Spotify Growing at Faster Pace Since Apple Music Launched Last Year

[MH01]

Apple gave streaming huge exposure when they joined the party, including the Taylor swift kiss and make up , the problem is they launched with an app and service that was , very un Apple. I tried it for a week , the app UI was awful, and remains to this day.

What did not help was the massive exposure of Beats 1 , while great for one genre of music, left everyone else with just a poor UI .

In its push to join the party before they were ready , they promoted the service , while driving people to the opposition, who had a stable offering , hence Spotify numbers in my opinion

 

[astrocramp]

It does a terrible job now BECAUSE it is integrated; the value prop is hidden for most people. In addition, it just gets people to listen to locally stored music.

The flipside of it is that Apple Music is getting in the way of me playing locally stored music. When I just want to listen to a playlist, Apple nags me to sign up for Apple Music. All that crap just clutters the UI and annoys people.

 

[MH01]

I expect Apple's growth rate to go up after announcing the student discount.

It does not solve the underlying problems, so why pay 4.99 when you are not prepared to pay 9.99.

They could make it free, and I still will not use that UI.

Spotify offers a student discount also right ? It's not students scewing the numbers, is the service .

 

[Studioman]

Spotify will fall by the wayside in 5 years. Their free tier is going to get cancelled by the record companies and that advantage will be gone. Keep in mind that Warner is making more from streaming because of a revenue sharing deal that could keep them from being able to go public because those deals keeps them in the hole while artist get little. Once that changes free is done. I actual like AM as all of my purchases live along side steam downloads.

 

[MH01]

The flipside of it is that Apple Music is getting in the way of me playing locally stored music. When I just want to listen to a playlist, Apple nags me to sign up for Apple Music. All that crap just clutters the UI and annoys people.

Bingo . I've stopped using iTunes , and now play my music off iPods or computer direct without iTunes. Apple Music got me using my iPod again

 

[CFreymarc]

A rising tide floats all boats!

 

[a.gomez]

Interface wins!

So far for the Dre investment... Ruined the original iOS Music app and drove away early adapters back to Spotify with a terrible UI, Hiphip flavoured radio and useless functionality.

and he made billions and got someone to finance his random show... a fiasco.

 

[Dr.Chroma]

This article doesn't shock me. Spotify's User Interface is way more fluent than Apple Music. Apple Music is due and will change their overall lay out, which hopefully will help. Also an advantage to Spotify is they have a lot more credibility and history than Apple Music. I hope Eddy Cue is reading this article.

 

[69Mustang]

A rising tide floats all boats!

See post 10. Either great minds think alike or it was pretty obvious this could happen. I'm just gonna say great minds cuz, ya know, one of 'em being mine and all.

 

[azentropy]

Since Apple Music doesn't offer a free ad supported method and Spotify does, I'll stick with Spotify. I just don't listen to enough music to justify paying for it.

 

[Hastings101]

I expect Apple's growth rate to go up after announcing the student discount.

Yeah I think something like that would help a lot. Spotify for $5 with my old university e-mail address was one of the reasons I started using it at first lol. Now I've used it for so long that I see no point in bothering with anything else unless it's legitimately better.

I feel like, besides the Discover Weekly playlist, Apple Music might do a better job at discovering and suggesting music than Spotify. Too bad the UI is a mess. Maybe it's just me, but I find iTunes very tedious to use lately.

 

[Jodeo]

REALLY?
I tried the Apple Music trial and was immediately turned off by the hideous, unreadable UI. iTunes is actually harder to user than before and it's a crap shoot if your music syncs or not. Sure, it's user error but helping me know what I'm doing wrong NOW is harder.

So sure, I tried Spotify for three months for 99 cents.
Better UI. Finds my music. Predictable, discoverable, sold.

 

[CFreymarc]

A rising tide floats all boats!
[doublepost=1462827295][/doublepost]

REALLY?
I tried the Apple Music trial and was immediately turned off by the hideous, unreadable UI. iTunes is actually harder to user than before and it's a crap shoot if your music syncs or not. Sure, it's user error but helping me know what I'm doing wrong NOW is harder.

So sure, I tried Spotify for three months for 99 cents.
Better UI. Finds my music. Predictable, discoverable, sold.

IMO, the Apple Music app suffers from classic "two many cooks in the soup" where everyone put in their own ingredients to make it taste like crap.

 

[m.x]

It becomes more and more obvious for me that this could really become one of Apples worst years.
There is stagnation everywhere.

Introduce a really flawless Apple Music service from the beginning? Nah! We are Apple, people love us, we will outgrow Spotify!

iPhone sales are down? Let's make a new iPhone similar to the last two ones with little changes and make no big flagship redesign!

Watch sales are not satisfying? Let's make new bands!

iPad sales are down? Let's name it a Pro device and make it more expensive with more expensive accessories! Customers don't need no new iPad mini or Air 3!

Mac sales are down? Let's just take them as they are and don't upgrade them! Some products are now 1698 (!!!) days old, who needs an update? Who needs a dedicated GPU in the 4K iMac? Who doesn't want to have 5400rpm hard drives in their "most advanced" machines?

Watch sales are still not satisfying? Let's make new bands!

