Apple Music Is the World's Second Most Popular Music Streaming Service Behind Spotify

[randyhudson]

It's impossible to compare subscriber base sizes. It's like comparing Amazon Prime Video subscribers to Netflix. Are they counting only Apple Music subscriptions, or including Apple One, free trials...?

The only interesting comparison would be number of songs played by subscribers.

 

[svish]

With Apple One, subscribers of Apple Music should only increase.

 

[Complex757]

Some of you act as if you work for these companies. Are you paying them or are they paying you? Sheeeesh.

Why do some of you care what some people prefer.

 

[michaeljk]

Spotify's Mac desktop app is far superior to Apple Music on the app. It has a responsive, quick UI. It is easy to find things and songs stream immediately.

Apple Music, on the other hand, is slow and clunky, full of bugs and doesn't work half the time. It's the worst Mac App I use (and it's from Apple, on their own platform.)

I know people say this all the time, but it's true: Steve is spinning in his grave.

Fire Eddie Cue! Just Fire him!

 

[stavibeats]

It's obvious as to WHY Spotify has a better user experience. They have a single focus - make a music streaming app - Apple has the resources to compete but they are clearly satisfied with what they're currently doing. I personally use Apple Music. I tried Spotify but the UI didn't please me - I hate how hard it was pushing podcasts down my throat.

 

[michaeljk]

With Apple One, subscribers of Apple Music should only increase.

This is the primary reason I stick with Apple Music, despite it being pretty seriously problematic, especially the desktop app, which is anything but intuitive. It's really terrible actually. Fortunately, I rarely use the desktop app, and almost only use the iOS App on my phone and AppleTV. I upgraded to AppleOne (probably like most) because it is only a couple of bucks more than just Apple Music plus the storage I need on iCloud, and then I get to watch Ted Lasso too. I might take a look at Spotify again and consider dumping Apple One and Apple Music.

 

[-BigMac-]

Maybe because there is no Windows Apple Music app.
Windows iTunes is f**king garbage.
No Apple Music, no lossless, no spacial audio, no hardware acceleration, no font smoothing.

Apple forgot Windows owns 85% of computer software market.

Meanwhile windows Spotify app is killing it👌🏻

 

[bobenhaus]

Spotify doesn’t deserve their number 1 spot. They have the lowest paying rates for artists, they do all sorts of shady things like create their own fake artists which they place in their top playlists , all to keep the revenues to themselves and avoid paying the miserable rates, and top it all now by investing $100 Millions in AI for military, « intelligent arms » And even brag about it because they know no one cares ( all while pretending they can’t pay the artists because they’re not making enough money. Meanwhile, Daniel Ek is worth 3.6 BILLIONS of dollars).
Ek and Spotify are considered the Darth Vader of the music tech industry.

Do a search if any of this sounds weird to you. Daniel Ek’s bots can downvote this to oblivion, but it had to be said.
Use better alternatives like Apple Music, Tidal,, Bandcamp, etc…

EDIT : here's a few links I posted in a later post here : https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-service-behind-spotify.2331888/post-30790772

Oh boohoo!

 

[applicious84]

Apple Music is the new Internet Explorer

 

[skitidetdu]

This is true, but "a lot" still isn't very much unless you're Adele or Drake and can muster a billion streams. The average amount per stream is about $.006 (as in, six-hundredths of a cent). Occasionally I've seen a stream reach a whopping half cent. But unless you're extremely popular, it doesn't add up to very much. Downloads, however, are much more lucrative but increasingly rare.

I wasn't talking about making a lot of money on streams. It is about paying out respectable royalty to the people that fill Spotify with content. The amount that Apple Music pay per stream is a lot higher than what Spotify pays. I can see this clearly from my monthly statements.

Edit: there was an article in a Swedish newspaper the other day about the best paid salaries in Sweden. Guess how many Spotify people are on the top 20 list.

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

Spotify's Mac desktop app is far superior to Apple Music on the app. It has a responsive, quick UI. It is easy to find things and songs stream immediately.

Apple Music, on the other hand, is slow and clunky, full of bugs and doesn't work half the time. It's the worst Mac App I use (and it's from Apple, on their own platform.)

I know people say this all the time, but it's true: Steve is spinning in his grave.

I don’t remember what Spotify is like, but AM has some really obvious UI fails that just make the listening experience so much more tedious:

1. Who in their right mind came up with the idea that the app is called Music but Apple Music is not an app but a service you enable within the Music app? The app should be called Apple Music.

2. The whole way Music/AM splits up what music I own and is stored locally, what music I’ve added and downloaded, what I’ve added to my library but not downloaded, etc., is unnecessarily confusing:

If I download two tracks off and a ten track album, why do I have to switch to “Apple Music” to see the eight remaining tracks?

Even if I’m not connected to the Internet, I would still want to see a greyed out track listing of the remaining tracks.

But with AM, you have a “Library” that only shows what you’ve added but you have to switch to the AM tab within Music to see music you haven’t added.

It should be one unified library that shows me the complete track list of an album or playlist I’ve liked or added, and then each track, album and playlist gives me the option to save to device or push to cloud.

I’ve added songs from new artists that were actually part of albums. But when I check in my library it just looks like a single since the Music library doesn’t show the rest of the tracks.

