Apple Music just passed a huge milestone — but it still needs a ton of work

At that pace, Apple Music could top Spotify as the largest streaming music service by number of subscribers in 2017, assuming that Spotify maintains around its current rate of growth.

Apple isn't commenting on the figures, but it's not hard to see how it would reach that kind of subscriber base in such a short time.

After launching at the tail end of June 2015, Apple Music has reportedly hit a major milestone in its existence.

The rapid growth of Apple Music, which was launched in more than 100 countries in June, raises the stakes in streaming, a form of distribution that offers hope to the music industry after more than a decade in the doldrums.

The cumulative number of Apple Music subscribers continues to grow and now exceeds 10 million users, this according to a recent report from the Financial Times.

Both Apple and Spotify have a significant lead in the music-streaming sector placing far ahead of competitors including artist Jay Z's Tidal and French streaming app Deezer.

Our own Nate Swanner named Apple Music as his pick for App of the Year in 2015, because of its powerful curation and cloud storage capabilities. Those subscriptions, however, were on a three-month free trial with account holders given the option to stay with the service and pay, or cancel the $9.99 monthly subscription.

Update: Spotify told Business Insider that it experienced its fastest subscriber growth ever in the second half of 2015, but did not provide an updated subscriber total.

Judging from the data we have at hand - and again, this data is rough, and doesn't include factors like music industry trends or increased iOS device sales - Apple is on track to add 20 million new subscribers in 2016. For example, streaming music is much more popular with consumers now than it was years ago.