Want to revolutionize the "future of television"? Let's cut the optical audio output port to increase the margin and focus on 1080p (maybe they did that because nobody shoots 4K with 16GB of storage ). Double the price so more and more customers can get them in their home! But don't rework the UI, make it white, that's enough!


Oh jeeeeez, like one of you said in a news earlier today, it seems like they are not even trying anymore. It's becoming an "We are Apple, we can do that with our customers" attitude which gives me sleepless nights because my beloved company is going down ☹️☹️☹️

 

[taedouni]

I tried Apple Music from June until a few months ago (late February). I still have it for my wife but I prefer Spotify, it sucks that some artist don't want their content on Spotify but I actually prefer Spotify. Their dedicated desktop app is superior than iTunes app. Plus Spotify has an Ubuntu version. Also the web browser option. Even the mobile app in my opinion is better (include car play since if you hold the forward or rewind button it actually increments or decrements in reasonable amounts such as 10 seconds to start off compared to Apple Music going from 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8 etc).

 

[bushido]

I absolutely hate Spotify's focus on tracks and playlists. It always seemed so hard to just listen to a record on there. Never mind the fact that it seemed to continually post to Facebook even when I removed its permissions.

huh? all the albums go to albums. not much else to do and you can easily switch to artist from there

 

[Alenore]

And yet Spotify doesn't have the new Radiohead album yet. If Spotify had the ability to let me upload my own music id be more open to letting it be my main music service. I hate not being able to fill in the catalogue gaps or when music gets taken away.

As a matter of fact, you can.
Put them in your computer so they show up in Local files, drag them into a playlist, sync that playlist on your mobile. Poof, music!

 

[dannyyankou]

It does not solve the underlying problems, so why pay 4.99 when you are not prepared to pay 9.99.

They could make it free, and I still will not use that UI.

Spotify offers a student discount also right ? It's not students scewing the numbers, is the service .

Yeah, but a lot of the problems are supposedly going to be fixed in iOS 10. And in the article on this site, a lot of students were saying they're switching because Apple matched spotify's discount

 

[69Mustang]

This actually matters. If eventually they'll be profitable, great, but if more users means more of a loss, they'll eventually run out of road.

Apple and Google and others have a luxury that they don't actually need to make money from their streaming services.

Apple could ditch it's cut of the 9.99 a month just to undercut Spotify and do quite well, if it really came to it.

You're right. If they're growing subscribers they'll eventually hit profitability. If they're growing ad supported users...

Also spot on <-- with Apple and Google not needing the money from their streaming services. It's a definite luxury not afforded to the Spotify/Tidal/Pandora's of the world.

 

[drumcat]

Why would we need FIVE apps? Apple needs to improve the interface for iTunes, but it doesn't need to be fragmented into different apps.

Absolutely it should. It should match the iPhone built-in apps.

The Video app on the phone covers videos. Make that for Mac.
The Music app on the phone covers music. Make that for Mac.
The App Store app on the phone covers Apps. Make that for Mac.
Podcasts...
iTunes U...
iBooks...

All separate apps. Yet on a Mac, you get a GIANT KLUDGE into iTunes. Even if they split iTunes into two apps where one was synchronisation with phones/pads, and one was "media", it would help a lot.
[doublepost=1462828662][/doublepost]

You're right. If they're growing subscribers they'll eventually hit profitability. If they're growing ad supported users...

Also spot on <-- with Apple and Google not needing the money from their streaming services. It's a definite luxury not afforded to the Spotify/Tidal/Pandora's of the world.

Don't assume profitability in scale. Sometimes acquisition costs grow larger. A logistics issue, but it happens.

 

[BuffaloTF]

It's sad. Apple always used to be "late to the party" but whatever they created would be better than what was out there (ex. Copy/Paste, Multitasking in iOS, etc..). Now, they have a habit of being late & their products being inferior.

I mean, that's purely a subjective statement... evidenced by the simple fact I find Apple Music to be the best service available in my own subjective experience. Before it, Google Play was an equivalent service... and then Apple came and bested them on price with the family plan. Spotify always had the worst UI and UX. And this update looks like they copied Apple Music's UI/UX... almost tab for tab.

These are services though, and it's fine to not like one and prefer another. Just wait for some insane person to come talk about how great Pandora is.

 

[Dydegu]

I have too much invested into Spotify at this point. Years of saved tracks and playlists. The recent Discover Weekly playlist is also phenomenal. I've discovered some of my favorite new music from it. Lastly, I can't download iTunes at work, so I can't listen to Apple Music there.

 

[Alphazoid]

Unsurprising. Intuitive UI and their app is available on pretty much every platform in existence.

 

[Frankied22]

As a matter of fact, you can.
Put them in your computer so they show up in Local files, drag them into a playlist, sync that playlist on your mobile. Poof, music!

That's too convoluted. I want to just upload music to a digital locker like Google Music or Apple Music.

 

[Art0fLife]

Has Spotify fixed it's serious catalog problems yet? When I tried it (unhappy with Apple Music) I was pretty disappointed to find it was basically just American music with a few other western nations. But even it's selection of western/European music was limited and awful. It really missed the boat on superior stuff from the east. Very little of anything useful/enjoyable. Which is a major problem. Apple Music on the other hand has a far more extensive global catalog with much better music. So I stuck with Apple Music even though the way it functions is frankly awful. Wish there would be a service that works well AND with a catalog worth paying for.