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Learn from History. iPod did not actually roar until it + a version of iTunes came to Windows. Had Apple focused on Apple people then, perhaps none of what followed would have played out.

Apple's pond is much larger now- and very, very profitable- but the other pond(s) is larger still.

That depends.
I wonder how many of those paid spotify subscribers are android users.
Could even be that most of the paying customers of spotify have an iphone or are on IOS.
 
AM and Spotify each gained 4M users over the last 3 months.

AM is available in ~100 countries where Spotify hasn't even gotten started yet.

Reports that AM is going to overtake (or even catch) Spotify seem overblown to me. AM is able to grow at a quicker rate percentage wise because their userbase is smaller and they're available in more countries already.

Honestly, the fact AM is already in more countries concerns me about the future of it. AM is in hundreds of countries and their userbase is so small? That means they're failing to convince many people to use it - they're having to cast a huge net to catch people. There's not a lot of countries left for them to expand into to continue fueling its growth. Spotify has no such problems - they could quickly gain more users by expanding into hundreds of countries they're not in yet.
 
People are still using windows 8!?

Willingly?!

Or do they work for companies with sadistic IT depts?

It was better than 10. I asked for it on my last work PC, and it has just been end-of-leased, leaving me with a 10 box and no more admin privileges as the university is trying (badly) to centralise things and work through "Software Centre", which is a right PITA. 8 was fantastic for those formerly known as Metro apps. 10 tries to be as good, but you can't switch between them by clicking in the top-left corner anymore, and the bottom-right + up gesture, and charms in general, are gone as well :(. 8 also had the best version of Skype, which SNAPPED to the side of my screen, another great feature they took away with 10, and took away from the Xbox as well, for no good reason. As for what is better in 10? I do like taskbars on all screens out of the box.

On the topic at hand, I had no idea Apple Music had achieved such numbers! I thought it was too little too late, but that is good to see, even if I personally still go in for buying albums through iTunes … even if the Windows version sucks. It seems that around here people keep talking about Spotify falling over soon, but I guess we'll just have to see!
 
I was not a big fan of Apple Music. Main reason is iTunes itself. It has been going downhill ever since they wanted to "simplify" things and introduced iTunes 12. For me it's way to Album-driven which is a way of thinking about music that online music distribution has gotten me out of. Other mayor annoyances are the very few sorting options, search still doesn't allow for typos and the Genre division is way to broad - which also affects any auto-playlist.
The final nail in AM's coffin, Spotify makes it a lot easier for the genre I mostly listen to (which is EDM) to discover new things with way more accurate recommendations whereas Apple doesn't even show Remixes on an Artist page.

Apple has a long way to go for me to subscribe to their "service".
 
Spotify is a million times better than Apple Music.

What makes Apple better in my mind is that they didn’t just design the service for people who stream, but also for people who buy music. It’s why I’ve switched back after trying Google for a while. Spotify won’t match my 30,000+ track library and store all of that in the cloud. Most of those files are lossless as well. iTunes manages. Sonos plays. Plus everything is on my iPhone. I hear pretty consistently that Spotify is better for discovery, but that doesn’t interest me nearly as much as having a service that takes personal libraries into account.
 
Reports that AM is going to overtake (or even catch) Spotify seem overblown to me. AM is able to grow at a quicker rate percentage wise because their userbase is smaller and they're available in more countries already.
The mention of AM overtaking Spotify refers to the US market only. ;)
 
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With their degree of success, Spotify till can't turn a profit. That's a big problem. That has to take its tole on the company eventually.

Spotify are surely aiming to be bought by Google or Amazon.
That or use the privacy nightmare known as Windows 10.

That's a good point. Windows 10 hoovers up everything that you do and it's almost impossible to stop it from collecting data if you put any sort of Microsoft account anywhere near it.
 
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Still prefer Apple Music for the ecosystem. Be it storing music on my Apple Watch, or listening to it from my Apple TV, or locating a song via Siri. It’s all these little conveniences which add up.
Tim, is it you?

People are still using windows 8!?

