Apple Music Now Has 36 Million Subscribers, Could Eclipse Spotify in United States This Year

[XTheLancerX]

I don’t know how when Apple Music is baked into most Apple hardware such as the iPhone. Maybe your use case is different, I just find Apple Music to be much easier, if I want to use Siri to select a song or playlist it works well.

I'll give you that it's baked into the phone and can be used with Siri. However, you cannot handoff music at all, and with Spotify I can control the music playing from my Mac with my phone, my watch, etc. Spotify Connect. Allows you to hand off music from any device seamlessly, and control music playback from other devices, not just apple products. And it works insanely well.

So, Spotify works *between* devices much better than Apple Music does, and Apple Music works more integrated with a single device.

I use Spotify Connect between my MacBook Pro, and my iPhone all the time, and control music playback on my MacBook with my Apple Watch. None of that is possible at all with Apple Music.

 

[rtomyj]

I guess it depends on what music you listen to…

Spotify caters for my pretty varied tastes with spot on recommendations and new discoveries.

Apple Music offers me their choice of "new" music in which I have mostly no interest. I am just not sure why that is, but…

YMMV, as usual.

As I have said before, I do not understand the mindset so many here have "Spotify must die!!111!!! So that Apple can "succeed".

Um, no. The mentality here is "Apple sucks!" Great majority complain about Apple Music. The interface, the content, the blah blah blah. Obviously many haven't tried it. The interface ones you've used it is very intuitive. One tab is for you library. You can customize it. One for recommendations, one for discovery and another for radio. Easy peasy. I get some decent recommendations in their "new music playlist". I have one of the most varied tastes of anyone I know. I usually download 60 songs a month. This month I was listening to Prince, Billy Joel, of Montreal, The Darkness, Art Vs Science, and Passion Pit. They still get my tastes. I suggest using the rating system for a while.

All in all, (don't wanna rant) you have people not using Apple products and complaining about them on this site.

 

[CarpalMac]

Spotify is barely making any money because of their free model. Apple is eventually going to destroy them in 3-5 years. I think they know Spotify is going to eventually crumble.

As consumers, we had better hope not.

 

[dampfnudel]

I enjoyed my free trial. But not enough to keep subscribing.

Too many subscription services, so I chose not to subscribe to any.

I know I’m in the minority.

You may be in the minority, but I have a feeling it’s a very significant minority.

 

[yoyodub]

Qobuz for me. I’ve tried Apple Music, Spotify and Tidal. For classical, Qobuz is excellent. The apps on desktop, iOS and Mac are plenty good enough. Streaming can be in much higher quality than either Spotify or Apple, it’s incorporated into some HiFi hardware. It’s not nearly as social as its competitors, but at my age (and I’m not *that* old), that isn’t important. Discovery is plenty good enough. It doesn’t get any of the hype of its very good competitors, but I hope that it endures!!!

 

[littyboy]

Spotify is superior in every way. Too bad Apple Music is gaining more subscribers. For many people, it’s just the default option because Apple pushes it so hard.

I could never give up the excellent music discovery on Spotify, nor could I live without Spotify Connect allowing me to seamlessly control playback from any device.

Agreed. People who say AM is better never actually tried Spotify. The music discovery beats AM easily. Also if you're comparing music quality, Spotify technically plays at higher kbps than AM but it's not noticeable.

The only downside about Spotify is Apple Watch. I have a feeling it is Apple that is preventing Spotify from building a standalone app.

 

[whsbuss]

Spotify is barely making any money because of their free model. Apple is eventually going to destroy them in 3-5 years. I think they know Spotify is going to eventually crumble.

Actually they have never turned a profit since inception.
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Agreed. People who say AM is better never actually tried Spotify. The music discovery beats AM easily. Also if you're comparing music quality, Spotify technically plays at higher kbps than AM but it's not noticeable.

The only downside about Spotify is Apple Watch. I have a feeling it is Apple that is preventing Spotify from building a standalone app.

