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Apple Music Growing at Record Pace With Two Million Subscribers Added in Just Five Weeks
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Well, I can personally say it accounted for at least one new subscriber. Happy with it so far.
It can’t be. Remember the headline claiming HomePod sales were disappointing only to later say in the actual article it was unclear how many were sold?
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Literally, you have no idea.
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Are you serious? I mean, I know what you’re saying but you can’t just dismiss the timeline.
You can't possibly know this, no more than anyone else can positively say it has. The fact is no one really knows except maybe Apple and they never provide this level of information.
One thing for sure Apple Music is growing rapidly and Apple Music is just a service that fits into Apple's overall vision and ecosystem. Spotify which I have used in the past, but cancelled a long time ago has 80 million paying customers and yet can't even hit break-even. That has to be a scary place to find yourself as a business. Apple doesn't have to make money because of the fact that they sell hardware and it's how they make their overall cash flow. Even Sirius XM with less than 30 million customers has made a profit. But yet here is Spotify not even break-even and that says one thing, their business model is not working. They are working on an IPO to get more cash to keep it going, but will that be enough for them to make it. How many subscribers do they need to hit break-even 100 million subscribers will that do it?
The good news is currently we do have a choice with there being multiple players. Apple is just one of many music service providers. However, I would not want to be Pandora or Spotify with the likes of Apple, Google and Amazon around... Don't get me wrong, I hope they all make it, but long term it's not likely.
Is paying more for music streaming such a bad idea though, if it means it’s sustainable?
Google Music is about as crappy as it gets and their so called radio music is by far the worst of them all. Because of YouTube Red I tried to hang with them as a paying subscriber but their music services in my opinion is atrocious.
It’s called deductive thinking. It is more likely that people buying HomePod already were using Apple Music.
You can't download music on free services for when you're on the subway or on a plane. You can't choose exactly what to listen to on Google's free service. It's radio so you get "songs like" or "similar to." If I want to listen to an entire album, I can't do that on Google radio.
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Make sure you "love" songs. It makes a difference. Don't reset it as you wipe any learning it's done. I had to go in and train AM when I first moved over but it's gotten much better. They do need to work on making that more intuitive though. The favorites mix is also great since it's all stuff you've "loved."
Go to Browse >> Playlists >> Activities and Moods. Or you could just type your mood in search and tap playlists.
This. The people buying the HomePod likely already have a music streaming subscription. They don’t get a HomePod with the express intention of subscribing to Apple Music after the purchase.
Home Pod owners who have not used Apple Music previously would go for the trial first. Just makes more sense.
Yay for gimped 256AAC files being streamed through a substandard DAC inside of a cell phone! The future... BEHOLD!
They need to ask the "artists" the same question. Is $9.99 and under so bad if it means keeping their industry sustainable?
The horse has left the barn, I doubt many would pay $25 per month for music. They will just go back to the old ways.
Sorry for the lawyer answer, but it depends on what you mean by "sustainable."
The fact there are no fewer than 4 well-funded and well-managed companies currently in this space all charging mostly the same prices, I'd say it is "sustainable" today.
And if by sustainable you mean going back to the price-fixing and anti-consumer business models of the 80s and 90s, then no thanks, I don't want that at all.
Technology usually makes things cheaper, but not in the case of music for some reason. Where in the 80s and 90s a band needed a huge budget just to record and master, today the technology is so accessible that a band can make a song recording that sounds 90% as good as a professionally mastered track using only a Macbook Pro and few hundred dollars worth of gear from Amazon. Likewise, where in the 80s and 90s a band needed a big marketing budget to get space in magazines, to get played on the radio, to get prominent space in the store, today social media and streaming make direct artist-to-consumer marketing a lot more affordable.
Yet record companies continue to exist and continue to insist that the artists must pay them for their services, and pass those costs down to the consumer. No, I don't buy it.
I have a few musician friends that record their own tracks, use low-cost mastering, sell direct on CDBaby, have a big social media following, and load everything up on streaming. They also hussle like crazy and work their butts of playing as many gigs as possible. By no means are they wealthy or living lavish lifestyles, but at no point in time has being a musician been about wealth and luxury unless you were in the top 1%, which I think applies to almost all careers.
The point is, I think it is sustainable today. To the extent it isn't, the delta should be made up by trimming fat from the top rather than pushing consumers to pony up more money.
"The harder task for Spotify will be turning a profit, which it has yet to do. Apple Music executive and record industry mogul Jimmy Iovine recently said streaming music services are "not making any money" due to a lack of margins, suggesting that a standard $9.99 per month subscription is not profitable".
So once they have hooked-up enough people, prices will rise.......and we will be sorry.
So once they have hooked-up enough people, prices will rise.......and we will be sorry.
Yeah, I was already considering doing so today to complain about something else that irks me: Cars that have BlueTooth but pretty crappy microphones. Every single time I get into my car it auto connects for music, however it also auto connects the mic so Siri can't understand anything I'm saying. Every single time I have to manually disconnect the mic by invoking Siri and selecting the audio input.
I think I have a good chance at getting a response for three reasons:
- Apple is a family friendly company and this is an issue for people with children
- Apple has been working towards making driving safer with Siri eyes free, so having to do this on the road can be dangerous and it only requires a simple toggle switch to not connect to that source for Siri
- I have a couple contacts on the Executive Relations team at Apple who I have worked with a few times over the years to improve the experience with their online store and their iPhone Upgrade Program. They're basically people who, when issues have been escalated to the highest level, interface directly between consumers and the executives at Apple. I didn't even know they existed until a couple years ago when I had a serious issue with my iPhone 6s. They've been very interested in collecting various bits of feedback from me in the past about how to improve usability for AOS and iUP so they might be able to put me in touch with someone on the iOS software side. Back in 2008 Steve Jobs replied to an email I sent about a serious issue I was having with Apps on the brand new App Store and he put me in touch with a senior engineer. I wonder if that guy is still around…
Historically, the deductive reasoning here is extremely inaccurate once the actuals are reported.
Again, you and everyone else have no idea.
Spotify just can’t seem to catch a break.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/14/17117160/spotify-mechanical-license-copyright-wixen-explainer
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/14/17117160/spotify-mechanical-license-copyright-wixen-explainer
And of those 4, all but one of them are clearly subsidising streaming music using profits earned elsewhere. Speaks volumes about its profitability, or the lack thereof.
The issue here is music copyright. Every time technology allows for a new paradigm of consuming music, a new law invariably gets passed to "fix" music copyright, which just makes the entire process of tracking payments even more convoluted and confusing. It's wasteful, it's inefficient, and there's really nothing these companies can do about it, because they are not the ones who wrote the rules in the first place.
Agreed. And I wonder if there is some strategy here in hitting Spotify—again, if it goes to trial—to figure this all out. I would imagine that Wixen chose Spotify to challenge the position of this copyright spiderweb because they know Spotify doesn’t have the resources to fight this one out, but they do know that Apple, Amazon, and Google do, and if they win over Spotify by de facto they will just turn around and collect their “royalties” from the Big Three. Can you imagine if Spotify finds itself in a position to join forces with the other streamers so they can all save their $$ if they lose? Baffling to me nonetheless.