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Apple Music Beats Spotify in Monthly Unique Users Thanks to 3-Month Free Trial
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I use AM, not Spotify, and overall think it's a great service. I guess I'm just baffled that 2 years later, AM has a big customer base, but the saying "A rising tide lifts all boats" seems to be more applicable in this case when defining Spotify's success.
I still think AM needs features such as:
- Improved UI (I know it has improved, but Spotify feels more natural, and I'm not even a Spotify subscriber). UI is Apple's strong suit, so I'd expect this to continue improving.
- Music Discovery - I'm not sure if "For You" is quite there. Apple's "mood" or "activity" playlists are rarely updated it seems.
- Playlist Management - Where are Shared Playlist? Why can't I subscribe to my friend's playlists?
But it means something that people who have Spotify barely use Spotify. I think they should report the numbers regardless.
The UI is still terrible.
Why can't Apple - the KING of UI designs, design SOMETHING that is easy to use on iPhone, iPad and Mac?
The desktop version of Apple Music blows. and the amount of different menus you have on Apple music is just insane.
Apple should just seperate the Apple Music App and name the music app iPod again to avoid confusion.
Why can't Apple - the KING of UI designs, design SOMETHING that is easy to use on iPhone, iPad and Mac?
The desktop version of Apple Music blows. and the amount of different menus you have on Apple music is just insane.
Apple should just seperate the Apple Music App and name the music app iPod again to avoid confusion.
So even with the free trial Apple Music still has 10 million less "unique users" than Spotify has paying subscribers. Something just doesn't add up. I don't think 20 million Spotify customers paid a monthly bill and didn't use their service, more likely there are a higher number of Spotify users that stream through their home Wi-Fi on smart TVs, consoles, or devices like Roku. The statement "Verto only tracks Apple Music usage on mobile devices, so Apple's unique monthly user number could be higher" is absolutely meaningless because Spotify's monthly user number could be higher by even more. Apple didn't beat Spotify, it came up ahead of it in this one survey simply by limiting the sampling population to mobile use. I would not have published this article with such a glaring gap in the data.
Apple Music is a decent service, but it really hasn't done anything to differentiate itself from the other services. Its only attempts so far that I've seen is by offering artists millions of dollars for a period of exclusivity. Here's an idea Apple, make your product better than the competition and you won't have to rely on artificial market limitations to obtain customers.
Apple Music is a decent service, but it really hasn't done anything to differentiate itself from the other services. Its only attempts so far that I've seen is by offering artists millions of dollars for a period of exclusivity. Here's an idea Apple, make your product better than the competition and you won't have to rely on artificial market limitations to obtain customers.
Agreed.
I actually like Apple Music, but iTunes is a users nightmare. It's a ****ing mess! I quite hate navigating it.
Thanks for the Swinsian suggestion, I've been looking for an alternative to iTunes for many of the same reasons... large masterfully curated library, I still buy my music and don't trust Apple not to screw it up or litter it with cloud crap. How do you handle syncing to iOS devices (where I've already switched to Cesium as my music player) with this setup?
Yes, it's a magical trick gone horrible wrong. The audience is gasping in shock but the magician stands their pretending he didn't just actually cut off his assistants legs.
When it comes to discovering new music, Spotify blows Apple Music out of the water. AM continuously recommends hip-hop/rap in the "for me" section, no matter how many times I tell them I listen to indie/electronic. While I like the AM UI, I much prefer discovering new music and artists. Until AM can somehow change that, Spotify will continue to get my money.
I find that it struggles when streaming over cellular data if you have anything less that great signal strength, something I almost never experience with Spotify.
I actually would like to switch, Spotifys free tier doesn't sit well with me and I think they are going to have more problems with artists abandoning the service/withholding releases unless they do something with it, unfortunately when I have tried AM I have always ended up back using Spotify within the month. Its that bad.
Spotify 51 sessions per month x 30.4M users = 1550M sessions
Pandora 23 sessions per month x 32.6 = 750M sessions
Apple 12 sessions per month x 40.7M users = 488M sessions
So, Apple is doing less than 1/3 the business as Spotify and is still being beat by Pandora.
Summary - most iphone users have apple music but dont use it because they're mostly using Spotify, Pandora or nothing.
Pandora 23 sessions per month x 32.6 = 750M sessions
Apple 12 sessions per month x 40.7M users = 488M sessions
So, Apple is doing less than 1/3 the business as Spotify and is still being beat by Pandora.
Summary - most iphone users have apple music but dont use it because they're mostly using Spotify, Pandora or nothing.
Wow. Thanks for that! When I last looked a few years ago, there were no naively-coded third-party music manager/players out there for OS X that looked good and worked well. I will definitely have to give this a shot.
I tried Apple Music for 3 months and really really tried to like it and even paid for a month or two afterwards to see if I could get into it. I wanted everything to be integrated etc and they somehow screwed it up. Was miserable really.
Spotify is superior in every way - I can't really think of any area where Apple holds an advantage other than the fact its still integrated (albeit poorly) with iTunes and the 3 month trial.