I love when some says "People". I have tried Spotify and moved to AM quite a while ago. See there's always the opposite side.

 

[ersan191]

Which is confusing to me why people rush to purchase products and services that only work with each other?

Because people are happy with those services and there isn’t a better smartwatch on the market.
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Agreed. People who say AM is better never actually tried Spotify. The music discovery beats AM easily. Also if you're comparing music quality, Spotify technically plays at higher kbps than AM but it's not noticeable.

The only downside about Spotify is Apple Watch. I have a feeling it is Apple that is preventing Spotify from building a standalone app.

I’ve tried and still have subscriptions to both, I don’t think one is significantly better than the other. Everyone has their personal experiences and preferences though.

Apple is absolutely preventing Spotify from making a capable app, there are no API’s for playing music in the background or adjusting volume on the Watch.

 

[legacyb4]

Yeah but when you download with apple music you are still using data. Unless they finally updated that. Spotify just uses what available storage is on your device and does not use any data whatsoever when a playlist is downloaded.
That to me is the biggest reason I will stay subscribed to Spotify. If I would do a switch it would be to Google's music service because you can truely download your playlist. Not just place it into the cloud in which you are still using data to listen to a "downloaded" playlist.

You mean Spotify has somehow discovered a magical way of transmitting data from their servers to your phone without having to use data? That's amazing... /s

 

[Baymowe335]

Impossible situation for Spotify. Apple could give their service away and it's Spotify’s entire business. Apple will pass them eventually and probably put them out or business.

 

[az431]

Spotify is superior in every way. Too bad Apple Music is gaining more subscribers. For many people, it’s just the default option because Apple pushes it so hard.

I could never give up the excellent music discovery on Spotify, nor could I live without Spotify Connect allowing me to seamlessly control playback from any device.

Describe two ways that it is superior.
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Yeah but when you download with apple music you are still using data. Unless they finally updated that. Spotify just uses what available storage is on your device and does not use any data whatsoever when a playlist is downloaded.
That to me is the biggest reason I will stay subscribed to Spotify. If I would do a switch it would be to Google's music service because you can truely download your playlist. Not just place it into the cloud in which you are still using data to listen to a "downloaded" playlist.

Spotify should license the technology that uses zero data for downloads.

 

[ipedro]

Apart from the clumsy start in its first year, Apple Music has grown into one of my favourite Apple products. It’s really grown to know me and works beautifully with Siri to play music that I like with very little input from me.

 

[Richard28]

i left apple music and went to amazon music

- works with apple CarPlay
- £20 cheaper per year (if you are a prime subscriber)
- very nice IOS app.
- works with my various echos
- can stream from a cheap firestick to my tv rather than the expensive apple TV.

Only negative is you cannot use siri to request music, which would be helpful in the car especially. I guess apple do not allow this as it is a USP for apple music and helps drive sales... but not for me.

 

[ipedro]

Impossible situation for Spotify. Apple could give their service away and it's Spotify’s entire business. Apple will pass them eventually and probably put them out or business.

Spotify will sell itself to Google or another tech giant rather than going out of business.

 

[Serge88]

I just discovered this free streaming music service call FM radio !

 

[ipedro]

Yeah I agree, iTunes is pretty much Apple's bane of existence right now. It's holding them back from the music area for a lot of people.

Apple should shift to an independent music app for desktop like Spotify's (which is really nice by the way) and have an independent app for syncing, restoring, etc.

They’ve been moving in that direction with each recent version of macOS. iBooks offloaded Audiobooks and the latest iTunes removed the App Store. Meanwhile, the TV App spread from AppleTV to iOS and macOS is the next stop given Apple’s huge interest in television lately. A podcast app for Mac would finally remove everything from Music from iTunes. My guess is that we see an independent Apple Music app later this year.

 

[cardfan]

None of the above. Still use itunes match though. Guess I hate subs. This isn't essential.

