I'd like popularity ratings, its hard to find good sounding music.
In an extensive profile of Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek, Fast Company's Robert Safian recently sat down to speak for a few minutes with Apple CEO Tim Cook at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California.
The topic was, of course, Spotify and Apple Music, two of the major players in the streaming music market and fierce competitors. Cook said that he looks to music as inspiration and motivation, a philosophy that's shared at Apple and has guided its focus on human-based music curation.
"Music inspires, it motivates. It's also the thing at night that helps quiet me. I think it's better than any medicine," Cook said.
While he declined to mention Spotify by name, Cook told Fast Company that Apple worries about streaming music losing the human touch, alluding to Spotify's more algorithmic approach to highlighting content.Despite launching just three years ago, Apple Music has 50 million paid subscribers and free trial members, with the company slowly catching up to Spotify. At last count, Spotify said that it had 83 million paid subscribers around the world.
Apple has always had an edge over Spotify due to its massive 1.3 billion active installed base, and the fact that it's never needed to worry about profitability like Spotify has. "We're not in it for the money," Cook told Fast Company.
Ek, too, didn't mention Apple Music by name, but he said he believes Spotify has something going for it that other companies don't: a singular focus. "Music is everything we do all day, all night, and that clarity is the difference between the average and the really, really good," he said.
Spotify's dedication to music and music alone is what Ek believes will ultimately help the company beat Apple and expand the Spotify service in the future.
Competing with Apple was always Spotify's plan, says Ek, even before Apple Music. Apple dominated digital music downloads via iTunes in 2008 when Spotify launched, with Ek aiming to replace the iPod with on-demand music.
Competition with Apple and working within tight margins, Ek says, has driven Spotify to be more disciplined.
Despite industry complaints and criticism from Apple, Spotify has continued to focus on free music, which is how Spotify draws in new paying subscribers. After going public earlier this year, Spotify overhauled its free listening tier, offering new features that include on-demand playlists and a data saving mode, which were previously limited to paying subscribers.
Ek believes that there's money to be made with Spotify's free tier, with radiolike advertising options. "Billions of people listen to radio, and most of that today isn't monetized very efficiently," Ek said.
Going forward, in addition to working to expand revenue via its free tier, Spotify plans to focus on artists. Ek eventually wants to get 1 million artists to make a living off of Spotify, ultimately imagining something akin to YouTube where artists and listeners can interact.
For anyone interested in the inner workings of Spotify or how Ek operates, Fast Company's full profile of the founder is well worth checking out.
Article Link: Apple CEO Tim Cook on Apple Music: 'We Worry About the Humanity Being Drained Out of Music'
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple CEO Tim Cook on Apple Music: 'We Worry About the Humanity Being Drained Out of Music'
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It is a mess. Confusing to the point I tried it and literally 5 mins after I went back to Spotify
What a strange set of comments from Cook. Why would sophisticated algorithms take away the 'humanity' of listening to music? I have Apple Music and Play Music thanks to family members including me in their family plans, but I only use my own Spotify account. I do occasionally check out the other services to see how they're getting on and if I should switch.
Spotify is miles ahead of Apple Music with the quality of its curated playlists. It's truly an interstellar distance. I also find iTunes to be laggy and the mobile Music (iOS) and Apple Music (Android) apps to be poorly designed. I would award the best auto stations to Play Music, but Spotify's aren't bad. AM's are just about broken they're so poor.
Tim should hold his tongue and start investing in AI and machine learning because it seems to be their biggest weakness atm. Siri is really poor and Apple Music is clearly incapable of generating relevant music for its users. That said, I am more of a 'nomad' than a 'hoarder' when it comes to music, so Apple Music's deficiencies bother me more than it might bother others.
Spotify is miles ahead of Apple Music with the quality of its curated playlists. It's truly an interstellar distance. I also find iTunes to be laggy and the mobile Music (iOS) and Apple Music (Android) apps to be poorly designed. I would award the best auto stations to Play Music, but Spotify's aren't bad. AM's are just about broken they're so poor.
Tim should hold his tongue and start investing in AI and machine learning because it seems to be their biggest weakness atm. Siri is really poor and Apple Music is clearly incapable of generating relevant music for its users. That said, I am more of a 'nomad' than a 'hoarder' when it comes to music, so Apple Music's deficiencies bother me more than it might bother others.
It is utterly irrational how some Apple Music users become on the subject of Spotify with such comments comparing Spotify to communism. It's just weird.
I subscribe to both Apple Music and Spotify and both offer an excellent service .
The Mac vs PC debate has been largely buried and replaced by iOS vs Android, Apple vs Samsung, Apple Music vs Spotify etc.
Why we cannot all live in harmony utterly baffles me.
I subscribe to both Apple Music and Spotify and both offer an excellent service .
The Mac vs PC debate has been largely buried and replaced by iOS vs Android, Apple vs Samsung, Apple Music vs Spotify etc.
Why we cannot all live in harmony utterly baffles me.
Last edited:
It's a form of identity politics I guess. People can't separate themselves from their mobile or desktop platform of choice, their preferred products, favourite games, paid services etc. So if you criticise Apple, no matter how constructively, it is often taken as an attack on the person who supports them. Like you're dealing with a hysterically fervent supporter of a political party.
Yeah. I’m growing a bit tired of Tim lectures about humanity as it fits or not his business model for Apple.
People may not be Apple’s product as he says, but underlining Tim speek we can find something more grotesque ... Humanity is the product.
