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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.
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.