“Streaming isnt enough as it is,” says Apple Music head as subscribers pass 30m

Apple Music has broken 30m subscribers, having grown its paying userbase by 3m since June

The figures were revealed in a Billboard interview with Jimmy Iovine, co-founder of Beats – the company that became Apple Music after it was sold to Apple for $3bn in 2014 – and now head of the service.

“I just don’t think streaming is enough as it is. I don’t agree that all things are going to be okay [just] because Apple came into streaming and the numbers went up,” Iovine said in the interview.

“Just because we’re adding millions of subscribers and the old catalogue numbers are going up, that’s not the trick. That’s just not going to hold.”

Iovine reckons that a lot of the growth music streaming services have enjoyed in recent years are the result of older catalogue music, essentially the low-hanging fruit of the music industry.

“It’s a matter of time before the ’60s become the ’50s and the ’50s become the ’40s” said Iovine. “The people that are listening to the ’60s will die — I’m one of them. Life goes on. So you have to help the artists create new stuff that they would never be able to do on their own.”

In order to survive, according to Iovine, Apple Music and its competitors need to find a way to add “soul” to their services, and differentiate themselves from free platforms like YouTube. The plan seems to be doubling down on its USP – the Beats 1 radio service and shows like Carpool Karaoke – and experiment with new “creative content”.