Time to face the Apple Music: Spotify looks worried, and rightly so Spotify has pulled in extra investment and put out figures showing a jump in paying customers - effectively puffing out its chest as hype-magnet Apple enters the music streaming market. In addition to the $350m in pulled in last month, the company has raised an additional $115m from TeliaSonera, valuing it at $8.5bn. Somewhat …
Perhaps Spotify has finally noticed Jay Z's efforts. There are other streaming services with similar price points and catalog size. It should come as no great surprise that more might enter the field or, as in the case of Apple, adjust their approach to it. Perhaps Spotify should retaliate by putting together a skinned Android phone that is optimized for sound quality.
"13% marketshare"
This. Apple Music will be automatically pushed out to 13% of the world's phones. Whoopee do. I'm sure when Microsoft create CortanaKaraoke and push it out free onto the 2% market share that windows phone holds, Spotify won't need to give a shit then, either. Monopoly power means nothing if you don't actually have a monopoly.
Even if Spotify lose every single iPhone to Apple Music, they'll still be better-placed in the 'droid market, which is the marketplace that actually matters. Android has 85% of the smartphone market and that number is still growing. Apple has 13% and that number is still shrinking.
Spotify doesn't need to lose for Apple to win - or vice versa - the market place is big enough for competition.
I would argue the importance of the percentages that you quote.
A large percentage of the Android share will be the very low end of the market, phones that people bought because they are very cheap. That kind of consumer is far less likely to pay for a monthly streaming service.
iTunes is generating $billions from just 13% of the market.
And it might be 13% of the smartphone market, but it's not 13% of the "people who own smartphones AND ACTUALLY BUY APPS/MUSIC" market. The income generated from mobile sales is disproportionately weighted to iOS.
What % of Spotify mobile users are iOS for instance... I bet you it's far more than 13%.
Yep! I love the fact I can sit at my PC in the evening, save a few new albums I want to stream and then save them offline on my Anrdoid phone to listen do during my commute. Or my girlfriend can do the same on my PC and then either download them to her iPad or her Android phone. Spotify does work really well cross device and it does have a great catalogue. I have always desperately hoped they would become profitable and stick around.
@JSX
I am unfortunatley not software agnostic, There is now way in hell your going to catch me funding Apple, I really disagree with their business model, and vote with my wallet.
Yeah i know im going to get a bit of hate, but the idea of crippled half functioning Itunes on $anyothersystem$, which im sure will function fine on IOS, Meh bugger that!
The only nice thing I see about Apple Music is the family offering, currently paying for two subs on Google Music and don't really want to create another google account just for music on two devices.
Other than that it doesn't bring anything special to the mix. I can't see it taking business away from Spotify in great amounts but it might well get iPhoners who have no streaming service to use Apple Music just because... it's Apple.
Spotify also have a family offering (half price for additional accounts on the same bill).
The main thing I like about spotify is the number of devices it works on - I've personally used it on linux, windows, android, iOS, symbian, fireos and two different amps from different manufacturers. There's many more devices out there with it as well. I don't see anyone else with the same breadth of device support. Apple certainly isn't going to.
Apple press release 8/6/15: "Apple Music is available on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, and PC starting June 30. Apple Music will be coming to Apple TV and Android phones this fall."
So you'll be able to get it on your PC and Android phone, not just on iOS/OS X.
Spotify announcements always have to be read with a hefty dose of caution. Why did the number of paying subscribers increase very sharply towards the end of last year? Well, there could be several reasons, but the most obvious is that Spotify started offering extremely generous discounts to new subscribers. Notably, many were able to get a 3-month introductory trial for only £1 or $1. That's right: just 33 pence or cents per month! In Spotify's stats these would presumably count as 'paying subscribers' even though the actual revenue per head would probably be less than if they were 'ad-supported' in the free tier. So the acid test, which journalists should be putting to Spotify, is whether revenue per head has actually increased over the period.
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There's always some idiot who comes up with this "now Apple is going to ban competitors" but no one can point to a single instance where they have retroactively banned competing apps. Did they ban Google Maps or Nokia Here when they did Apple Maps? No. Did they ban WhatsApp et al when they introduced iMessage? No. And so on...
But please, continue with the ridiculous assertions every time Apple adds something new that all the competition is going to be banned from the App Store tomorrow.
Muppet.
That's a good one!
I have several Muppet albums and they're still as good as ever!
I thought the great thing about these streaming services was that they have *all* the music there is, or a close approximation to that anyway.
For the cost of the subscription they charge I would be pretty miffed if more than 1 in 200 of the things I want to listen to isn't there. Otherwise I might just as well load my phone with music I've ripped from CDs.
Only because there are so many bands.
I've found local artists with following of 100, obscure 1980s New Wave, and bands such as Star One/Ayreon/Guilt Machine, Dr. Steel, Voltaire, and the soundtracks to Batman, Spartacus, and much more.
If you want another good way to find new music,give the streaming services a try. For Spotify, that's starting with a track from one of the bands in your exotic list, and choosing "Start Song Radio".
It's only "that crap" if you always want to listen to the same thing.
You can discover a huge set of new banks this way. I've found many, with two slotting firmly into my favorites: a new-to-me guitar maestro of Joe Satriani with Pandora when it was in the UK, and a steampunk bank called Abney Park via a random linkage in Spotify.
I'm not a Fanbois, but Apple Music is music to my ears. I'm a paying subscriber to Spotify simply because it's on all my devices and I had no other real choice. But Spotify doesn't listen to its users. Family pricing was only recently introduced after *years* of complaints, and only to select markets, plus they still refuse to allow the option to block explicit music... one of the most requested options by users.
Apple ticks both of these boxes right out of the gate, plus they have the content, they are creating an Android app and device manufacturers will follow soon.
Had Spotify listened to its users then I would stay with them... but they didn't. So I look forward to cancelling my Spotify subscription and signing up to Apple Music's family plan.
What I really dislike about Spotify is the badly behaving Windows software which insists on installing into users' folders and not under %programfiles%. People have complained on their boards but Spotify just doesn't listen - it takes constant admin work to gather the hash for latest versions with software restriction policies in place.
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