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Spotify Growing at Faster Pace Since Apple Music Launched Last Year
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I must be missing something here. All you people saying that UI for Apple Music is horrible, and you can't work it. Either I am way smarter, or missing something. I have no problems with it, and think it is well laid out. I use it on all my devices, even my wife who can't work the DVD remote figured it out with out any problem.
that is b/c, as Jobs would say, it is a little box of garbage (referring to Apple Music). it's clunky, disorganized, it's not nearly as intuitive as Spotify, and it's insanely slow to load songs. the only benefit that it has, is syncing playlists with iTunes. if you don't use iTunes though, there is no benefit since Spotify playlists sync as well onto any device where you either have the Spotify app, or have downloaded the Spotify program.
Apple Music is full of glitches, especially the download for offline playing feature. I'll have downloaded an entire album successfully. Then a few days later go to listen to it...says I never downloaded it. Apple Music looses songs left and right that you have downloaded and their support has been worthless. I've read Apple Community support pages and others have the same problem
No issues at all, whatsoever with Spotify. I gave Apple Music a 3 month run and couldn't stand it anymore so I went back to Spotify. From reading this article, I am one of many
Apple Music is full of glitches, especially the download for offline playing feature. I'll have downloaded an entire album successfully. Then a few days later go to listen to it...says I never downloaded it. Apple Music looses songs left and right that you have downloaded and their support has been worthless. I've read Apple Community support pages and others have the same problem
No issues at all, whatsoever with Spotify. I gave Apple Music a 3 month run and couldn't stand it anymore so I went back to Spotify. From reading this article, I am one of many
Well there must be enough crappy music on Spotify to keep uses happy, that's all i can say. Everyone likes classical.
If people would go to Spotify just because the UI is better, they have rocks in their heads...
Its much more then the UI... Its' all subjective. UI plays a part ya, but what about content ? I dunno about one else but content comes first for me
edit: (I would have also accepted "Spotify grows faster than a sugar cain")
I reckon, in part, Apple music stuff-ups are a huge blame to this as well, which would tie in with why Apple will be overhauling Apple music at WWDC 2016
If people would go to Spotify just because the UI is better, they have rocks in their heads...
Its much more then the UI... Its' all subjective. UI plays a part ya, but what about content ? I dunno about one else but content comes first for me
edit: (I would have also accepted "Spotify grows faster than a sugar cain")
I reckon, in part, Apple music stuff-ups are a huge blame to this as well, which would tie in with why Apple will be overhauling Apple music at WWDC 2016
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Yes and it does what it says it does. It provides noticeably high quality streams of records.
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I've actually had the same problem with songs disappearing on Spotify and Tidal in the past. That problem isn't exclusive to Apple Music. Spotify is around to get engineers rich quick while the artists starve working 12 and 18 hour days to provide content for Spotify.
Despite the launch of Apple Music, which recently reached 13 million paid subscribers, rival service Spotify told Reuters that it has experienced a faster pace of growth since last June than beforehand.Spotify recently announced that it has 30 million paying customers, compared to around 20 million paid subscribers last June, while its total active user base has grown to nearly 100 million from 75 million a year ago.
Apple has not recently disclosed how many users it has on a three-month trial for an overall comparison, but Spotify remains over 2x to 2.5x larger than Apple Music in terms of paid subscribers worldwide.Apple Music has inevitably generated increased awareness of the concept of streaming music, which in turn has helped Spotify triple its paid subscriber base in just two years. The service, which launched in Europe in October 2008 and expanded to the U.S. in July 2011, had 10 million subscribers through May 2014.
Spotify continues to operate at a loss due to expensive royalties and revenue sharing with music label partners, but the Swedish company expects to eventually become profitable through continued subscriber growth. Spotify will also seek to earn increased revenue from advertising, concerts, merchandising, and video.
Spotify today announced that 12 new original series will be coming to the streaming music service this summer and fall, centered around music performances, music profiles, and music culture. Last year, the company also added video programming and podcasts from partners such as Comedy Central, ESPN, and MTV.
In related news, Spotify for iOS was recently updated with a new bottom navigation bar in lieu of its traditional slide-out "hamburger" menu.
Article Link: Spotify Growing at Faster Pace Since Apple Music Launched Last Year
Hard to imagine how anyone could be thrilled with 13M paid subscribers when there are over a billion active iOS users, especially when the Apple Music app is one of the tentpole apps on iOS. Steve Jobs once said that a lot of people don't know what they want until you show it to them. Well, they have seen it now and a lot of people, it seems, don't want it. Just seems like Apple's music apps, iTunes, and the Music app on iOS have been on a steady downhill trend insofar as usablilty for years now. It was much simpler before, buy a song, add it a playlist if you want, and enjoy. Now it's complicated.
