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Spotify Announces 75M Active Users, Raises $526M Following Apple Music Debut
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True, but you won't be a student forever... hopefully.
For a non-student like myself, it would be foolish to stay with Spotify... Apple Music offers 20% more tracks, free streaming live radio, Siri support (doesn't get any better than being able to tell it to play the #1 track from May, 1982... in my car), seamless integration with match and a better UI.
It's a no-brainier IMO. I'll be switching on day one.
True, but you won't be a student forever... hopefully.
Apple Music offers 20% more tracks, free streaming live radio, Siri support (doesn't get any better than being able to tell it to play the #1 track from May, 1982... in my car), seamless integration with match and a better UI.
It's a no-brainier IMO. I'll be switching on day one.
I guess you have a point. In my view the extra $5 is for the new features and the select few tracks I can't find on Spotify but can find in iTunes. The Siri integration is what I always wanted in Spotify but could never get obviously.
I will definitely be trying the free trial but as long as my bank account stays shallow I can't have $10 milked out every month until I graduate with my engineering degree...
and you will end up using that because it will turn out to be better and more integrated. Just be honest.
Netflix also operates at a loss. Many companies do in this crazy new world we live in.
Twitter was launched in 2006 and didn't turn a profit until 2014. There are countless other examples. Market leadership is more important for the long term view.
My iTunes Match account just came up for renewal, so I let it lapse. I'll give Apple Music a try, as most music I listen to is streaming anyway.
That $7.7 million was the money Spotify paid to an unnamed "superstar": "A 'global superstar,' meanwhile, received $7.7 million, which will jump to an estimated $13.9 million in the year ahead."
From the original WSJ article (that BI is referencing) published today: "Spotify is now valued at more than double Pandora Media which has a current market capitalization of about $3.5 billion. Both companies operate at a loss, as they share a large portion of revenue with music label partners."
Spotify isn't going anywhere though. They have a huge estimated market capitalization and a large and increasing subscriber base.
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Amazon also took forever to become profitable. They do alright.
Yeah, I was paying for Spotify when it first came to the US then moved to Beats when they introduced the 14.99 family plan last year so the Apple offering is right up my alley (just not sure if iTunes Family Sharing is..).
I guess we'll have to wait and see how they report their users over time. I'd be curious to see what criteria Spotify uses to count active users.
True, but you won't be a student forever... hopefully.
Apple Music offers 20% more tracks, free streaming live radio, Siri support (doesn't get any better than being able to tell it to play the #1 track from May, 1982... in my car), seamless integration with match and a better UI.
It's a no-brainier IMO. I'll be switching on day one.
Will Apple offer an ultra low bitrate streaming option? One thing that keeps me with Rdio over others is the 64kbps configuration available on cellular connection. Keeps my streaming costs low with my payforwhatIuse Ting plan.
I feel like I may get overrun with monthly subscriptions but I'm definitely going to try out the 3 month trial.
I didn't say Apple was trying to eliminate free, I said that is the net effect. Apple eliminated free because that was the path to get what it coveted most from the music industry: a family membership. Apple could have well kept a limited functionality free tier but that wasn't the primary objective so it was sacrificed.
If other services want to compete w/ Apple's family rate It's likely the industry is going to require them to drop free tiers too. Thus Apple's sledgehammer to the free tier.
I laugh at Pandora 1.5M tracks but it is true. I listen to there horrible 90's station and 90% of what they played I already have on CD's and I don't even have many 90's CD's. I cancelled the service last year and never looked back it was the same 10 songs over and over again.
how can you even listen to music like this? it would kill me
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
No but 2 observations:
1. The bulk of Apple's revenues & profits come from a low-priced, high-value offering (iPhone) which is very competitive on price because of the subsidy model. While maybe a stretch, one might say the bulk of Apple's revenues & profits ARE made by competing at low prices that customer's pay (because the subsidy providers are paying the rest of Apple's price in the background)
2. Instead of chasing lowest price, Apple has already been found guilty of flexing it's muscles to try to get content owners to press Apple competitors to RAISE their prices (see the Ebook debacle). Here too, there is rumor and multiple investigations into Apple apparently trying to kill the no-(customer)-cost free streaming music offerings of Spotify & Pandora as part of propping up the appeal of it's offering at $10/month. So, instead of competing with established competitors on price by also offering an ad-supported free tier, Apple is rumored (and under investigation by a couple of state and federal governments) to have tried to use it's influence to alter competitor offerings so that it's offering (and Apple profitability on that offering) would be better realized.
While I can get into Apple not trying to be "lowest price above all else", I think both of the above points are interesting. On one hand, the thing that yields the bulk of their revenues & profits IS competing at low price points because Apple found a way to get someone else to pay the rest of what Apple wants for those products. And the bad Ebook behavior and rumored-but-being-investigated potentially bad behavior of trying to drive up the prices of competitor offerings is not exactly a white knight move on Apple's part.
The Ebook case is already settled with Apple found guilty. This music streaming case is just getting started. Whether the latter turns out to be Ebook 2.0 or if Apple learned from it's Ebook behaviors and did not engage in what has been rumored, I'd like Apple much more if it would win it's revenues & profitability on the merits of it's own offerings rather than trying to prop up the value proposition by such anti-consumer tactics (or rumored tactics). We consumers do not win by an Apple driving up prices of other company's offerings.
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The current Music app isn't supported by Sonos, though it does support Beats Music so maybe it will.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
It's possible because they have revenue sources beyond the subscription fee charged. But again, plenty of other Ebusinesses don't have to actually earn profit to be very successful- see Facebook and Netflix. Spotify is a private company interested in going public sooner or later. As Facebook illustrated, building up a big list of followers can make an IPO pay off very handsomely even if they don't make a profit going into the IPO. Look up the valuation of Spotify to see what a consistently unprofitable company like that is worth.