Also, why is there no easy way to like, favorite, heart or dislike a song? I have to press and hold for a menu and sometimes scroll down to find the like heart button. That’s 2-3 steps just to heart a song. Really dumb.

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

Maybe because there is no Windows Apple Music app.
Windows iTunes is f**king garbage.
No Apple Music, no lossless, no spacial audio, no hardware acceleration, no font smoothing.

Apple forgot Windows owns 85% of computer software market.

Meanwhile windows Spotify app is killing it??

Agree -It’s a pretty dumb move.

If AM was an awesome desktop app then it would really be a good marketing ploy to give windows users a look into how clean and easy Apple apps can be.

However, the current AM desktop app is very clunky and buggy so it’s probably best to keep it Mac only.

 

[Mr.Blacky]

I have listened to some German content on my account though so I doubt the accuracy of your statement.

You didn't really read the comment I quoted, didn't you? ?
Because then you would see the possibility, that my comment was purely sarcsam.

 

[211]

Apple Music’s share would increase if Apple took the user experience seriously. The UI is confusing with too much hidden swiping, hidden options and lack of customization. Apple used to know how to make things easy for the user, the iPod took just seconds to understand. I know the Music app can do more than the iPod, but Apple hasn’t made it easy to navigate. Finding songs is a pain as not everything is shown in the results. You can’t even see the whole title or artist name. It keeps pushing its own agenda (ie. forcing you to listen to its new music) rather than adapting to what the user wants.

I love that Apple is progressing with the technology side of things, such as lossless and Dolby Atmos, but that’s not enough to encourage you to use the service when it’s so frustrating to use. And don’t get me started on Siri

 

[jntdroid]

Spotify still won't allow you to sync your own library right?

If that's still the case, that's why I stick with Amazon and Apple music. If it's not the case, then I might look at Spotify again.

Honestly we'd go all in on Apple if I could take the time to recreate all of our playlists, so for now we're still primarily on Amazon for that reason alone.

 

[Smartass]

I was on Apple Music for 5 years, then i switched to spotify the moment it was available. I don't regret it one bit. Apple music is good if youre a typical "POP music from MTV listener", otherwise it's crap.

Also, i got annoyed so many times by the shi**y UX in the app.

 

[Smartass]

Apple Music’s share would increase if Apple took the user experience seriously. The UI is confusing with too much hidden swiping, hidden options and lack of customization. Apple used to know how to make things easy for the user, the iPod took just seconds to understand. I know the Music app can do more than the iPod, but Apple hasn’t made it easy to navigate. Finding songs is a pain as not everything is shown in the results. You can’t even see the whole title or artist name. It keeps pushing its own agenda (ie. forcing you to listen to its new music) rather than adapting to what the user wants.

I love that Apple is progressing with the technology side of things, such as lossless and Dolby Atmos, but that’s not enough to encourage you to use the service when it’s so frustrating to use. And don’t get me started on Siri

Do you still have to tap three times, just to like a certain song? As in three times: Unlock phone while music is playing, open music app, tap three dots(or something like that) and finally click the heart icon?

I remember back in 2015, the heart icon was right next to controls buttons, so easy and simple. Then apple obviously hired a complete moron to be in charge of UX for that app and it went downhill from then on.

 

[211]

Do you still have to tap three times, just to like a certain song? As in three times: Unlock phone while music is playing, open music app, tap three dots(or something like that) and finally click the heart icon?

I remember back in 2015, the heart icon was right next to controls buttons, so easy and simple. Then apple obviously hired a complete moron to be in charge of UX for that app and it went downhill from then on.

Yep. Along with Shuffle, Loop and other options people would use regularly are hidden away. There is so much empty space that could be used for quick access. I have to relearn where everything is nearly every time I use the app

 

[lazyrighteye]

“WE’RE NUMBER 2!”
I’m fine with that. Can you imagine if Apple were the #1 streamer? Ugh… The whiny “no fair” chorus would be insufferable.

But look… There’s choice. How about that. If you want to rock your Samsung Fold and ThinkPad ecosystem, you have a solution. And - get this - it’s the #1 solution! And we all know #1 is the best so you’re kind of like #1 by default. Look at you and that #1 swagger… Rock it!

Like I’ve said many times: I’m glad there are options. Let’s keep it that way.

 

[ian87w]

Spotify has free tier. It will have more userbase no matter what.

And look at that Tencent Music. They're right behind Apple, even though they are only in China (vs Apple's worldwide audience).

 

[kev_fam]

That's because there aren't any others worth considering, in my opinion. So it has to take that second spot.

Tidal actually, much better sound quality

 

[whsbuss]

Hoping the mods close this thread. Nothing of substance comes from these debates.

 

[BlendedFrog]

So, based on this graph, SiriusXM/Pandora is part of the '10% other' group? SXM could be considered one of the original streaming music platforms.

 

[dorsal]

Still listening to Pandora. Yikes! It's not even on the chart.

 

[boss.king]

That's because there aren't any others worth considering, in my opinion. So it has to take that second spot.

Tidal is pretty good from my experience. I trialed Apple Music and Tidal last year and found that Tidal had way better playlists right off the bat (although Spotify beats them both here).