Apple vice president of Apple Music and International Content Oliver Schusser has revealed to Macerkopf that European developers have been paid over $25 billion via the App Store. Last year, Apple had revealed that it paid $20 billion to European developers.

In January, Apple announced that it has paid developers $120 billion since the App Store’s launch in 2008. Out of that, $25 billion has been paid to European developers so far. Schusser also revealed that Apple Music now has over 50 million paying subscribers.

“Our services, which include content stores, Apple Pay and iCloud Storage, are targeting $ 40 billion in annual sales. In January, we announced that developer revenue in the App Store reached $ 120 billion. Payments to European developers have just exceeded $ 25 billion. Since its launch nearly 4 years ago, Apple Music now has 50 million paying users around the world. We are the leading music streaming service in the US and the world’s leading music service on the iPhone. Our customers love the great content, be it via playlists, radio, beats 1 or suggestions in For You. Apple Music was the first place to hear the great new music of Nicki Minaj, The Weeknd and Frank Ocean, just to name a few. Beats 1 also features exclusive and popular artist-led shows, including Drake, Nicki Minaj, Ezra Koenig, Lars Ulrich and Elton John. The last update I want to release today is Podcasting, where our customers downloaded and streamed over 50 billion episodes of 650,000 active shows on Apple podcasts. “

Apple’s podcast platform is growing rapidly as well. It now hosts over 650,000 active podcasts, with over 50 billion podcast episodes being downloaded so far.

Apple’s services business will now be playing a key factor in its growth especially since iPhone sales have slowed down. The company is expected to hold a media event on March 25 where it will unveil its new magazine subscription service along with a video streaming service.

[Via Macerkopf]

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