Apple Music Attracting New Streaming Subscribers to Aid in Music Industry's 'Fragile Recovery'

[Tech198]

I just wish the movie industry would follow suit. All movie access for a fee. $25 a month for all movies, anytime.

Yep.. Some-days i wonder if they ever will, or forever be stuck in the piracy ball game cat and mouse.

47% streaming sounds better than a kick in the teeth..... while movie studios may actually want tat extra 31% (lets say) that just tells me there is no room for swaying either way.

$25 Sounds fair deal... a month

Apple's only got lowest paid Apple music subscribers because they started later.. (Spotify had a head start.). I would have thought content also factored into it,, probably does, but still Apple started later.

 

[Four oF NINE]

That will NEVER happen, in fact it will only get worst and worst as Cook has publically sated he wants to concentrate on services now.

Yeah? Well he can cram his subscription service where the MOON don't shine. I buy music, not rent it.

 

[pika2000]

Streaming music, although convenient and works for many people, to me it is a regression.
Before and during the early days of iTunes, we have DRM music that can only be played on a specific service or platform. We fought hard and finally got DRM free music. Guess what, with streaming, we are now back at DRM music that is specific to one service. Instead of extorting end consumers, the labels are now extorting the streaming providers via license fees. Sooner or later, we will only have the big boys offering the service. No competition, higher prices, and you don't even own anything.

Unlike movies where I only watch them once or twice, I listen to music more often, for the rest of my life, thus the idea of only renting my music doesn't really jive with me.

 

[Abazigal]

Interesting read about Apple's possible ambitions to dominate the music streaming industry. After all, if you are going to enter a market, why settle for anything less than total domination?

http://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2016/7/12/apples-plan-to-own-the-entire-music-industry

It certainly puts recent moves like their use of exclusives in the right perspective. If you though the Apple executives were flailing about blindly, think again.

 

[rippley5150]

I'm all for the music industry making a comeback but the RIAA will never be happy until they have all the money,

 

[Jim Lahey]

I have just switched back to Apple Music from Spotify.

Both have their merits, but overall I prefer Apple's setup now. It definitely does a much better job recommending me music, which is the main thing really.

One of Spotify's core issues, for me, is that it always feels like just an app. Apple Music feels like it's baked into the device. I do understand though that Spotify is available on more devices. Swings and roundabouts maybe.

Apple Music is winning for me, but I understand if people still prefer Spotify. They are both fabulous services.

 

[PJA]

No, what you have on your phone is itunes store to purchase music. if you want to listen, streaming or your own stuff, you have Apple Music that seems to prefer that you stream. So ironically they seem to be at odds with each other.

That's funny because I have Apple Music and I don't stream at all. I download all of my music and it plays fine just like the music I purchased prior to having Apple Music and when I turn it off all of ,y purchased music plays fine. And iTunes Store has always been the app on the phone. ITunes never was.

 

[inscrewtable]

...Spotify... showed no signs of slowing down...

They've also showed no signs of making a profit.

 

[ScottHammet]

"Nor is this the first time new technology has come along to get people to pay online. Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs convinced record labels that iTunes would save the industry from piracy, only to vaporize album sales by selling singles instead."

iTunes may have vaporized album sales, but Napster was about to vaporize everything. At least iTunes gave them back the ability to sell anything at all.

 

[Four oF NINE]

As I mentioned above in post #14. Features that were there previously have been moved behind the paywall. the iOS app is heavily biased towards streaming. you are constantly being badgered to subscribe to the 3 month trial. So yes itunes has millions of tracks available to purchase, but the way features and behavior all are pushing towards streaming. As someone who has invested in 20k songs, i do not want to stream and feel less and less supported by itunes and Apple.

Cesium app is a worthy app; all YOUR music, not a mention of Apple streaming service.
[doublepost=1474418757][/doublepost]

Vinyl made me fall in love with music again. Although I used to buy cd's in record stores so the culture and fun of doing that is nothing new to me. I took my daughter to a record store (bought her first record!) and she loved all the PHYSICAL music and that there's music playing and posters and shirts and stuff.

MP3's and such killed music for me. I bought 700-800$ worth of music on iTunes and it just wasn't the same.

