Apple Music reaches the 20 million subscriber mark

Apple Music’s growth has been nothing if not steady since launching in June of last year. The streaming service hit 13 million paid subscribers in April and beat the 17 million mark in September.

This week, the company announced a nice round milestone, telling Billboard that it now counts 20 million paid members among its ranks, making that a 15-percent increase in three months. That’s about half of what Spotify has (as of September), but the Swedish music service had a half-dozen year head start in front of Apple’s OS-embedded offering.

Eddy Cue had some interesting figures to share around the announcement. Apparently half of the service’s subscribers are located outside the US, thanks to the fact that Apple Music is currently available in more than 100 countries. Also, confirming a key shift in the way music is consumed, 60-percent of subscribers haven’t actually purchased any music from iTunes in the past year.

The exec also used the opportunity to talk up recent Grammy nominee Chance the Rapper, whose recent mixtape Coloring Book debuted exclusively on the service. “It’s been quite a year,” Cue told Billboard. “We were thrilled to see that we could take [artists’] passions and drive them all the way to No. 1. Chance the Rapper, who we put on Apple Music exclusively, hit the top 10 on the Billboard charts [based on streams alone], and I can’t recall that being done before.”