I can pump my tunes to my PS4 using Spotify and it plays over the game i'm playing through my TV speakers. Incredible. Just works everywhere and still has very nice interface.
Spotify is superior in every way - I can't really think of any area where Apple holds an advantage other than the fact its still integrated (albeit poorly) with iTunes and the 3 month trial.
I can pump my tunes to my PS4 using Spotify and it plays over the game i'm playing through my TV speakers. Incredible. Just works everywhere and still has very nice interface.
huh... didn't think iTunes was still that bad. I still use iTunes, but only on v10.3, so that I can still transfer music to my 80 GB iPod Classic (although I do acknowledge there have been alternatives to iTunes for years now).
I am a longtime Spotify user and Apple has given me no reason to fully switch. I tried AM with the trial for the full integration into the iPhone but AM isn't available on other platforms like Amazon Fire, Roku, Playstation, etc. I have an Echo Dot in the kitchen for hands-free music while cooking and AM is a no-go. This type of integration is where the market is moving, not away from it. I need more non-apple platforms to consider a move. For me, there are more cons to AM than pros, so the switching cost is too high.
I think their walled garden approach to AM is hurting them more then helping at this point. But hey, if they can get Def Leppard and Bob Seger to join their library, then they may get my ten bucks.
I think their walled garden approach to AM is hurting them more then helping at this point. But hey, if they can get Def Leppard and Bob Seger to join their library, then they may get my ten bucks.
I've been using Cesium too and it's very nice. I don't yet have an answer to your question. I'm experimenting with breaking free of the Apple "ecosystem" and figured music was the best place to start. I've been using Apple products for 34 years, but I'm beginning to wonder how much longer their products and services will truly appeal to me. I wish Apple would focus more on hardware, the OS, the UI, etc., and less on milking customers through half-baked "services". I think this is a telling sign of a growing weakness within the company, perhaps the beginning of the rot. They were always a hardware company, yet today they let the Mac stagnate while Microsoft of all companies bests them in desktop hardware innovation. Apple Music is pre-installed on hundreds of millions of devices, yet it can't get meaningful traction. I think Steve would puke if he knew about Apple Music. It's the return of DRM.
Anyway...
So I'm trying to use third party services as I'm no longer certain that my next phone will be an iPhone, or even that my next computer will be a Mac. Therefore I'm avoiding iTunes for the purposes of this experiment. I'm using Swinsian on the desktop or organize and manage my library. I have Google Music set to upload my entire library to Google. So when I'm on an iOS device, I'm now using the Google Music app for playback and not syncing my phone via iTunes. I can add albums to my Google Music library and see them across my devices, just not on my computer (unless I'm logged in to the Google Music web app, which is quite nice).
I view services like Apple Music, Spotify, Google, etc. as a great way to try music, but if I really dig the album, I buy it. I want the lossless audio files, plus streaming services completely screw artists. If you really care about music and the people who make it, you should buy the album. And this goes double if the artist is independent. More and more indie labels are selling lossless audio files on their websites and there are great sites like Bleep.com that have a huge selection of lossless audio from many artists and labels. Instead of trying to nickel and dime me with Apple Music, Apple would make A LOT more money if they just sold Apple Lossless files. Oh well.
Anyway, I don't want my computer library messed with in any way. I've had numerous minor problems with iCloud Music Library. Being a "collector", that isn't acceptable to me. While I don't believe iCloud Music Library has deleted anything from my library, I can't truly be certain as I have a huge number of files and I can't check all of them. But I have discovered duplicates and albums that iCloud Music Library wrongly reports as uploaded that I cannot access on my devices. In short, I don't trust the integrity of the service. So I'd rather keep my "collector" library in a one-way sync relationship with any cloud service.
So far I'm pleased with Swinsian's speed and responsiveness. Blows iTunes away. Time will tell if it's reliable and stable, but so far so good. And I'm surprisingly pleased with Google Music's interface, the responsiveness of the app, and sound quality, which I find better than Apple's Music app.
The sound quality on Play Music is horrible even on the highest setting. I can't listen to it for more than 5 minutes. Apple Music has the best sound quality of all of them I tried.
Sound quality from best to worst.
Sound quality from best to worst.
- Apple Music (Highest quality sounds even better than some of my CD's).
- Amazon Music (Much better than it was however some older albums don't sound good. Garth Brooks however sounds great as I heard they switched over to 256kbps AAC however some albums might still be in mud MP3).
- Spotify Music (Too loud. Really my volume meter maxes out so it might seem to sound better but too me they just doubled the volume of the standard CD).
- Google Play Music (Mud quality at 320kbps MP3 I can hear metallic flat swish sound and after listening to album I then switched to Apple Music to hear the rest of the album and my ears stopped hurting).
Wow. Get out of my head! This is me and my thoughts as well. Great minds and all that.
Thanks for the info and validation. I don't think we're alone.
While I've had some minor issues with iCloud Music Library (as previously noted), iCloud Photo Library TRASHED hundreds of photos when it first launched. I have never re-enabled it.