So many great bands I had heard just by hanging out in a record store in the 80's and 90's

Good luck lugging around 400 vinyl albums and a device to play them; which is what I'd have to do to equal the ease and convenience of my iPhone.. not really practical

 

[MysteryMii215]

The fact that almost half of the industry revenue is coming from streaming is, I believe, the reason why support for downloading music has almost disappeared from iTunes.

And is possibly one of the many reasons (other than to get the song to be more popular so it can get better chart placement) why you see so many god damn songs discounted to 69¢ all the god damn time.
[doublepost=1474421852][/doublepost]

This data comes at a premium through most ISPs/Carriers. Data caps make sure that you can only stream as much as they want you to. The more you want to stream the more you have to pay.

For a long time, my data cap on my cellular made streaming a non-option. But that cap has significantly increased by itself over time and now I can stream for a time during each billing period without worrying about crazy overage fees.

Or you could just switch to T-Mobile and stream all the music you want without going over your data cap.
[doublepost=1474422184][/doublepost]

Spotify has some investors with very deep pockets. As long as they can keep growing, I don't see them going anywhere.

That will be until Spotify does something controversial that begins their downfall from grace and ends up becoming the next Myspace (as in a service that was once popular, but then had all of it's userbase jump ship to a different service that's similar to the former service, and is still around despite no one using the service).
[doublepost=1474422359][/doublepost]

The "exclusive" label is way overblown. It is usually just for a few weeks, then it's everywhere.

Unless your name is "Beyoncé".
[doublepost=1474423045][/doublepost]

The Courage to Aid the Music Industry's 'Fragile Recovery'. Give me a break.

A dollar for every thousand streaming plays. What a disgrace.

The best way to support music is to get out and go see your favorite artists play.

Actually, Apple Music pays slightly more in royalties than Spotify. Apple pays 57.5 percent of it's Apple Music revenue back to the "Big 3" (Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group), while Spotify only pays back 55 percent of it revenue back to the "Big 3". In fact, according to sources, Spotify is trying to negotiate with the "Big 3" to bring that rate
down to less than 50 percent.

 

[Antonio Blanco]

Has the green button bug been fixed yet? Expanding all windows while hiding the menu bar and dock menu is stupid when I need access to those things at all times.

Also, has SIP finally been fixed to allow 3rd party apps like TotalFinder / XtraFinder to work or does Apple still disrespect developers?

Wrong thread.... but you can press the option key to expand the windows without hiding the dock and the menu bar, just like before! i can't take a screenshot with the option key pressed to show you, but you can try for yourself.

 

[deany]

I know AM gets a lot of crap for UI, but I'm sure they've converted a lot of people to paying customers through ease of use and ubiquity. Never thought I'd see the day where I paid for music, but here we are.
[doublepost=1474388786][/doublepost]
Ah yes, Amazon Prime where most of the music I want to listen to is unavailable or only a 10 second sample can be played.

Dont knock amazon Prime if Prime member-

• Its Free - free music!
• Its improving daily
• It works with Echo Dot
• SONOS are offering Echo Dot integration in 2017
• for just over £20 you can upload a quarter of a million songs to their server.

Cheers

(GPM subscriber and amazon Prime user),

 

[pratikindia]

While many people are happy about streaming media, I remain cautious about where everything is headed.

To start is bandwidth of the interwebs. Streaming eats a lot of bandwidth that is still a limited resource in most of the world. The more people stream, the more constraints we put on the network. You can argue it forces growth, but it also causes headaches for transition.

This data comes at a premium through most ISPs/Carriers. Data caps make sure that you can only stream as much as they want you to. The more you want to stream the more you have to pay.

Ownership of content is at risk. While anyone born after 1995 is probably comfortable with all their documents, data, music, photos, movies and whatnots "in the cloud" many of us older folk understand why ownership of your content matters. Streaming gives you temporary access to content that is not owned by you. Whenever you don't pay for the streaming service, you immediately lose the music you listen to. It guarantees that customers will always be back for another month because otherwise they have to find some other means to listen. If the industry were to move completely to streaming, nobody would be able to listen to their music without a subscription being paid to a company who has rights to stream.

