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Eddy Cue 'Thrilled With the Numbers' as Apple Music Hits 11 Million Users

As others have said, the UI and the ease of use is much better on Spotify than Apple Music. I too will drop my free subscription after the 3 month grace period ends.
This might be a little off topic, but I wish T-Mobile was not the only provider that let you stream music services like AM as data free. When you not only have to pay for a subscription, but incur the data charges as well (when you're mobile and out of Wi-Fi zones) then you're getting double whammied. Our current family plan allows for 3GB/person. AM & Spotify are data hogs… my kids could go thru this in no time! Providers need to re-think the limits they put on streaming, otherwise IMHO none of these music streaming services are going to be around for long. The business model will change once again and we'll all go back to owning our music.
 
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mrobbo said:
I couldn't even see out the three month trial period. Signed back up to Spotify last night. Tired of wrestling with that UI and having my music getting messed up across computers. Too many issues. Playlists are poor compared to Spotify at the moment and it really offers nothing to set it apart. Maybe i'll try again in 6 months time.
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I 100% agree with mrobbo... I lasted three days and I then unsubscribed... what a lazy heap of rubbish from Apple... really poor UI and no no no innovation.... really how off the mark could they be... with all the hype from Bono saying he was working with Apple to change the way we listen to music... what a load of crap.... I'm a life long loyal Apple customer, but I'm really starting to believe they have gotten lazy and bloated and afraid to really innovate... I'm waiting for a new MacPro refresh now for nearly 2 years... come on Apple... don't forget us old skoolers that made you so great to start with :(

Spotify for me is the best out there... and the new Discover Weekly is so spot on in relation to my tastes it's like having my own assistant scouring the internet for me for new music that seriously tickles my music buds. Apple need to realise they aren't always the best at everything.... others can take risks and innovate and they can be BEST IN CLASS also.... :)
 
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After the free period this number will hit so low, Eddie's heart will break in two.

Let's face it, Apple is making some big mistakes.

1. apple watch - huge mistake, it is already a failure
2. apple radio/streaming/ and the whole Iovine dre purchase.

Neither will do good. Apple stick to iPhone/iPad/Macs and leave iTunes alone.
 
Nausicaa said:
I must say I'm surprised by the reactions here. I'm a long time Spotify user so I haven't even bothered to use Apple Music yet, but I was pretty concerned Apple would dominate this space. Spotify really is an awesome service. In over three years I haven't really had a single issue I can recall. Great selection and it always seems to work - I use it in my car every day and it never skips out or crashes or anything. I'm loving the new Discover weekly playlists as well.
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I was stunned by the Spotify desktop app last night after trying it out after a few years. It's clearly a better UI experience than AM. I planning on using it on my iOS device as a primary source for streaming or background noise for my studio work.

Apple needs to get its stuff together or else it's bye bye Cook and Cue.
 
I understand that people are upset with the issues of Apple Music, but I don't see it being an unmitigated disaster. They are working on a fix, right now it's free, and let's be honest, it's not Apple Maps bad. Nobody has been stranded in the desert because Apple Music malfunctioned. If you don't like the service, the beautiful thing is that you don't have to pay for it. I think Apple will be alright even if this turns out to be the "total mess" some people are predicting in the thread.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
Who would those be? AAPL has been tanking ever since it's smash earnings report a couple weeks ago because "uninformed investors" read between the lines and saw iPhone growth slowing down in the next year.

Investors especially are not fooled by 11m users of a trial service. Certainly some % of those will drop off. What % is the big question.
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Uninformed investors are just those, people who invest and are uninformed. Those people might take this as good news. Not everyone understands that 11 million on a free trial (which was not mentioned) doesn't mean 11 million paying users. Yes, Apple has been tanking but not every investor buys a stock only when it's going up. A lot of people actually buy at the moment.
 
This discussion is going in circles. Yes, it's free. Yes, it scrambles people's libraries like there's no tomorrow. Yes, there used to be a time when you didn't need to have three backups of everything before using Apple's new service. Yes, those are the most important twelve weeks for Apple Music adoption, and five of them have already been wasted while the iTunes team is (I imagine) sweating over how to solve all the problems people are having. No, I have never used Apple maps for longer than five minutes while in the safety of my house, and it looks like Apple Music will be met with similar fate in my household. Yes, Apple will be alright even if this remains a total mess (it already is total mess), because when you have 162 billion dollars in the bank (or whatever the latest figure is) you can write off 3-4 billion as loss. Yes, MySpace used to be the unbeatable giant that everybody used. Yes, BlackBerry used to be extremely popular and thought to be unbeatable. Yes, AOL used to be the only way loads of people used Internet. Yes, Hotmail used to be THE e-mail service everybody used.

On the plus side, it looks like every time Apple does something very successful the stock price drops, so Apple Music should lead to new peak in AAPL pricing.
 
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nburwell said:
I've been equally using Spotify and Apple Music for the past month. I can readily say that Apple Music has yet to impress me. They continually suggest urban music for me to listen to (I listen to much more than that). Their "curated" playlisted have done nothing for me. At this point, I'm sticking with Spotify since I'm a bigger fan of their playlists and the "Discover Weekly" playlists that come out every Monday have been spot on. I don't speak for everyone, but in my eyes, Apple has a lot of work cut out for them.
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This is exactly how I feel. Their curated selections are only about 10 songs long, and some have some laughable songs in there. On first thought it may seem unfair to criticize since it's a new service, but is it new really? This is based on Beats Music, AFAIK that service had been around for a while (no one cared about it btw), and Apple does also have many years of experience with the iTunes music store and Genius shuffle which collects user data and tastes. If they can't come up with good curated/discoverability by now, I don't expect a huge change in a while if any.
 
