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With Apple Music at 20M Users, Spotify Hits 50M Paying Subscriber Milestone
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Sorry if I was t clear. But yes, web based. The problem is t mobile, but say, at work. Installing iTunes is a strict no no.
I also don't want iTunes on my windows computer since it's a hot steaming pile of bugginess and memory leak hell. (Reasonably fine on the Mac though)
So without web based streaming, I can't rely on Apple Music.
I like Spotify a lot because the file sizes of songs seems to be smaller and the songs play virtually instantaneous. Also the dark color is easy on the eyes. That being said I still use Google Play Music because I got in on the introductory $7.99 pricing. Also because my own stuff missing from the services is housed there. I wish Spotify had a way to upload your music to their servers like that. They seem slow to intergrate new features. It took a very long time for them to implement Chromecast support. I get the impression they have a very small programming team.
In the UK I pay around £23 a month for 20 gig of data and Spotify premium is included in my Vodafone contract. Are you saying this does not count? Obviously Vodafone pay Spotify and they most likely gave Vodafone a generous discount.
Vodafone present this as a free promotion, but when you compare Vodafone price plans to competitors they clearly factor in the "free Spotify" and up the prices accordingly.
Given this, why shouldn't carrier "free promotions" be included?
20 million users in 18 months is pretty impressive. Apple Music could use some improvements, but it's a lot better than it was last year.
While all the executives at these companies are toasting one another the actual musicians and artists are getting pennies...no fractions of pennies on the dollar and angry as hell. You want to know how bad it is? Vinyl revenue is actually pulling in more money than streaming.
It's because of this that I only buy physical albums. I'm not supporting this borderline legal theft.
It's because of this that I only buy physical albums. I'm not supporting this borderline legal theft.
This comparison is pointless. Nobody was listening to Spotify (or any streaming service) on their phones 9 years ago.
Apple advertises on TV, I've never seen a Spotify TV spot. I think Spotify has done quite well considering it has been mostly word of mouth or write ups on tech news sites, or promo offers that have fueled it's growth. To this day, I imagine a lot of people don't even know what Spotify even is.
I think this very unfair to say. In 2008 the trend was cds or payed for digital music such as Itunes was the way to go. Spotify at the time had a very hard time convincing music industries that streaming was the way to go and therefore did not have such an expansive music library back then. It's worth pointing out that Steve Jobs (who I respect and was Apple leader at the time) actively opposed streaming at the time.
I think it is more accurate to say Apple is waking up and smelling the coffee with this one.
Browsers were free so many would just accept the default. Music subscriptions cost money so most people check out competition before deciding to spend; it's not a default so far as requiring no action.
Use it on my work laptop every day, it's fine. Nothing earth shattering but it works and doesn't have memory leaks
Assuming you mean this:
https://9to5mac.com/2016/12/06/vinyl-sales-greater-than-digital-sales-last-week/
That was only in the UK, and the comparison was to music downloads, not streaming.
Actually, music streaming has developed into the most important revenue driver for the music industry, having recently surpassed downloads. It has converted many people who rarely bought music before into a stable monthly revenue source. The real issue are not Spotify et al, but Youtube, which delivers more music streams than all the subscription services combined and, being purely ad-driven, pays far less per play than Spotify or Apple Music:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/26/spotify-music-download-apple-itunes-streaming-vinyl
<begin quote>
Though the latest figures only cover the first half of 2015, the monitoring service Nielsen reckons that YouTube delivered 60% more music streams than all the on-demand music streaming services combined – and that the gap had grown since the same period in 2014. The arrival of Apple Music in June 2015 might shift that, but it’s unlikely.
What riles the music business is that the amount that YouTube pays it per track played works out as substantially less than Spotify or Apple Music.
<end quote>
And, BTW, I don't miss the old days where you could only buy albums that often had just one or two good songs and a lot of boring filler material.
I encounter the odd memory leak. or did last time I tried it on the PC. though it's been a year
But it's not a matter of how it works on a work machine
it's about policy, and permissions. Work Policy is no iTunes or other user non work software on work PC's.
And since I set the policy, I sure as hell am going to stick with it
I live at the edge of 4G coverage for my phone. Go a few miles more and you're lucky to get anything. I do get 15 mb DSL service, which isn't bottom of the barrel but with literally only one provider it's not like I expect things to get better. Because of wireless and internet limits, I tend to still buy my music and rip it. And until there is the infrastructure in place for most of the places I visit for 4 or 5G wireless and data plans that aren't expensive, limited data, or both I expect to stay that way.
P.S. What I pay for 15 mb I bet is more than many pay for 1 gb ethernet.
P.S. What I pay for 15 mb I bet is more than many pay for 1 gb ethernet.
Like a previous poster above me I used to be on Vodafone UK and my tariff included Spotify Premium.
I jumped ship to o2 in Autumn and have been using Apple Music since because my tariff includes unlimited music streaming with certain apps (Spotify is included as well as Deezer and some others I forget).
I've personally found Apple tends to have a few more songs that aren't third party recordings and/or are available on AM but aren't on Spotify.
I jumped ship to o2 in Autumn and have been using Apple Music since because my tariff includes unlimited music streaming with certain apps (Spotify is included as well as Deezer and some others I forget).
I've personally found Apple tends to have a few more songs that aren't third party recordings and/or are available on AM but aren't on Spotify.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
It is default. The overall system integrates with it. iOS won't offers up Spotify or encourage a Spotify subscription. Anyone interested in Spotify has to manually make it work.
Same with Maps. Click a location in Calendar and Apple Maps is going to open, not Google Maps. The former is the default too, integrated with the rest of the system... much like IE was back in the IE vs. Netscape days.
My point was that the default (or integrated) system usually wins but look through even this thread and you see plenty of Apple people commenting about favoring Spotify (anyway), or trying AM and switching to Spotify, etc.
Note this is no attack on Apple- just an observation that Spotify appears to be surviving an IE-like default option threaded into the iOS... even with a segment of us Apple people. IMO, that's a good thing as competition is much better for all of us rather than even Apple completely dominating anything such that all competitors completely die out.
I've worked in tech and online companies for a long time. I don't for a moment believe that number. But neither do real investors. It's a nice pretend number. The real question is, how sustainable are they? My guess is they are waiting for a larger company to buy them. Maybe a telco...maybe a big entertainment company. It's a play to be bought. They are not sustainable since they lose money and if they raise prices they will lose subscribers quickly. They need to be part of a larger company that has the ability to lose money in one area and make it back in another. Alone they are most likely toast within 5 years.