For a long time, my data cap on my cellular made streaming a non-option. But that cap has significantly increased by itself over time and now I can stream for a time during each billing period without worrying about crazy overage fees. Now that I can though, I don't want to. I buy my music because I believe a purchased album means more to the artist than streaming only their most popular songs. Plus the sound quality of a CD (uncompressed audio file) can't be beat with streaming (yet). Plus there's something to get signed at a concert.

Streaming music is also now introducing "exclusive" music. It used to be anybody could by an "exclsuive" album from Goodies (or Target or Walmart or wherever). Now, "exclusive" means only subscribers of the exclusive provider are allowed to listen. That's a huge difference in who has access to new music.

I know I'm a minority of people who don't like the path streaming music has taken. This is the way the industry is moving and due to all the **** pirates out there, we aren't going back because this keeps the industry alive; the point of he article. I dread the day I start feeling the need to add $10/15 month bills to my plate because it becomes the only way to access new music.

I share the same thought as yours and I still buy physical copies and digital copies. But I am happy to be an AM subscriber as I can listen to millions of songs which I did not buy.

 

[macs4nw]

It would be quite a bit more than $25/month. If you provided me a service with access to all video based entertainment (movies/TV/cable series) past and current, on demand, commercial free, to any device I want, I'd easily pay $100/month for that, probably $200.

Perhaps because you've been conditioned by the cable cos that such an amount is a reasonable cost, but I believe that figure to be way out of proportion to the actual amount of content an average working person can reasonably consume.

Stick to that ~$50/week amount for a moment which is roughly $7 a day, that means you'd have to watch give-or-take three full length 2-hr movies each and every day of the week for the entire month to justify $200/mo.

Streaming your average content (movies, sports, sitcoms, news, documentaries etc.) should come in at no more than $50-$75/mo, while the providers could of course slightly upcharge for new releases, sports blockbusters, etc.

But will that happen? Not likely, and why not? Pure greed by content owners and distributors, if you ask me, and Hollywood's powerful lobbying effort to bring about the DMCA. Had there been a Napster-like service for movie and video content prior to the advent of the DMCA, causing those content producers and distributors to nearly bleed to extinction similar to what happened to the music industry, contrary to what some will argue, the industry would have survived, however top actors and actresses wouldn't be paid the exorbitant millions per movie they currently make and more importantly for consumers, the monthly fee 'landscape' we now have, might have been drastically more modest.

 

[69650]

From what I've seen and read, one of the biggest growth sectors in the music industry has been the re-emergence of the old physical LPs. A lot of people are starting to get fed up with the poor quality of compressed music. Personally I think it's great to able to wander through my local record store again on a boring Sunday afternoon.

 

[OllyW]

From what I've seen and read, one of the biggest growth sectors in the music industry has been the re-emergence of the old physical LPs. A lot of people are starting to get fed up with the poor quality of compressed music. Personally I think it's great to able to wander through my local record store again on a boring Sunday afternoon.

It is great to see vinyl back on the shelves again but isn't it bloody expensive.

 

[MacBergin]

Of course, both Pandora and Spotify are losing a lot of money each year. Considering the financial situation of their costs, which don't go down the more subscribers they get, they will just be losing even more money.

I've been saying for some time now, that in the long run, the only companies that will survive in the retail music market are Apple, Amazon, Google and possibly Facebook, if they're interested, and also, possibly, Microsoft.

There has never been a successful music streaming company since the very beginning back around the year 2000. The only way it works is if there's a parent company that absorbs the costs out of other profit centers, because it believes that it benefits those other profit centers in their own sales and profits.

So those companies I mentioned can easily afford the several hundred million a year in losses both Pandora and Spotify are suffering. But neither Pandora nor Spotify can, in the long run.

You watch, within the next 18 months Facebook will buy Spotify.

 

[DevNull0]

So, music streaming is a $1.6 billion business over 6 months. The entire music industry is $7 billion a year.

Meanwhile Activision Blizzard (makers of World of Warcraft) made $4.6 Billion last year. League of Legends alone made $1.6 billion last year. Basically the entire music industry is a tiny pimple on the entertainment industry. So why is Apple (who made $234 billion last year) fighting so hard over such a microscopic pie.

Apple is throwing away the entire gaming market (not to mention all the extra mac profit they could make selling better video cards), and they're going after a market where a 100% market share wouldn't even be noticeable on their balance sheet.

