Apple launched its new iPhone lineup in 40+ countries following its initial launch in September. The company plans to have the device available in 130 countries in total by the end of the year.

Filed under: AAPL Company Tagged: iPhone, iPhone 6s, iphone 6s plus, Korea, lg, Samsung

Continue reading more about AAPL Company, iPhone, and Samsung at 9to5Mac.

What do you think? Discuss “Samsung’s pink gold Note 5 & price drops don’t stop iPhone 6s from selling out in S. Korea” with our community.

The Apple TV is supposedly set to ship sometime in October although 9to5Mac has already reported that many orders will likely slip to November. While everyone waits to be able to get their hands on Apple’s new set-top box, I found a way to watch all of the brand new Apple TV aerial video screensavers right now, before the box is actually available. Visit my blog to see them all — there’s currently 34 videos in total on the random rotation.

The current set of videos includes scenes from Hawaii, London, China, New York City and San Francisco. Most locations have several different videos as well as shots for night and day — the Apple TV will pick the right one for the user’s local time. The slow pan over the Great Wall China is particularly stunning.

Apple is likely to add even more video sequences in the runup to release — it already added to the selection at least once last week.

You might be wondering how this is possible. Over the weekend, the URL for the server source of these videos was discovered. All I do on my blog is parse the video source on the server and display the available files in an interactive list. The videos themselves stream straight from Apple’s servers, just like how the Apple TV works.

As this is relying on completely private implementation details, there’s a good chance Apple will make it stop working soon, so watch them while they are still available.

The new Apple TV is set to launch by the end of October, starting at $149 for 32 GB and $199 for 64 GB. The old Apple TV is still sold for $69. As well as these new screensavers, the fourth-generation Apple TV brings Siri, App Store for third-party apps and games, universal search and much more.

Filed under: AAPL Company, Apple TV, iOS, iOS Devices Tagged: aerial, Apple TV, Apple TV 4, Screensavers, Wallpaper

Visit 9to5Mac to find more special coverage of AAPL Company, iOS Devices, and iOS.

What do you think? Discuss “Watch the new Apple TV’s beautiful HD aerial screensavers ahead of release later this month” with our community.

Apple delivered a major upgrade to Maps in iOS 9, OS X El Capitan, and watchOS 2 with the addition of transit directions in select cities, and now its rolling out additional cities and transportation methods to bolster that feature. In addition to expanding transit, Apple has found a new partner in Canada to provide rich local business data for use in Maps.

Transit in Apple Maps already supported buses, ferries, subways, and trains in supported cities including San Francisco, New York City, and Washington, DC, and today users noticed Amtrak train routes between major Northeastern cities in the United States (via MacRumors). Not all Amtrak routes are present within Apple Maps as routes for cities that currently support Apple’s transit feature are presented but the new data does add to the feature.

Continuing transit’s rollout, The Boston Globe reports that Apple Maps today turned on support for the new feature for customers in the area. Transit in Boston supports viewing routes for the city’s buses, commuter rail, subways, and trolleys within Apple Maps.

Before Apple officially unveiled its transit feature in Maps, 9to5Mac first reported that Boston would be absent at launch but on Apple’s list to target next. The rollout comes just as Apple pulls the plug on HopStop, which was a transit service app that provided data in Boston acquired by Apple in 2013.

Sydney, Australia is also set to gain transit in Apple Maps this moth according to Apple’s site, joining Baltimore, Berlin, Chicago, China, London, Mexico City, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toronto, and now Boston.

Finally, Apple Maps in Canada is set to improve with local business data. As iPhone in Canada points out, Apple has partnered with Yellow Pages in Canada to provide local business information like hours, ratings, website, and contact information within Maps. Apple has similarly partnered with Yellow Pages in other regions including Turkey for sourcing local business data for Maps.

Filed under: Apps, iOS, Mac Tagged: Amtrak, Apple Maps, Boston, Canada, iOS 9, maps, os x el capitan, Sydney, Transit, watchos 2, Yellow Pages

Check out 9to5Mac for more breaking coverage of Apps, iOS, and Mac.

What do you think? Discuss “Apple Maps gains Amtrak routes + Boston transit, partners with Yellow Pages in Canada for business data” with our community.

Valve has announced in an email to customers that its new hardware accessories, the Steam Controller and the Steam Link are not yet fully compatible with OS X. The hardware, which was marketed as cross-platform ready, started arriving in customers’ hands this week.

The company says software issues are at the heart of the delay, and it will be pushing out firmware updates to enable support very soon. In the case of the Steam Controller, users can already start using the gamepad on their Macs by switching to the beta version of the Steam client in the app’s preferences.

In order to make up for this problem, Valve has gifted every single affected pre-order customer with the Valve Complete Pack, which includes every game the company has ever made, or will make in the future. Buyers who still want to get a refund on their hardware will still be able to do so.

Filed under: Mac Tagged: gaming, Steam, steam controller, steam link, Valve

Visit 9to5Mac to find more special coverage of Mac, gaming, and Steam.

What do you think? Discuss “Valve delays Steam Controller and Steam Link support on Mac, hands out free games to buyers” with our community.