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With Apple Music at 20M Users, Spotify Hits 50M Paying Subscriber Milestone
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Agreed, and my owned music is better quality than what is offered for streaming. What is interesting is that Spotify is considering lossless audio. Lossless does not necessarily mean anything about quality. But I do hope that works for them as it will be good for the music industry in general, but I won't get my hopes up because the majority of people don't listen to music with a critical ear, but rather just as background noise while they are doing other things.
Nope you are not alone. Having Apple Music on the Apple TV is a great feature and my family uses it daily. It should open up to the default Browse Screen tab in my opinion, as it would allow more discoverability and looks better instead of library.
I do agree Spotify has good playlists and curators, but once I found the Houdini Playlist App that was a game changer. It allows you to transfer playlists from either service in a matter of minutes all on your iOS device (You can even use the same playlist clipart bonus!). The accuracy was usually spot on, with the occasional not found song that a manual search later was able to locate on Apple Music.
I think the Apple Music interface needs to be updated to a black background, get rid of the white and pink font please! Either allow users to customize their Apple Music app appearance or a dark mode will compliment the upcoming OLED iphone.
Apple Music and the Apple Watch show promise, but another feature that keeps us with AM. They need to allow more than one playlist at a time hopefully in the next AW major update.
Also think Apple Music should introduce a web interface for those times the itunes software is not available or able to be downloaded on i.e. work computers.
Lastly Sonos please update so Apple Music can be used without the Sonos App like Spotify. The Sonos Speakers are great quality, but having to use a Sonos App creates an unnecessary barrier to such a wonderful partnership. (Wouldn't be surprised either if Apple acquired Sonos and integrated it into the Apple Ecosystem of Apple Music/Alexa competitors) Like the Beats acquisition even though it was highly overvalued in my opinion, has worked out well with the headphones and AM combined, it's a hit with athletes and the marketing is spot on.
Spotify had a huge head start. Apple Music definitely has work to do and improve on, but will be interesting to see where this sector is come 2-3 years from now.
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Considering that last year Spotify said that they had 100M subscribers and 30M paying, this must mean they now have 50M paying. I'm on Apple Music and love it, mostly because of it's tight integration with my huge library that I've had for decades, inside iTunes. But this is very impressive from Spotify.
Switched from Spotify to Apple Music because of integration with my old iTunes playlists. But still go back to Spotify and listen to ads for music discovery. Spotify has some great weekly playlists and have not been able to find the equivalent to the Discover Weekly or even new music Friday on Spotify.
Spotify currently has around 2000 employees (and is still rapidly growing).
I'm definitively in the minority here. I am a subscriber to Spotify (through my cellphone contract), but I do not like the interface, I don't like their pop-up thingies (behind the lyrics) that I cannot switch off, and I don't like how complicated everything is. I just signed up for a three-month-trial with Apple Music and I love the interface. I love how I can easily access the lyrics, how easy it is to like (or dislike) a song, and how it is slowly learning which songs to play for me. I also found that Apple Music has a better song selection when it comes to international artists and classical music. But I could be wrong. So far, I'm seriously considering renewing my subscription when it comes up - despite getting Spotify for free for another year.
It really is no competition... Today Apple music is better without question. I say "today" because you might have had an argument before Apple updated Apple Music this year. Now AM has a much better UI than Spotify. From small things like icons, colors, and responsiveness all the way to its larger artwork and simpler navigation. It's just better looking and more intuitive/easier to navigate.
Disagree? Here's an example... there is no reason that when I go to a particular artists page in Spotify that I shouldn't be able to hit a link on "popular" and find more than the top 5 songs from that artist. Not being able to see what the most popular songs from a particular artist are is an obviously terrible design flaw. Of course I can do it from the bottom of the search page but that doesn't filter out other artists and it's clunky. By comparison if I go to an artists page in Apple Music I can easily swipe right and get more songs or click and see a complete list. As a matter of fact just go compare artists page in general in Spotify and Apple Music. See how you can swipe to the right on top songs, similar artists, albums, etc. You get updates from the artist.. videos and images that you can comment on. The comparison is really embarrassingly bad for Spotify.
The player is also much better in Apple Music. The ability to swipe up and see lyrics and whats up next and even move songs in the queue is just a better and more intuitive solution.
The integration into iMessage is awesome. If you share a song with someone else that has Apple Music they can play it with a player right in the messages App. You can also share your most recently played stuff right inside the messages app. It's simple but it works great.
Apple Music also has more exclusives and I imagine they will continue to have more. Perhaps it hasn't been an artist you're personally interested in yet but there's always the chance it happens in the future.
In my opinion social is the only area I think Spotify still has an advantage over Apple Music. Apple Music literally does everything else better. With that said I'm sure that more social features and the ability to see what friends are listening to is coming. In some ways Apple has already passed them with what they allow artists to share on their pages.
Apple has some deep pockets.
Even for Apple, at what point do you ditch a service that is bleeding money year over year? However I understand that in their mind, even if their services lose them money, as long as folks buy more hardware then it has paid for itself.
It's time for some hard negotiations with these labels. Or better yet allow artists to self publish on platforms like Spotify/Apple Music. I wouldn't be surprised if that's something we'll see in the future. Talk about disruptive. That's the route I thought that Spotify was going to go when they were rumored to be buying g SoundCloud, but that didn't happen.