Even VR which Timmy dismisses is already over $1 billion this year and estimated to be a $100 billion market by 2020. Chase those record labels, Apple.

 

[thisisnotmyname]

Perhaps because you've been conditioned by the cable cos that such an amount is a reasonable cost, but I believe that figure to be way out of proportion to the actual amount of content an average working person can reasonably consume.

I'll be fair and state that I'm not an average working person. But on the flip side I'm sure there are plenty of people right in the median income group that have monthly cable bills over $100 today.

Stick to that ~$50/week amount for a moment which is roughly $7 a day, that means you'd have to watch give-or-take three full length 2-hr movies each and every day of the week for the entire month to justify $200/mo.

Sounds like you are using redbox numbers or such. A movie ticket around here costs a minimum of $11 and up to $22 depending on theater and features (Imax, Atmos, etc...). My first post referred to *everything*, no more months long delay while content is in theaters and such either. Does that change your perspective on my hypothetical?

Streaming your average content (movies, sports, sitcoms, news, documentaries etc.) should come in at no more than $50-$75/mo, while the providers could of course slightly upcharge for new releases, sports blockbusters, etc.

OK, time for me to walk back a small part of my everything. I did mean everything TV and movies but not sports. I would expect NFL/NBA/MLB/NHL to all be uncharges but I would also like those to be available with first run live streaming as well.

But will that happen? Not likely, and why not? Pure greed by content owners and distributors, if you ask me, and Hollywood's powerful lobbying effort to bring about the DMCA. Had there been a Napster-like service for movie and video content prior to the advent of the DMCA, causing those content producers and distributors to nearly bleed to extinction similar to what happened to the music industry, contrary to what some will argue, the industry would have survived, however top actors and actresses wouldn't be paid the exorbitant millions per movie they currently make and more importantly for consumers, the monthly fee 'landscape' we now have, might have been drastically more modest.

You completely lost me here. Napster success in video would have caused studios to lose money so they would *lower* prices?

It seems like you feel there's a monopoly on content. Sure most of what we consume comes out of a limited number of producers but that's our choice, not due to barriers to entry. There are TONS of indie movies out there (and great ones, I watch a lot of indie pics). Serial works are less common but exist. The majority of people really like what the major studios are putting forth though and feel it is worth the current pricing. I think the situation I described is worth even more, to me, and I suspect it would be to a very large population of others as well.

Media isn't a social justice issue, we're not talking about life saving content and if little Billy doesn't get his Big Bang Theory he just won't make it to nine years old. Statements about what pricing *should* be just seem out of place. I could definitely be misreading you though, maybe you are just doing as I did and stating "I'd pay $XXX for this type of service."

 

[DoctaSfink]

So, music streaming is a $1.6 billion business over 6 months. The entire music industry is $7 billion a year.

Meanwhile Activision Blizzard (makers of World of Warcraft) made $4.6 Billion last year. League of Legends alone made $1.6 billion last year. Basically the entire music industry is a tiny pimple on the entertainment industry. So why is Apple (who made $234 billion last year) fighting so hard over such a microscopic pie.

Apple is throwing away the entire gaming market (not to mention all the extra mac profit they could make selling better video cards), and they're going after a market where a 100% market share wouldn't even be noticeable on their balance sheet.

Even VR which Timmy dismisses is already over $1 billion this year and estimated to be a $100 billion market by 2020. Chase those record labels, Apple.

This is so true. These phones contain hardware (when paired with a nice analogue controller) that, in my opinion, easily exceeds the quality of Nintendo's 3DS, which still holds the lion's share of the handheld gaming market. In the gaming industry, developers want to sell games on platforms with a large install base. Smartphones have become ubiquitous. Why is it only the freemium trash gets development funding while all the awesome paid games are relegated to consoles?

Slap a high-quality $60 analogue controller onto your existing smartphone and boom, you have a portable system potentially rivaling or exceeding the PS3 in graphical fidelity. I've long predicted gaming would transfer almost entirely to handheld devices, but this transfer is taking far longer than I expected.

 

[Abazigal]

So, music streaming is a $1.6 billion business over 6 months. The entire music industry is $7 billion a year.