Willingly?!

Or do they work for companies with sadistic IT depts?
Probably some old cheap tablets with little to no OEM support. Some of them have so low specs that a simple upgrade doesn't work. Can't even boot from USB to do a clean install on some of them... Yes. It's that bad. Consequently, lacking any re-sale value, their long term usage is basically: e-reader in the kitchen for recipes, youtube-player, music-streamer,...
 
What makes Apple better in my mind is that they didn’t just design the service for people who stream, but also for people who buy music. It’s why I’ve switched back after trying Google for a while. Spotify won’t match my 30,000+ track library and store all of that in the cloud. Most of those files are lossless as well. iTunes manages. Sonos plays. Plus everything is on my iPhone. I hear pretty consistently that Spotify is better for discovery, but that doesn’t interest me nearly as much as having a service that takes personal libraries into account.

Glad you had a good experience with the music matching. I didn't - Apple Music replaced (and kept on replacing) some of the tracks that I really like with completely wrong replacement tracks - and no way to tell it to make an exception for those tracks.

It was pretty for that reason that I stopped using AM.
 
That wasn't to be taken seriously. ;)
It's just that the way you put it sounds something like Apple Markting Department would say.
In fact it's more like: Hey! Apple Music works perfectly on your Apple devices. (If it didn't Apple would have failed completely).
So does Spotify. However, to make you pay for AM iso Spotify, we locked everyone else out from the HomePod.

Seeing an ecosystem from the inside should hopefully always result in an excellent user experience, while seeing it from the outside will reveal a more complete picture. And Apple doesn't do well on cross-plattform.
People who lack the outside vision will one day wake up and realize how they locked them self in with Apple.

Since the Apple Music App has been crippled in the past iOS releases (a usability nightmare that made me purchase Cesium music player) it's not even a pleasure to use anymore,... also playlists, history,... will stick with Apple. Limiting your music to Apple devices (and a bad Windows/Android experience) is like buying a supposedly universal aftermarket navigation system like TomTom that will only fully work inside a specific brand of car.
For the same reason I would always recommend using Alexa over Apple. Apple will lock you in with HomeKit, while Amazon is using an open standard (ZigBee). So you can ditch Alexa anytime and use any other device that supports ZigBee (the HomePod does not).

So, take a look outside the Apple ecoystem, and see if AM is really the best deal. Especially when it comes to retrofitting old equipment, something with a Spotify receiver will outperform AirPlay in usability. That costs ~30€ (~40$) per unit, e.g. AudioCast.
 
To be expected, as Spotify has been there for a long time, is very well known for music streaming and offers a great service.
 
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How long are people going to hang on to the "been there longer" angle?

The simply fact is, and this is what the headline should be, "Spotify has almost double the paid for users compared to Apple Music"

You can argue why to the cows come home but you can't change the facts.
 
LOL, now that would really boost market share for Apple...
windows-10-barely-increases-market-share-despite-fall-creators-update-launch-518315-2.jpg

Exactly! I think a web player would be nice, though.
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How long are people going to hang on to the "been there longer" angle?

The simply fact is, and this is what the headline should be, "Spotify has almost double the paid for users compared to Apple Music"

You can argue why to the cows come home but you can't change the facts.

Exactly. This is impressive for Spotify, especially as Apple Music is default on every iPhone.
 
How did Apple drop the ball so hard on this? They were the market leader. They DOMINATED music. They had the iTunes (when it was good), the iTunes store, iPods, gift cards, it all worked so well.

Honestly, I don't even use iTunes anymore. It's clunky, the music exploration is horrible, custom playlists are updated a couple of times a year at most. I cant find ANY new bands. The library also seems to be smaller than Spotify; Spotify frequently has things Apple doesn't, when did that happen? Apple music seems to be only good for hip-hop and hipster whistling songs from San Fransico.

Or well, the 00's were great for Apple. Now expensive junk.
 
AM and Spotify each gained 4M users over the last 3 months.

AM is available in ~100 countries where Spotify hasn't even gotten started yet.