 

[Alan Wynn]

Apple needs to revamp their family plan, having to set up ALL of your Apple IDs as a family before hand is the reason we don't use Apple Music.

Not sure what you mean here. To use Family Sharing (which covers Apple Music, Apps, Books, Movies and TV shows - everything except in-app purchase), one has to have one's account linked in a family. This can be done at any point.

We all have our own payment methods, and want to keep it that way. Spotify's model of paying $14.99/mo for 6 completely independent accounts is amazing. So we went with that and not Apple Music.

Every user in a family can have his or her own payment method defined. Every member can access all Family Sharing content from every member of the family. It is designed for actual families, not groups of friends, however. Spotify's approach seems designed more for groups of friends agreeing to share.

 

[0388631]

Spotify caters for my pretty varied tastes with spot on recommendations and new discoveries.

Agreed. I fell in love with Spotify and Deezer for this exact reason. You could say it spots and identifies music you might like...

 

[deanthedev]

I have trouble believing this. Free users still are bringing in income because of ad-revenue. Probably a lot of the revenue comes from that alone. Then you have premium users.

You have trouble believing facts?

Spotify ad revenues are a tiny fraction of their subscriber revenues. As in 1/8 or so. Yet they comprise the larger number of users.

Spotify has an unsustainable business model. They’re going to have to drop the free tier eventually. Probably right after their IPO.

 

[Apple_Robert]

For my needs, Apple has a better music library and integration into my Apple-based universe.

 

[LizKat]

That's because you're getting old. In my case, I am older than dirt and very little interest in music written after 1989.

I read that without my glasses on and saw that date as 1489. Yeah, I thought, once we passed the time of Johannes Ockeghem and Josquin des Prez, or mid-Renaissance at the latest, it's been downhill ever since.

Apple Music does a pretty good job digging their stuff up for me...

 

[DamoTheBrave]

I’ve been an Apple Music subscriber since it started but went briefly back to Spotify this weekend looking for a song.
Spotify is just much, much better. Apple has better integration with it’s own OS but Spotify’s software is so much nicer to use. They use gestures better, it’s more obvious where you are in the app and it feels like a better experience which takes less thought. Apple seemed to want to re-invent and not make the obvious decisions that Spotify made but the fact is Spotify made those design decisions for solid reasons.
It’s kinda tempting to go back to Spotify.

 

[Alan Wynn]

However, you cannot handoff music at all, and with Spotify I can control the music playing from my Mac with my phone, my watch, etc. Spotify Connect. Allows you to hand off music from any device seamlessly, and control music playback from other devices, not just apple products. And it works insanely well.

Essentially, it works like connectivity works for other things on Apple Devices?

So, Spotify works *between* devices much better than Apple Music does, and Apple Music works more integrated with a single device.

Like all the continuity features I use on occasion, I can see that would be nice at times. I do use my watch to control music, podcasts and other content on my iPhone (that is automatic). It does not yet work with my Mac or AppleTV.

 

[Abazigal]

Agreed. People who say AM is better never actually tried Spotify. The music discovery beats AM easily. Also if you're comparing music quality, Spotify technically plays at higher kbps than AM but it's not noticeable.

The only downside about Spotify is Apple Watch. I have a feeling it is Apple that is preventing Spotify from building a standalone app.

I started off with Spotify. Didn’t renew my free trial because they lacked the type of music I was looking for (kpop, certain kinds of Asian pop music).

Maybe it’s because of the music deals Apple has with the record holders, but it did sport more of the music that I like to listen at the time. Maybe Spotify has since caught up. I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter.

What I like about Apple Music is its integration with the rest of the Apple ecosystem. There is a dedicated app on the Apple TV and Apple Watch, and I do frequently sync music to my watch to listen from. I also appreciate the Siri integration. And then there’s the HomePod when it does get released...

Apple Music just integrates more seamlessly into my daily life than Spotify.