Yes, and I would guess that Apple Music is already profitable. Not Apple. Just AM. Spotify's free tier will be the death of their service...
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Spotify Reaches Over 40 Million Paying Subscribers, Continues to Outpace Apple Music
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Yes, and I would guess that Apple Music is already profitable. Not Apple. Just AM. Spotify's free tier will be the death of their service...
"Outpace". That's the important word here.
(I have no boat in this race. I like 'owning' my music. Though it would be just lovely if Apple focused on both offline/owned music as well as their new service. Like... why can't I rate music? Why is the app so horrible? Why aren't artworks displayed on playlist folders?)
(I have no boat in this race. I like 'owning' my music. Though it would be just lovely if Apple focused on both offline/owned music as well as their new service. Like... why can't I rate music? Why is the app so horrible? Why aren't artworks displayed on playlist folders?)
They may have dramatically improved their suggestion engine, but when I tried out AM last year, it was utter BS. I have a huge range of genres I'm interested in. I asked Apple Music for suggestions. It gave me nothing but the band Slipknot. Slipknot is ok... I've listened through to all of their albums and have already picked out the songs I like and ignored the rest. They're not new. They're not particularly great. But despite telling Apple Music about all of the bands that I like that sound nothing like Slipknot, they couldn't make a single suggestion for me that wasn't Slipknot.
I strongly suspect that if you listen to popular music, Apple Music will serve up you like. If you listen to obscure stuff, Apple Music is clueless and will just offer stuff based on whatever track you do like that is most popular.
As someone else already said, Spotify's Weekly Discover feature for the win.
I can. it is filled to the brim with spam music of wannabe artists that name themselves, their songs and their albums exactly as the real artists. Spotify is great if you like covers, not so much if you want to find the actual original artist quickly.
Good to see there are multiple options for consumers. Apple Music, Spotify, Microsoft's Groove, Google All Access, Tidal... probably others I haven't thought of. I was hesitant about subscription music for a long time but it's really been a great option for me and how I like to listen to and discover music. I sampled a bunch of them, and eventually settled on Spotify and couldn't be happier. Others may prefer Apple Music. That's great! Isn't it better that we have choices and are able to use what's best for each of us as individuals?
Oops, sorry, forgot. This is MacRumors. I'm supposed to be partisan and become hyper-critical of any service that doesn't originate from Apple. I'll try better next time. The things that some of you people post is so incredibly depressing. None of this is worth that level of emotion.
Oops, sorry, forgot. This is MacRumors. I'm supposed to be partisan and become hyper-critical of any service that doesn't originate from Apple. I'll try better next time. The things that some of you people post is so incredibly depressing. None of this is worth that level of emotion.
You've been able to do this for years with Apple's original Remote app
It takes money to make money. Spotify is still in their growth phase. They're receiving money from investors and spending it on more features, more content, and more infrastructure so that they can support more customers than they already have. This is normal behavior for any company that's growing quickly (for example, see Tesla.) Burning investor money isn't a problem unless you start plateauing and aren't growing anymore. Once you're no longer growing, you should be profitable... if you're not, you're a failed company.
Adding 3M subscribers per month means that Spotify is doubling their subscriber base annually. Hundreds of millions if not billions of people of people own phones and want to listen to music on them. So they should be able to continue doubling for another 2-5 years before they plateau and need to be profitable.
Spotify have been doing 99 cents for 3 months offers etc.. they have been fighting hard I will give them that. I think the march towards more paid users as quickly as possible probably means they are going to drop the free tier completly soon. It can't IPO with that free tier. VC's have sunk a ton of money into this thing and they won't get it back unless they can convince shareholders that this business makes money and can grow.
Strangely, like Daniel Ek says, Apple Music has been good for them. I think without Apple Music Spotify would be dead. I think Apple have convinced the industry that they can make money from streaming and so likewise Spotify will be looked at more favourably by investors (if they drop that free tier!)
Strangely, like Daniel Ek says, Apple Music has been good for them. I think without Apple Music Spotify would be dead. I think Apple have convinced the industry that they can make money from streaming and so likewise Spotify will be looked at more favourably by investors (if they drop that free tier!)
I think more notable exception is the reliance on iTunes.
Google Play Music, Spotify, Etc, almost all work entirely based off Web / HTML5 players online. This allows for access to streaming from literally any device. As long as it has a web browser.
Apple's Music being married exclusively to iTunes for playback off of mobile is one of the primary reasons I didn't subscribe after my free trial.
I do not want to install iTunes. Period.
And i CANNOT install iTunes at work. Period.
which made Apple music pretty much useless except when i'm at home at my desktop. Again, A pdevice I really do not want iTunes on, since iTunes, has always been a buggy, poorly coded mess with memory leaks galore.
The Spotify app has got to be the worse on iPhone. If I create a play list and connect the iPhone to the car (Dock) it halts playback when the song ends. I have to manually skip to the next song.
I find Apple Music so much better and integrated. so I cancelled my Spotify subscription and went with Apple.
I find Apple Music so much better and integrated. so I cancelled my Spotify subscription and went with Apple.
There are 6 billion people on earth. Suppose 15% of them will eventually pay for streaming music. That's 900 million. If the market is split 50-50 between Apple and Spotify, it means Spotify has a potential of 450 million users. It may very well be that Spotify will not break even until they have 150 million users, but since the potential is so great, that doesn't really matter.
Tl;dr: pretty sure they can continue to remain competetive without making any money for several years.
Which is probably why Apple excluded music apps from the new Siri API.
Is Apple Music profitable at this point?
I doubt this will ever happen. The labels don't want another quasi monopoly controlling the market like Apple used to with the iTunes store, and some of them even own shares of Spotify.
Wrote to spotify about a family plan in Canada. They suggested I switch to Rogers as my wireless carrier for a "special deal."
I'll give apple music another try.
The suggestions were really poor at the beginning, but the more I use the more it got better. And now I can discover even more bands with "my new" playlist (copied and paste from "discover weekly" on spotify)
Or did you mean you don't want streaming music to go near your own files? - Yes - it's this perceived issue. I'm probably over-paranoidm but given the variations in copyright / fair-use laws around the globe there is also the potential issue of Apple creating a "catalogue of misdemeanours" on behalf of the music industry who are renowned for being a bunch of litigious Jon Snows. I remember being at a cyber crime conference years ago and the speaker from the music industry was met in equal measure with guffaws, boos and general contempt from a professional audience with more important issues to deal with (eg organised crime and terrorism) than making the record labels richer.
With all this sarcasm I can't figure out what to do with myself.
I agree on your explanation of that process, but not that Spotify is still in its growth phase where it should need financial injections. Not with a base of 40 million subscribers and a number of years as the first to market in a now very close to mature market.
I hope Spotify's investors are increasing the pressure because if they cannot structure their business to convert that revenue into a profit, then there is something fundamentally wrong with your business model. Granted there is lots of room to grow in terms of subscriber base, but the market is very competitive, so price increases are a no-go to become profitable. They need to become more efficient or squeeze the artists to make a profit, and I don't see them putting a squeeze on their suppliers (the artists) with the current trend of artists going for exclusives or limiting publication to certain platforms.
It's got to be one of the most confusing piles of crap I have ever used. If someone has a cheat sheet for this app please share it ... otherwise it takes me about 5 minutes to find a new tracks playlist within a certain genre.