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Alenore said:
The App Store is a mess, Siri still isn't on par with competitors, Maps still has annoying bugs, iAd is pretty much useless and iCloud isnt exactly stellar.

Why hasn't this guy been fired yet?
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tentales said:
Coz the guy that would've is unfortunately 6' under and the smiling social activist is running the show.
Steve believed people prefer to own Music. Especially those without an unlimited broadband connection.

Apple always had trouble with online services: .Mac, MobileMe, iTunes Match and iCloud is still a mess, even though to a lesser extent.
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Just for the record, all these services besides Apple Pay were introduced under Steve, with poorer quality than today. And Apple Pay works quite flawless from the beginning.
 
Mike MA said:
Just for the record, all these services besides Apple Pay were introduced under Steve, with poorer quality than today. And Apple Pay works quite flawless from the beginning.
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Just because he wasn't fired back then doesn't mean he shoudln't be now. And that is why I didn't mention Apple Pay.
 
Maybe I am the only person on here who loves it and has had very few issues! I was a spotify user but hated the UI. I picked Apple Music up straight away, found it really simple to use and have had no issues with my library of 20,000 tracks.

My main gripes have been some songs not getting added when adding an album and some tracks not downloading correctly. I'm sure those bugs will get ironed out.
 
Anto38x said:
I 100% agree with mrobbo... I lasted three days and I then unsubscribed... what a lazy heap of rubbish from Apple... really poor UI and no no no innovation.... really how off the mark could they be... with all the hype from Bono saying he was working with Apple to change the way we listen to music... what a load of crap.... I'm a life long loyal Apple customer, but I'm really starting to believe they have gotten lazy and bloated and afraid to really innovate... I'm waiting for a new MacPro refresh now for nearly 2 years... come on Apple... don't forget us old skoolers that made you so great to start with :(

Spotify for me is the best out there... and the new Discover Weekly is so spot on in relation to my tastes it's like having my own assistant scouring the internet for me for new music that seriously tickles my music buds. Apple need to realise they aren't always the best at everything.... others can take risks and innovate and they can be BEST IN CLASS also.... :)
Click to expand...

No innovation? How much innovation do you want in searching for an album and adding it your library?? Its either available or not. The curated playlists have been impressive.
 
Anto38x said:
Spotify for me is the best out there... and the new Discover Weekly is so spot on in relation to my tastes it's like having my own assistant scouring the internet for me for new music that seriously tickles my music buds.
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Agreed, this works really well for me too. I'm starting to think this kind of "crowdsourced curation" (the discover playlists are based on what other users listen to around songs you liked on Spotify) may be better than Apple's much-vaunted team of professional curators.
 
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Jimmyjamh said:
No innovation? How much innovation do you want in searching for an album and adding it your library?? Its either available or not. The curated playlists have been impressive.
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Innovation would have been a free tier like Spotify. Instead, Apple went with the usual $9.99 like every other streaming service in the past 5-8 years. To be fair Apple offers the $14.99 family plan which is the best rate in the industry, but it's not enough to really set it apart from other services.
 
11 million? Why would they release this number when we pretty much know that after the free trial a lot of people will drop it? Do they like humiliating themselves?
 
lazard said:
Spotify started when streaming music was in it's infancy and available bandwidth was garbage.
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Never said the contrary... just gave my opinion on why that comparison is stupid... You can't compare a solid service that had 8 years to mature with a service that exists for 1 month...
 
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GhostRaider said:
11 million? Why would they release this number when we pretty much know that after the free trial a lot of people will drop it? Do they like humiliating themselves?
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And how do you know that "a lot of people will drop it"? Do you have any information that no one else does have?

Even if everybody complaining on Macrumors and any other sites would drop it (which they won't, not everybody), that would be a small % of the total trials... Many users are happy with the service (myself included) and will not drop it..
 
Itzamna said:
Never said the contrary... just gave my opinion on why that comparison is stupid... You can't compare a solid service that had 8 years to mature with a service that exists for 1 month...
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Apple has some of the best talent in the world, unlimited resources at their disposal, and a cult-like fanbase of over 800M users...compared to Spotify which had none of those.
 
lazard said:
Apple has some of the best talent in the world, unlimited resources at their disposal, and a cult-like fanbase of over 800M users...compared to Spotify which had none of those.
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Unlimited resources? You have no ideia on how a company works... Specially on new services that no one knows if they will be a major or moderate success... They had, probably, a smaller budget on Apple Music than what they had on any other iDevice since the first iteration of said device. Specially after the 3B$ they spent on Beats that budget must have been very very thin...

As for the cult-like fanbase... First that number is away exaggerated... You are saying that 12-15% of the world population is Apple fanboy's? Not even half of that... 800M iTunes users doesn't mean that they are all die hard fans of Apple. And second that works both ways... First because the die hard fans are the first to, sometimes, bash the brand they are die hard fans for... And many times due to pathetic problems like some minor UI change. And second, the more cult-like a brand is, the more haters it attracts... And we both know that Apple is on of the top most hated brands in the Internet world...

And, what has all that you said have to do with the fact that Spotify has 8 years of maturity and Apple Music has 1 month?
 
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Shirasaki said:
Another controversial Apple service.

If they can add some sort of Japanese songs support, I would like to pay a visit.

Update: fix "product" to "service".
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There's more Japanese music than Spotify, but there's less now than there was on iTunes Radio, which is annoying.
 
This is embarrassing. Why can't Apple just stick to what it is good at? They would need to spend EASILY 10x as much cash as they have on Apple Music, to even come close to reaching the quality of Spotify and their curations. This is ALL Spotify has done, for years.

Does this guy really think you can be a success in the market with some half-assed Apple Maps attempt translated over to music? Great time to invest in Spotify...
 
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