Apple Music for Android hits 10 million downloads on the Google Play Store

After first being announced and previewed at WWDC in June of last year, Apple launched its music streaming platform on Android on November 10th. Now, after almost a year of being available to the public (and only a month since it finally exited beta), the app has garnered more than 10 million downloads on the Google Play Store…

Since the app first became available, Apple has slowly been adding features and improving the experience. The company added the ability to save music to SD cards for offline listening in February, support for a homescreen widget in March (both Android-only features), and the long-available-on-iOS family plan and video playback features in April. At the exit of beta, the app rounded out its feature set with equalizer settings and stability improvements.

While 10 million is certainly a lot, it’s a far cry from the 15 or so applications on Google’s app marketplace that have passed 1 billion downloads. These include Facebook, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger, as well as a slew of Google’s own apps like Hangouts, Gmail, Search, and Google+. It’s also a lot less than the 100 million+ that have installed the Spotify app.

Apple Music hit 15 million paying subscribers in June, but it’s unclear how many of those are primarily Android users — this download figure does little to shine light on that subject. But it’s clear that a decent number of Apple Music’s paying customers are using the service on Android devices, and it’s nice that Android users have the option. Personally, I prefer Spotify and Play Music because Chromecast support is non-negotiable in my household.