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I need data, but I think it may be at least partially true true unrelated. We're witnessing the transition from an ownership model to a streaming model. (Millennials don't want to own homes or cars as much either.) Yes, we got Apple Music and yes, Spotify grew too.
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Couldn't agree more. What's hilarious is 99% of the people on here will pretend none of this is true.
It is true for the most part. I'm just not sure how much innovation can happen. The technology needs to happen first before it can be used. Of course we weren't going to see the level of innovation that we saw in the first years of the iPhone/iOS. We went how many years between iPod and the iPhone with very little innovation. So... pace yourselves... Apple is not super human they can't go 100mph in perp.
Not that Spotify is full of saints, but I wouldn't ever support a business founded by Jay Z or Kanye. No way.
Wait... how did they figure that?
The only way you'll spend $32,919 on streaming music is if you subscribe for 274 years
The way I see it... $10 a month for 40 years is $4,800
Not chump change... but still not as high as they're projecting.
Anything will produce a big number after a long time though. Did you ever think how much you will have spent on your smartphone or home internet over 40 years?
Missed investment opportunities. If you invested the money instead of spending it on streaming your retirement savings would be 32,919 greater. Add it all up and small sacrifices today can pay huge dividends later, appears to be the drift of the article.Wait... how did they figure that?
The only way you'll spend $32,919 on streaming music is if you subscribe for 274 years
The way I see it... $10 a month for 40 years is $4,800
Not chump change... but still not as high as they're projecting.
Anything will produce a big number after a long time though. Did you ever think how much you will have spent on your smartphone or home internet over 40 years?
Can I ask why it is? I'm on Apple Music where my entire existing library already exists which doesn't happen on Spotify. We pay $15/month for 6 users which makes each of our costs around $2.50 which is definitely lower than Spotify. I haven't had any UI headaches as others have. What is Spotify doing that makes it such a superior product?
At least they are supporting the artists and not starving the artists to stay afloat. I sensed some undercover "shade" in the tone of the post. The bottom line is these people are millionaires like everyone else. I trust them more than I do Spotify TBQH... If Spotify keeps racking up tens of millions of dollars in loses I'm not sure honestly how much longer they can stay a going concern without raising their rates.
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We're talking about people who were willing to sign up for a new $9/month plan. A lot of them had already been using Spotify. That's a pretty decent chunk. 13 million is not bad for less than a year. They only now price-matched Spotify for for students.
FWIW, 1 bilion active iOS devices doesn't equal 1 billion users. A lot of those are second and 3rd devices. I'm guessing the the number is closer to 500 million than 1 billion for users.
Ah gotcha.
Yeah... I can see how that $10 a month for 40 years could be invested in something else to grow into something bigger.
But you wouldn't have enjoyed the 40 years of streaming music.
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It's even worse. Since Apple Music is available on Android... that's billions of potential customers.
But the same is also true for Spotify. You can get Spotify on iOS, Android and Windows. Yet they only have 30 million paying customers out of multiple billions.
Perhaps paid streaming music isn't as hot as we thought?
It's rather mind boggling and a bit pathetic that Apple can't seem to focus and do things right. Far smaller and less well funded companies, create successful services rather easily. If Apple wasn't so full of themselves, they'd feel embarrassed by such a failure.
Or you could just buy a gazillion dollars worth of music... Ill keep my money in my pocket and pay where I lay.Ah gotcha.
Yeah... I can see how that $10 a month for 40 years could be invested in something else to grow into something bigger.
But you wouldn't have enjoyed the 40 years of streaming music.
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It's even worse. Since Apple Music is available on Android... that's billions of potential customers.
But the same is also true for Spotify. You can get Spotify on iOS, Android and Windows. Yet they only have 30 million paying customers out of multiple billions.
Perhaps paid streaming music isn't as hot as we thought?
Its new. It'll be 2-5 years and then it'll peak...and I don't know where we go from streamed songs...
I've signed up for Spotify rather than AM, even though I get hounded every time I open up iTunes. Slowly migrating out of the Apple ecosystem, it's starting to choke my ability to choose.
I wonder how much of the growth of Spotify is because people try out Apple's offer, find they hate the interface, realise that streaming is a good way to go with music, and then go somewhere better.
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With all the issues with Apple at the moment, I've been checking into alternatives myself, only to find that Apple offers absolutely NOTHING that cannot be found outside the walled garden. There used to be a great point to being in the Apple ecosystem with great products and software that was reliable and useful included on Macs, and a level of reliability that made it worth paying the extra. I used to even argue that when you took the cost of maintaining a computer into account, getting Windows alternatives to the software that came with a Mac, and the lower devaluation, that Apple computers and devices worked out LESS EXPENSIVE than the alternatives to use, despite the higher purchase price. But, with the ongoing reliability issues, bad build quality, and constant dumbing down of software, it's getting increasingly more difficult to justify the higher prices of Apple Products.