Meanwhile Activision Blizzard (makers of World of Warcraft) made $4.6 Billion last year. League of Legends alone made $1.6 billion last year. Basically the entire music industry is a tiny pimple on the entertainment industry. So why is Apple (who made $234 billion last year) fighting so hard over such a microscopic pie.

Apple is throwing away the entire gaming market (not to mention all the extra mac profit they could make selling better video cards), and they're going after a market where a 100% market share wouldn't even be noticeable on their balance sheet.

Even VR which Timmy dismisses is already over $1 billion this year and estimated to be a $100 billion market by 2020. Chase those record labels, Apple.

Not every decision Apple makes is based solely on revenue. Else, we would have had cheaper iPhones and hybrids years ago. Nor do I see Apple chasing the gaming market (partly because games require powerful graphics cards, which tend to run very hot and make a lot of noise and consume a lot of power, factors which are anathema to Apple's design tenets).

A large percentage of Apple's users likely enjoy listening to music, and controlling the music market would allow Apple to better connect with its users. This would also give Apple more leverage over music rights owners, which in turn gives it more power in delivering content to its customers.

I also suspect that Apple will eventually leverage on its music streaming capabilities to deliver video streaming as well. Imagine a combined Apple Music + video subscription. It would be very effective in keeping users within the Apple ecosystem.

In short, yes, Apple Music likely isn't a great revenue generator on its own, but done right, it can help Apple sell more hardware, and that's just as important.

 

[DevNull0]

Not every decision Apple makes is based solely on revenue. Else, we would have had cheaper iPhones and hybrids years ago. Nor do I see Apple chasing the gaming market (partly because games require powerful graphics cards, which tend to run very hot and make a lot of noise and consume a lot of power, factors which are anathema to Apple's design tenets).

Why do you make assumptions how how you think PCs must operate and cite it as gospel? I have a high end gaming PC, water-cooled CPU and I bought a better-build-quality video card that reviewers said ran quiet. The PC running full out playing Doom is whisper quiet. My MBP is louder as soon as the fan goes from "off" to "slow".

Apple could make whisper quiet gaming PCs if they wanted to. Heck, look at the Razer Blade Stealth, it's a powerful gaming laptop that puts the MBA to shame in size, noise, and build quality. And it even docks with a desktop graphics card for even more performance at home. On the other hand, as the posting right above yours said, iPhone gaming could dominate a $200 billion market if Apple were interested. Instead they focus their efforts on the $7 billion music market. Personally I am very much a gamer, and I don't even download iPhone games much anymore because it's too hard to separate the gems for the freemium trash. I even played Oz: Broken Kingdom (from the iP7 keynote). It is a beautiful game with so much potential ruined by a horribly broken upgrade system designed to get you to fork out a non-stop stream of cash. That game for $20 with no iAP would be one amazing game. But as it is, it's unplayable junk that is just frustrating because of the blown potential.

I spend about $50/month on gaming software, and not one cent goes to Apple. I would LOVE to have more good mobile games.

A large percentage of Apple's users likely enjoy listening to music, and controlling the music market would allow Apple to better connect with its users. This would also give Apple more leverage over music rights owners, which in turn gives it more power in delivering content to its customers.

Apple has sold a billion iDevices. If it were a large percentage of Apple users, it would be a heck of a lot more than a $7 billion market.

 

[DoctaSfink]

Not every decision Apple makes is based solely on revenue. Else, we would have had cheaper iPhones and hybrids years ago. Nor do I see Apple chasing the gaming market

That's the thing. Apple does not need to chase the gaming market at all. Apple is the gaming market. Android is the gaming market. The hardware is already there. The OS is already there. The development tools are already there. The convenience for the user is unprecedented. Third-party developers should be chasing Apple and they should be chasing Android. They are the ones who stand to lose everything in the wake of freemium models that are taking advantage of a massively untapped install base.

games require powerful graphics cards

Not true; not even close to being true. The Nintendo 3DS has sold over 60 million units since launch; that is more than any other current generation home console, and those consoles sport way more powerful video cards. Current iPhones could run laps upon laps around the 3DS in terms of graphics, run those laps in a resolution multiple times that of the 3DS, and run those laps with far more power and heat efficiency.

Games require solid software development that takes advantage of existing hardware.

 

[Datalinks]

Maybe we will get better music too now...