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Apple Music Was Always Going To Win (gizmodo.com)
Apple Music is about to overtake Spotify as the most popular streaming music service in the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend. Gizmodo: [...] Here's where the inevitability comes into play. Because all Apple devices come preloaded with Apple Music, countless consumers start using Apple Music without knowing any better. It's effectively become the streaming music analogue of Microsoft pushing people to surf the web with Internet Explorer. The big difference is that people eventually have to pay for Apple Music, which is the same price as Spotify. As many suspected when it launched three years ago, Apple Music was bound to succeed simply because Apple is big enough and rich enough to will it so. Think about it this way: Spotify gained traction quickly after its 2011 launch, largely because music enthusiasts had seen its streaming model succeed globally and wanted to try this neat new thing. After all, there wasn't anything quite like it at the time, and Americans love to feel innovative.
But eventually, Spotify would cease to feel special and new. As the years passed, practically every major tech company launched its own music streaming service. And then, in 2015, Apple unveiled Apple Music in 2015 -- which was really just a rebranded version of Beats Music. Because Apple could preload the service on iPhones, Watches, and Macs, the company could effectively tap into a new revenue stream without actually inventing anything.
But eventually, Spotify would cease to feel special and new. As the years passed, practically every major tech company launched its own music streaming service. And then, in 2015, Apple unveiled Apple Music in 2015 -- which was really just a rebranded version of Beats Music. Because Apple could preload the service on iPhones, Watches, and Macs, the company could effectively tap into a new revenue stream without actually inventing anything.
Preinstalled app used more than 3rd party. Quick, someone tell Microsoft so they can try this with IE, I mean Edge.
the company could effectively tap into a new revenue stream without actually inventing anything.,
they sound surprised apple would ever do such a thing
Because, you know, no one could EVER prefer it over Spotify...
>> After all, there wasn't anything quite like it at the time, and Americans love to feel innovative.
So I haven't been using Pandora since 2008 or 2009?
Mr Anderson!
Android is the most popular mobile OS and Google hasn't been able to leverage their size to push much of anything. Google Plus? I think Google also has a music service? In this case, the services are probably so similar that it's hard for consumers to tell them apart and the convenience of being preloaded may be enough. But this is only true in parity product situations.
It doesn't matter that it came from apple, or Atari or whomever. Not using apple hardware ensured I never got wrapped up in that nightmare that is iTunes.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
be able to charge less because you dont have to pay anyone 30%
these are apples contributions to innovation in tech.
Consumers aren't as dumb as this article makes them (us) out to be.
G+ or GPlus or Google Circles or whatever it was called failed. Then it failed again after a regrouping. Google it "preinstalled" with every account and still failed to gain any traction.
If Apple didn't have a great product then it wouldn't sell great
... I hope it's been improved since Apple took it over.
Beats took over MOG, which was great. Beats UI was horrible, so I dropped it (or rather didn't switch to it - they didn't even do a real migration) and went with Spotify.
Apple Music Was Always Going To Win
Requiem for the American Dream
From TFA: "Globally, however, Spotify remains in a league of its own, with nearly twice as many paid subscribers as No. 2 Apple, and slightly faster subscriber growth."
I'm a happy Spotify customer. It works on every platform we have in our house, including Linux
I used Pandora and Spotify until I got my iPhone 6, which was my first that had Siri. Being able to use voice control for my music in the car made Apple Music the obvious choice.
Since the catalog is pretty much the same for on-demand specific music between the major services, the one that is integrated into my phone just makes sense. If Amazon or Spotify stood out in some other way, I would consider them, but they don't.
Sorry, I'd love to comment on your story, but I'm not paying the WSJ for the privilege.
I honestly like it better. Once one learns the interface, it's very easy to use, and they actually pay the highest royalties, so it's better for artists, too. If you already use other Apple devices, it's a no-brainer, it works seamlessly across all of them. I'm all for competition, though, so I hope the other services keep Apple on their toes.
I read a comment title "Beats UI was awful...". But, really, it's spotify who has a terrible UI. Sure, it might look better and be easier to interact with, but it's user hostile. It's designed to keep reasonable features from users (like proper shuffle) to advance Spotify and their partners' agendas. I'll be glad to see someone overtake Spotify. It's atrocious how lame their pursuit of profit has made music. They clearly promote some songs so you hear them far more than others, even when shuffling your own playlists. Die, Spotify!
The last I heard, more than 90% of computers don't run MacOS and more than 80% of the smartphones being used in the world are not iPhones. That means that less than 10% of desktop and laptop computers, and less than 20% of smartphones, being used today, have Apple Music pre-installed. Based on that alone, it doesn't appear to be a given that Apple Music would win. So, it must have to do with which users are using iPhones and Macs. Also, keep in mind that before streaming services started being offered, iTunes was the biggest music retailer, and iTunes did allow you to stream the content you bought (IIRC, it was called iTunes Match). So Apple just had to get their existing iTunes customers to start paying for Apple Music. I suspect that that, as well as Apple's long-standing entrenchment in the music industry, was what determined whether Apple Music would win or not.