Some of what is around, such as Spotify is far superior to Apple's offering, and Microsoft these days has made substantial improvements on Windows to the point where there is little difference in reliability (though Mac OS X still looks nicer in my opinion). In many ways, Windows 10 is actually EASIER to use than Mac OS X.
I'm certainly not going to rush away from the Apple ecosystem quite yet; a large amount of the tech we use at home is from Apple, but unless they get their act together in the next year or two, we will be forced to look elsewhere as devices become out of date and come up for replacing.
[doublepost=1462858044][/doublepost]
With all the issues with Apple at the moment, I've been checking into alternatives myself, only to find that Apple offers absolutely NOTHING that cannot be found outside the walled garden. There used to be a great point to being in the Apple ecosystem with great products and software that was reliable and useful included on Macs, and a level of reliability that made it worth paying the extra. I used to even argue that when you took the cost of maintaining a computer into account, getting Windows alternatives to the software that came with a Mac, and the lower devaluation, that Apple computers and devices worked out LESS EXPENSIVE than the alternatives to use, despite the higher purchase price. But, with the ongoing reliability issues, bad build quality, and constant dumbing down of software, it's getting increasingly more difficult to justify the higher prices of Apple Products.
Some of what is around, such as Spotify is far superior to Apple's offering, and Microsoft these days has made substantial improvements on Windows to the point where there is little difference in reliability (though Mac OS X still looks nicer in my opinion). In many ways, Windows 10 is actually EASIER to use than Mac OS X.
I'm certainly not going to rush away from the Apple ecosystem quite yet; a large amount of the tech we use at home is from Apple, but unless they get their act together in the next year or two, we will be forced to look elsewhere as devices become out of date and come up for replacing.
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3300 songs of 3 minutes each gives us about 165 hours of music. I can't think of a jam-session that can stretch that long!
Maybe this might help you understand.
Let me cry in my Silicon Valley beer for a sec.
In the late 90s I worked for a startup in the valley with very bright energetic people. Our company had a revolutionary product in an infrastructure niche no one else had. One of the fastest growing tech companies around with large technical staff and very little hierarchy in ways of middle management. The tech savvy founders focused on solving problems quickly, allowing customer facing pre-sales techs to be creative and come up with solutions together with engineering in the span of days, that would take corporate giants like Microsoft weeks or months to solve.
It was that nimbleness that allowed us to win big contracts ahead of the established players. This is universally true of many startups and "disrupters" with a smart new product and flat hierarchies.
I was lucky to be amongst the first 200 staff and saw the company grow to 5000+ employees within a few short years.
After exponential growth, corporate procedures and a swath of middle managers weighed us down. Take any scene out of "Office Space" and it happens to nearly all companies once they reach a certain size.
Apple was amazing in how it grew to this size and still pump out great products in relatively short order. SJ was not known for for his subtle, laid-back approach. Now that "the cat" is gone, the pencil pushing mice come out to play. Having said that, I still think Apple has bucked the lethargy trend of most large corporations.
It's not so much managerial delusion about Apple's place in the world, but lethargy setting in in the absence of forceful visionary leadership. It is rare for a large corporation to come back from the brink like Apple did in 1997 and behave much like a startup again, let alone for that to happen again. Not saying they're anywhere near that scenario, but the phenomenal success over the last 2 decades is unlikely to continue at this rate.
Who knows, Apple could've easily bought Spotify (if it was for sale), but probably decided against it when they launched Apple Music.
So now Google is back-dooring their way into Spotify according to this story:
http://www.caama.org/follow-the-money-is-spotify-getting-the-bear-hug-from-google/
I find it annoying that the For You section seems to propose more and more automatically generated content instead of those handpicked playlists Apple has been bragging about.
Also, the playlist "Monday in the rain" comes on Thursday when it's sunny. And "late night alternative" comes in the morning. And today I got "Alernative Christmas" as a suggestion
I also told Apple Music at least 25 times I dislike Britney Spears but she keeps appearing in For You. Seems that Apple's music algorithms suck as hard as their search algorithms.
Also, the playlist "Monday in the rain" comes on Thursday when it's sunny. And "late night alternative" comes in the morning. And today I got "Alernative Christmas" as a suggestion
I also told Apple Music at least 25 times I dislike Britney Spears but she keeps appearing in For You. Seems that Apple's music algorithms suck as hard as their search algorithms.
I have to agree... the thought of Tim Cook standing up on stage saying Apple Music F****** sucks to the engineers seems a lot, lot less plausible. Of course, it only mildly helped MobileMe when SJ did it... who knows...