Last edited:
Um, no.
The main issue I see here is that a lot of criticism aimed at Apple just ends up being dead wrong.
And you wonder why they get the blowback they they do?
But we're not discussing low-quality commentary. You just rejected my entire statement on whimsical grounds, which is exactly what the sort of fervent supporters I mentioned tend to do.
There are also a lot of regulars who seem to criticise anything that isn't made by Apple and attack members who are making legitimate complaints about Apple and their products.
I guess some people take their choice of technology suppliers way too seriously.
Apple Music truly respects the art of music.
If you really love music and want to see artists continuing to thrive, you don't give your money to the algorithm company that is happy to starve creativity by giving music away for free.
If you really love music and want to see artists continuing to thrive, you don't give your money to the algorithm company that is happy to starve creativity by giving music away for free.
Humanity isn’t a quality Apple exudes like it did under its founders. The keynotes used to focus exclusively on their products’ abilities to promote expression and creativity, delivered by a maverick who emodied a rock and roll attitude. Now the highlight of the keynotes are Apple’s market share. The headlines are about Apple’s financial successes. And the products are about conformity and canned expression like emoji and stickers.
Steve made Apple a profitable corporation;
Tim is making it a profitable not-for-profit organization;
Both are better than a non-profitable good-for-nothing that is to come.
Tim is making it a profitable not-for-profit organization;
Both are better than a non-profitable good-for-nothing that is to come.
It’s leaving off a crucial number. It says you need 366K streams per month to make minimum wage on Spotify vs 200K streams per month to make minimum wage on Apple Music.
So how many artists actually get that many streams on either platform?
Spotify has an API - it might be possible to use it to answer that question for their platform (possibly not. I don’t know if that datapoint is revealed by the API, and the rate limit might be too low to practically arrive at an answer.) Apple Music will be harder.
I guess probably the best thing to do is to randomly select artists on each platform and check if they make minimum wage or not. Not sure how many you need to check to have statistically significant results. Also not quite sure how you’d perform that random selection.
I pay for Spotify Premium, as does anyone who really cares about music. And Spotify still pays for streams from free users.
If you love music then you want to discover as much as you possibly can. Spotify has vastly superior music discovery than Apple Music, so why would I not make use of that?
I knew that feature existed, because I use it. Lol. I'm not disputing the importance of that.
Don't worry, Tim. Roon integrated with Tidal is what Apple Music should have been. But since it is not, I'm sure glad that Roon and Tidal are out there serving up music in a way that music lovers really appreciate and can enjoy. This is where the heart, soul, and humanity really are.
For me, Apple Music being available on my Apple TV and Apple Watch is even more valuable, together with Siri support. Furthermore, at the time I subscribed to Apple Music (and stopped subscribing to Spotify), AM had more of the music which I listened to.
I like most of Apple Music. But a hundred superior features mean nothing if it doesn't help me discover new music. Spotify's Discover Weekly and Discover tab totally destroy Apple Music. I find new great stuff in a day with Spotify than a month with Apple Music.
Yep, agree. The pompous attitude from Apple (Tim) in this is showing. I used to buy all my families music through iTunes, then moved to Apple Music when it was available. Had it for about a year I think before moving to Spotify. In the whole time I had Apple Music, I didn't "discover" much. Since moving to Spotify, I find that I've discovered a lot of new artists. So whatever Spotify is doing is better than Apple in this regard... if its algorithms then they are good algorithms. If Apple is trying to do it with humans, in a world where AI is taking over things from healthcare to elevator maintenance, then that seems silly and given Apple's view of the world, I doubt that they would have hired people that like the kinds of music that I like.
As for the free vs. paid thing. If anyone here is my age, they realize that "discovery" in the old days was via radio, which to the consumer was free. You heard a song on the radio, and then you went down to the record store and bought the 45 so you could listen to it more; and if you REALLY liked it, you bought the whole album. I'm not an expert on the models used by these companies, but my understanding was the free tier was funded by advertising. How is that different from radio?
And Spotify is available on watches and media players as well, and has voice support through Alexa, Google, etc..
Once you stopped paying your subscription it's called DRM... ever heard?
And even if you're still paying, have poor/spotty/no internet, you have to have had the forethought to download everything you want to listen to BEFORE the interruption. Jank.
Last edited:
As somebody who knows (and nearly worked with) the Spotify music discovery team, I have to disagree. The algorithms are growing, they're far from primitive and they use many, many cues to detect what is liked (likes, adds, plays, replays, pauses, scrubs, shares, volume adjustment, time spent researching the artist), correlate it with music that is likely to be received well and tailor that algorithm based on the reception of delivered. The results aren't as well curated as a good friend's suggestions but they are often superior regardless because the machine knows millions more songs than your friend, has seen billions of relationships between songs and knows how you tend to listen.
As my Discover Weekly can attest, every week. The last radio show I listened to that was this good was Tom Petty's Buried Treasure.
While a good DJ can read a room, we aren't talking about rooms. We're talking about curated playlists and stations. These DJs have no idea who's listening at any given time; they know only the theme of their station and the records they're already aware of. So they spin generic music for generic people. It's great that you're into that, but some of us have taste.
Last edited:
Radio was (note: was. Less so now) actually profitable, unlike Spotify who flush half a billion dollars down the toilet annually while still underpaying artists.
How is that even remotely applicable to me as someone who is deeply entrenched in the Apple ecosystem?