By that logic, Google Music should be number one as it launched 3 years before Apple and it is preinstalled on larger number of devices. This is an a posteriori justification of the event that happened. It has zero value just like an article telling you why a specific went up after it goes up.
... I own my own music, and I don't sell my personal information in exchange for it. I use cash.
I don't respond to AC's.
Spotify is clearly winning far more users worldwide so this Apple statistic is a bit deceiving. It clearly only focuses on the US which Apple has always done well with products and services.
It probably also helps that Apple's war chest is so large that the music cartels cannot litigate them out of profitability or existence.
Apple Music was bound to succeed simply because Apple is big enough and rich enough to will it so."
So what happened with Microsoft Edge browser. It is right there on the taskbar of every new Windows computer and every computer that was "voluntarily" upgraded for free to Windows 10. Is Microsoft not big enough or rich enough to make Edge a leading browser?
I think Apple Music is a mess but the rivals are worse IMHO. Perhaps people actually do make informed choices based on preference.
It's effectively become the streaming music analogue of Microsoft pushing people to surf the web with Internet Explorer.
That's misunderstanding either the situation with Apple Music or the situation with Internet Explorer. Apple isn't sabotaging Spotify and making it crash on Apple devices. As far as I know, Apple isn't actively trying to redirect you to using Apple Music with every update of iOS. Apple isn't pushing to have record labels to produce only music that works on Apple Music.
Iâ(TM)m a victim! Why doesnâ(TM)t the government do something?
Waaaaaa! /liberal
One thing is very different in the United States: the iPhone has a serious market share. It doesn't elsewhere.
"... Apple Music was bound to succeed simply because Apple is big enough and rich enough to will it so." - Like they did with iBooks? No, you have to have a good product, too.
but the music streaming business actually exists in the whole world, not just America for Americans with iPhones. But yeah, keep posting this to try to spread the notion that Apple Music is the biggest music streaming service in the world.
Well being convicted of price fixing might have held apple back in this case.
I use a Mac at work and it's a pretty good workstation, but trying out iTunes was just a stunning experience in contrast. It was probably one of the most awkward players I ever tried. It had to make a copy of whatever you want it to play instead of being able to just use things whereever you had them, and God help you if you try to use it with an iPod; the syncing was destructive and would delete things you already had.
Huh. I'm at work right now and just realized that I technically still have iTunes, though I've upgraded the OS since I last tried it. So: first thing that happens when I try to start it, is it wants me to agree to some kind of License agreement. WTF. If you decline, it doesn't even start. That's pretty ludicrous right there, considering the company owns the hardware and iTunes comes with MacOS which comes with the hardware. There shouldn't be additional terms to using things that you already bought.
So, I agree to the terms. (Not that I read them.) Now I'm looking at .. whatever. Ok, so I have some music files. I'll just go to the file menu, pick open.. open, WTF. Where is open? How do you open and play a music file?
Maybe it's "add to library" except that's definitely, positively not what I want to do. I just want to play a music file. But let's try that, since for some reason I remember from a few years ago, that you had to do that to get anything even close to working. It's disappointing they still (!) haven't fixed this, but that's life.
I'll add my directory of music to the library. Ok, this is hilarious. It's making a copy. It can't just add that directory to the library; it has to copy the files from it and store an extra copy for its own use.
Except the copy is smaller! This is good news, right? Nope. It ignored all the FLAC and Vorbis files. Yes, I remember this from forever-ago. iTunes hasn't caught up with the modern audio formats. That you still can't read a Vorbis or FLAC file in 2018 reminds me of how MSIE didn't support PNG images for many years after they were standardized. Absolutely ridiculous for a tech company in 2004, but egregiously ridiculous in 2018. I hate to tell you this, Apple fans, but for all its shittiness, MSIE did eventually learn how to handle PNGs.
At least it saw the MP3s. And it made a copy of them, for some fucked up stupid reason. I remember this bullshit from before. Amazing that they still haven't fixed this, either.
I'd go on, but it missed so much of my music collection that it's hard to care. Firefox is better at playing local music files than iTunes! I suppose if I had things in the format that iTunes wants, maybe it wouldn't be so over-the-top horrible? Reminds me that if I would just make MSIE pages instead of standard web pages, then MSIE works too.
So,we're debating whether iTunes or MSIE is better, and iTunes is losing. I don't think I can stay engaged. At least it does appear to be able to play an MP3.
Anyway, if I had the will to go on, I'm sure I'm just scratching the surface of this weird fucking program's oddities and limitations.
This kind of software should have gone away in the 1990s. By the turn of the century everyone was used to stuff way better than this.
Never used it, and never will.
If I want streaming, I turn on the radio. Its free, consumes zero bytes of my data cap, its local I hear about Traffic, weather, events all locally.
