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Spotify Announces 75M Active Users, Raises $526M Following Apple Music Debut

"Apple Music: Streams iTunes", "Spotify: Songs on demand". Are these not the same things? Aren't we assuming that Apple Music will be the entire iTunes Library on demand? Why was the keynote so vague about the workings of Apple Music? Maybe one less explanation of how "Connect" works would have allowed time for things like how offline listening works.
 
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Mildredop said:
How has Apple got 7 million more tracks than any other music service?
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They're offering a higher percentage to labels and artists than Spotify. The ones that were holding back. I'm pretty sure with Dre and Dale Gribble they were able to capture some more underground artists as well.
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Spotify isn't going anywhere any time soon. The labels practically own Spotify. Plus the fact the free tier they have keeps users in and will balk at paying $10 for Apple's ecosystem. I don't see Apple gaining much traction because of this. If you're already paying for Spotify, then Apple Music is a no brainer if you're on iOS. If you're trying to convert Spotify free users to Apple Music, good luck.
 
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But will they have a PS4 app? My guess is, Apple won't release this. Spotify has one, and I'm so glad they do! That'll be the one competing factor on whether or not I'll switch.
 
upyourego said:
I currently pay £15 per month for two Spotify accounts (on the family plan). I like Spotify but the way Apple will be able to integrate their service into my iOS device, the extra songs and the £15 per month for six accounts makes it a no brainer for me to switch.
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I expect Spotify will announce similar pricing within a month, before Apple Music launches.

Also, big feature that Spotify has that Apple made no mention of was synchronized lyrics for every song.

Obviously since Apple will be giving 3 month trials of Apple Music, I'll put my paid Spotify subscription on pause and give Apple Music a spin. We'll see which one I go with at the end of the trial.
 
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EvilEvil said:
Competition is good.
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So many don't understand this. As consumers, the more competition the better for us.

We don't want to see Apple beat Android or vise versa. We want both of them (and others) in the market. With competition they have to keep one-upping each other in what they offer. Without competition, you end up like Blackberry where you don't have to do anything to offer new or better features because you aren't forced to continue to push. You already have all the users so why bother investing in getting any better.

Competition means more choices, better choices, and lower prices for the consumer. We want more and more competition.
 
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meh,... remember when Ping was going to kill facebook. Maps was game over for google... iAd was the end of Google ads. ITunes radio? was going to kill Pandora. iCloud, so much for dropbox. iBooks, so long Kindle... Right? not really.

In the end nothing happened - hell some of those Apple services are now in the mud. Apple services are hit and miss.
 
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ArtOfWarfare said:
Unsigned artists. Without a publisher, you don't have the time or knowledge to go and upload your music to every single service out there, but you do have the time to upload it to iTunes (via Connect) if you want to be taken seriously as a musician.
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So, in other words, it's 7 million tracks that 99% of users will have no interest in listening to.
 
thekeyring said:
It doesn't bode well that Spotify still isn't profitable despite currently being the industry leader.
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I have not heard this before - what is your source?

Edit: I looked around and found this article saying Spotify lost $90M in 2012:
http://pulseradio.net/articles/2013/09/spotify-operates-at-a-loss-asks-for-additional-investment

But a current article, from just yesterday, says they're net profit is $7.7M thus far this year:
http://uk.businessinsider.com/spoti...on-valuation-war-with-apple-music-2015-6?op=1

Sure, it's not much money for a company as large as Spotify, but $7.7M net profit is net profit, which means they're not operating at a loss anymore. The funding they just raised would be so that they can continue growing as rapidly as they have thus far - they're going to need everything they can get now that Apple is seriously entering the on demand streaming market.
 
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Everyone seems convinced that streaming is the future, but if nobody is making a profit doing it yet it seems like it might be unsustainable. These companies can't keep doing it forever at a loss. And at some point if people are doing a ton of streaming and the artists still are making practically nothing, it seems like eventually they'll wise up and pull their music from streaming.

And where did WSJ get that 37 million song number for Apple? Apple's own press release said over 30 million songs.
 
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I think i'll stick with spotify. The fact that they recently updated their app with "spotify running" which detects your running pace with music to match, the fact that most, if not all my friends use spotify(social interaction is great, which means I can easily see what my friends are listening to, see their playlists, suggest songs, etc.), and the fact that spotify is on more devices that I care about(i.e. computers, phones, and my playstation 4 for music in the background while playing games, etc...).
 
They already lost me as a Premium User.
I might come back if i'm not happy with the Apple Music Trial.
But i've been waiting to have all my songs in one App.

Mildredop said:
I wonder if apple music will work with Sonos.
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It should, at least the ones you added to your library. It's just accessing the Music Apps Songs through the MediaPlayer Framework
 
The record companies that are investors in Spotify are just waiting for the IPO to cash out. That will most likely be the end of Spotify.
 
I am not a music streamer, so I have no horse in this race. However, Spotify says that they are operating at a loss and hope to become profitable by adding subscribers. That business plan suddenly doesn't look so plausible. I'd say Spotify subscribers can expect a price hike once the attachment trends become apparent. IMHO, of course.
 
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Mildredop said:
So, in other words, it's 7 million tracks that 99% of users will have no interest in listening to.
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99% is an understatement. Half of the 30M tracks that are on all services have received 0 listens (source: Spotify had a blog post on it). Apple hosts them for the annual fee the artists pay - not because they're collecting any money on sales from those 7M tracks. They're in the same boat as many of the apps on the app stores - utter garbage that nobody wants.

If 99% of the world's music consumers have no interest in you, you're doing really well as that means 1% of the world's music consumers are interested in you. That means you have somewhere around 20 Million fans. You're doing really, really well if you have that many fans. Katy Perry only has 80 Million fans, so you'd be 1/4th as successful as her if 99% of people were disinterested in you.
 
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