Reports that AM is going to overtake (or even catch) Spotify seem overblown to me. AM is able to grow at a quicker rate percentage wise because their userbase is smaller and they're available in more countries already.

Honestly, the fact AM is already in more countries concerns me about the future of it. AM is in hundreds of countries and their userbase is so small? That means they're failing to convince many people to use it - they're having to cast a huge net to catch people. There's not a lot of countries left for them to expand into to continue fueling its growth. Spotify has no such problems - they could quickly gain more users by expanding into hundreds of countries they're not in yet.
You keep saying "hundreds of countries' . I take it you know that there are 195 or so countries in the world. :)
 
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How did Apple drop the ball so hard on this? They were the market leader. They DOMINATED music. They had the iTunes (when it was good), the iTunes store, iPods, gift cards, it all worked so well.

Honestly, I don't even use iTunes anymore. It's clunky, the music exploration is horrible, custom playlists are updated a couple of times a year at most. I cant find ANY new bands. The library also seems to be smaller than Spotify; Spotify frequently has things Apple doesn't, when did that happen? Apple music seems to be only good for hip-hop and hipster whistling songs from San Fransico.

Or well, the 00's were great for Apple. Now expensive junk.
Well a certain person did pass away....
 
AM and Spotify each gained 4M users over the last 3 months.

AM is available in ~100 countries where Spotify hasn't even gotten started yet.

Reports that AM is going to overtake (or even catch) Spotify seem overblown to me. AM is able to grow at a quicker rate percentage wise because their userbase is smaller and they're available in more countries already.

Honestly, the fact AM is already in more countries concerns me about the future of it. AM is in hundreds of countries and their userbase is so small? That means they're failing to convince many people to use it - they're having to cast a huge net to catch people. There's not a lot of countries left for them to expand into to continue fueling its growth. Spotify has no such problems - they could quickly gain more users by expanding into hundreds of countries they're not in yet.
In addition to that Apple Music is always right there in the OS. It's like internet Explorer on Windows. I am surprised still people are not enabling it. My daughter started with iPhone and she always used Spotify. Because all her friends use Spotify. Maybe the teenagers like Spotify? The same way they like snap chat, but not iMessage.
 
Spotify's money problem won't go away until they get bought out, which is the plan of the venture capitalists behind it. They have been absorbing huge losses and are just hoping that some large company will buy them as the loss leader they are.

Music streaming is now a commoditized business, where consumers will choose primarily on price; hence Spotify has to match every Apple move on students, family plan, etc., and is unable to raise prices to cover costs. Unfortunately, Spotify is thus far a one note business, but are competing against much larger companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, etc., that have multiple revenue streams and can leverage their music streaming.

As Spotify continues to hemorrhage money, the future looks even more bleak for them as Apple looks likely to offer an entertainment bundle in the future that Spotify can't match. Amazon is already offering music "for free" with Prime and is adding to their bundle. Disney and others are coming. "Better discovery" won't save them.
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AM and Spotify each gained 4M users over the last 3 months.

AM is available in ~100 countries where Spotify hasn't even gotten started yet.

Reports that AM is going to overtake (or even catch) Spotify seem overblown to me. AM is able to grow at a quicker rate percentage wise because their userbase is smaller and they're available in more countries already.

Honestly, the fact AM is already in more countries concerns me about the future of it. AM is in hundreds of countries and their userbase is so small? That means they're failing to convince many people to use it - they're having to cast a huge net to catch people. There's not a lot of countries left for them to expand into to continue fueling its growth. Spotify has no such problems - they could quickly gain more users by expanding into hundreds of countries they're not in yet.


At the end of last year, Apple Music was available in 59 countries that Spotify wasn't. AM isn't in "hundreds of countries." There are only 195 countries and AM is in a little over a hundred. They aren't looking to expand into other countries in any significant way as they have been in roughly the same number countries since launch. Predictions of AM overtaking Spotify was for US only.

Apple Music is on a steady growth trajectory in absolute numbers. They are now adding about 2 million users per month on an accelerating growth rate.
 
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