Really, you can get almost any song on YouTube for free. Music on YouTube is very different now even compared to a couple years ago. They seem to have given up on the hyper-aggressive DMCA takedowns and are instead relying on revenue splits from advertising. YouTube first party ads can be slightly annoying but they're not that bad compared to third party advertising (which everyone should be blocking by now, anyway), and it's a worthwhile annoyance to put up with for free streaming.
When I checked Google Play Store five minutes ago, I found that Apple Music for Android was incompatible with my Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8" tablet (SM-T350) despite that it runs Android 7. What am I missing?
nothing wrong with spotify, it's just google and apple arrived in the music scene. And amazon lol.
That I keep hearing about?
It is available for the most popular mobile OS too
I opened Google Play Store on my Galaxy Tab A 8" and searched for apple music. Many of the top 16 results imitated the Apple Music eighth notes icon, but not one was published by Apple. I opened Chrome on the same tablet, navigated to your comment, and clicked the link to the app only to see a notice in Google Play Store: "Your device isn't compatible with this version." Nor does it give me a list of devices, and I've noticed the app is also incompatible with a lot of other Android devices.
Is Apple manufacturing an incompatibility to make Android look more fragmented in order to encourage Android users to switch to iOS on grounds that iOS is less fragmented?
Yeah, they wanted to call it iFixit but somehow that name was taken already.
To avoid the higher royalties that record labels and music publishers impose on jukebox-style services, Pandora's lower service tiers behave more like a radio than like a jukebox. When the user chooses an artist, Pandora automatically builds a format out of recordings similar in genre to those of the chosen artist.
Those who hate cross-site tracking can answer a mix of 1 and 2 in a constent manner.
1. I hate ads. I'd rather pay for my content directly.
I'd rather pay for my content directly, but I'm not buying a month's subscription to ten different sites just to read one article on each of those sites. So how do I spend 1-5 cents on a single article or pay $10 per month for a bundle of sites? Adult Check would have been great for this, but the publisher of Perfect 10 magazine sued it out of business when too many publishers on Adult Check's network displayed infringing photos from the magazine. Google Contributor appears to be ideal except for two things:
1. The same company also operates DoubleClick and AdSense. This makes it more likely that Google will share my article purchase history with its advertising division to trigger "interest-based ads" on third-party sites.
2. Reloading the same article counts as an additional purchase at full price. This disincentivizes publishers from increasing server reliability, as each reload means more revenue.
2. I don't mind ads.
I don't mind ads hosted on the publisher's server because they have no third-party ad network or ad exchange to track "click-stream" (viewing history) across multiple sites. Daring Fireball does it right, selling display ad space directly to advertisers. So does Read the Docs. But I don't see how a smaller publisher can reach advertisers in order to do this.
Apple should be investigated for anti trust here. This is the same type of bundling that got MS in trouble with Windows/IE.
What's more.. Apple grants Apple Music access to OS-level functionality not available to any other music streaming service on iOS (namely, voice control through Siri).
I'm a Spotify user and I will not be compelled into using Apple Music. But damn, I really need voice controls when driving!
I always used either Spotify or Google Play as I could get them at cheaper pricing. I finally switched to Apple Music for one reason. Quite often when I got into my car, Apple Music would play the same song every time. It wasn't even a song that I liked. It was a song that was free that they offered at some point. It seems like if you have a third party music app and you get out of the car with that music playing, You later inside the house stop playing that third party app and launch other games and such, When you get back into the car, The car tries to continue playing music. Because that third party app was not the last thing to play audio, Apple Music gets chosen as the music player by default. Well... I only have those few songs that I got for free on that service so it picks the same one every single time to play when it can't determine that I was using Google Play or Spotify. I don't even like the music it is playing. I tried to disable music downloads over cellular and cleared my download cache so that Apple Music couldn't download the song but I was till in WiFi range when leaving so it still ended up playing that song. I finally gave up and just subscribed to Apple Music. Now it at least picks the correct music streaming app.
The solution to this seems obvious to me. Apple should allow setting a default music streaming app so that when you get into a car that tries to resume playing music and the phone can't determine what you used to stream music last, The phone will choose the music app that you actually use.
Relevant track from Apple Music.
If Apple Music becomes the significantly dominant power then there will be no money in Spotify so the owners will have to go back to their previous money making model (premium torrent trackers) and just let everyone pirate music properly again.
Everything old shall be new again.
The OP wasn't about MS and there was no MS angle. So you decide to talk about MS anyways. Riiiiight.....
I tried Apple Music simply because Siri commands would work; Apple has not opened up the Siri API to non-Apple apps as far as I am aware. The fact of the matter is though, Spotify is a far a better application than what Apple Music/iTunes is in terms of usability and functionality (with exception for Siri integration). I guess it depends on what you use it for though.
I don't see Apple Records on my iPhone.