The music discovery is by far one of the best features for me. I've found hundreds of songs that I never would have found without Spotify. Also, Apple Music doesn't have an EQ?
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Indeed. I'd imagine money is made from touring and merch these days. Not from record sales.
At least if you're not a pop icon, anyway.
That was more than a year after music launched...and nothing to do with the existence of Apple Music or competition in streaming
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It's not selective, it's accurate, rather than your made up memory.
This has nothing to do with gripes about the 30% cut Apple were taking, but we are discussing whether Spotify griped about the existence of Apple Music which they did not; they said it was good for streaming overall and subsequently Spotify
That is actually incorrect, with regards to the amount of people that work for Spotify. Over 1.6k people work for the company. Here's an article with that fact: click here to view it
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Spotify lets you import your old iTunes playlists to the service. They've had that functionality since launch IIRC.
Had spotify. Dropped it for apple music. Dropped apple music as I really didn't listen to enough music to justify $10 a month. Plus their "radio" stations aren't good. Found out I had Amazon music with my Prime membership. Been using that for a while and really like the interface. Signed up for the full music membership for $8. Will probably keep it. $8 vs $10. Pick your poison. Amazon music has better "radio" stations IMO as well.
I'm still buying tracks and using iTunes Match to sync my music/playlists between devices. I use Pandora and some music podcasts for discovery. I tried Apple Music and don't use it enough to justify $10/month. That's an album that I could buy and keep each month. I also found the service to be kind of buggy and the music suggestions to be shallow and repetitive.
I'm still miffed that Apple screwed up what was a great system for me. Before Apple Music, iTunes Match would get me ad-free iTunes Radio, which was far better than the crappy radio service that is in Apple Music. I had iTunes Match for my library and iTunes Radio for discovery all for $25/year. And when I came across something I really liked on iTunes Radio, I'd hop on over to the iTunes Store and buy the album. A great solution solely in the Apple ecosystem.
I'm waiting for the day that Apple inevitably deprecates iTunes Match in favor of Apple Music. Not sure what I'll do then. Hopefully by that time Apple Music will be worth the investment.
I'm still miffed that Apple screwed up what was a great system for me. Before Apple Music, iTunes Match would get me ad-free iTunes Radio, which was far better than the crappy radio service that is in Apple Music. I had iTunes Match for my library and iTunes Radio for discovery all for $25/year. And when I came across something I really liked on iTunes Radio, I'd hop on over to the iTunes Store and buy the album. A great solution solely in the Apple ecosystem.
I'm waiting for the day that Apple inevitably deprecates iTunes Match in favor of Apple Music. Not sure what I'll do then. Hopefully by that time Apple Music will be worth the investment.
Why does it have to be one or the other though? I subscribe to Google Play Music and Amazon Music Unlimited. And I buy vinyl and I go to shows when bands I like tour (was at a show last night).
And the subscription services have allowed me to discover bands I would have never found out about and I eventually bought their records and gone to their shows. This is an overall win for the musician even though they make no money from streaming.
And I say this as a guy with records on Spotify so I know how little you make per stream. I actually lose money keeping our records up there.
An average Spotify or Apple Music subscriber spends close to $120 a year on music. I am sure the vast majority would not have done that without these services.
Also; people tend to leave out the fact that the number of paying subscribers today is nowhere near the number of people who bought physical music back in the day. The music industry will never, ever get back to the money that was made in the 70s, 80s or early 90s simply because music now competes with so much other stuff for the same share of disposable income.
Especially among younger people, traditionally one of the pillars of music related spending, things like Netflix, new phone every year, cell phone subscription, apps, internet subscription, portable computers for use at school and so on eats away at the money that 30 years ago did not have much more to be spent on than music and going to the movies.
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You have been able to do that for years on Spotify. There are also services that submits your songs to a wide range of streaming/downloading services for a tiny one-time fee, leaving you with the full payment from the services if you own all the rights. You don't need a record company today if you don't want to.
Also; people tend to leave out the fact that the number of paying subscribers today is nowhere near the number of people who bought physical music back in the day. The music industry will never, ever get back to the money that was made in the 70s, 80s or early 90s simply because music now competes with so much other stuff for the same share of disposable income.
Especially among younger people, traditionally one of the pillars of music related spending, things like Netflix, new phone every year, cell phone subscription, apps, internet subscription, portable computers for use at school and so on eats away at the money that 30 years ago did not have much more to be spent on than music and going to the movies.
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You have been able to do that for years on Spotify. There are also services that submits your songs to a wide range of streaming/downloading services for a tiny one-time fee, leaving you with the full payment from the services if you own all the rights. You don't need a record company today if you don't want to.
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You not tied to ancient iTunes software on desktop (talk about clunky/bloated mess). Webapp makes it super easy to use at Work. It works on my PS4 in the living room (no need to buy anything else). No need for text, all my friends and family are just there on the side menu - click share and pick their picture. All the music I listen to were done by people that been dead hundred of years - exclusives are irrelevant. I can control any Spotify app on any device from any other spotify app. Just the webapp sells it for me.
I can't even begin to imagine spending £120 a year on music, that's insane! In the last year I have spent £16.99 on music buying a Kate Bush CD. These music streaming services must be extracting more money from people than they have sense.
Such a funny comment. I think back to my CD buying years, and I easily spent that in a year. If you aren't buying music, and not paying for a subscription service, where are you getting your music from, other than your existing library?