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Why Apple Music Doesn’t Stand a Chance Against Spotify…

Paul Resnikoff
38

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38 Responses

  1. anernermuss

    so are you gonna tell us why it doesn’t stand a chance? or just post more screenshots of your screen?

    • Anonymous

      paul do actual work? lol

      its like when he pats himself on the back over and over and acts like he infiltrated a safe Mission Impossible style to get a contract when someone just emailed it to him.

  2. DavidB

    In related news, David Lowery (The Trichordist) reports that musicians’ lobby groups are getting hefty payments from Spotify.

  3. Yep

    I get it.

    It’s effectivily a paywall.

    Other services have tried this:

    emusic, TIDAL, Bloom, Napster (the legal one…)

    And we all know what/will happened to those….

      • Yep

        Funny that the only ‘buzz’ on the internet today is ‘How to easily disable the automatic renewal feature’

        FREE Music for 3 months.

        • DavidB

          In fact, the other ‘buzz’ on the media is that Spotify have suddenly made it much harder to cancel Premium subscriptions. Allegedly.

  4. DaDaDa

    “And we all know what/will happened to those….”
    So what’s the solution ? Stop charging for music and do more busking in the streets ?

      • What

        Yeah Spotify…. We all know how much of a success that was for artists ( except for Ek’s bank account )

  5. bleep

    Good thing you plugged your charger in before taking that third screenshot.

  6. iRobot

    I resent having to “verify my humanity”… it’s discriminatory

  8. Amyt

    It’s anybody’s guess at the moment. Even if Apple Music has 20 million paying subscribers after 3 months/ trial, it’d be pretty cool

  9. DavidB

    Of course, if Spotify has a free tier and Apple Music doesn’t, then people who don’t want to pay will choose Spotify. But Spotify needs to increase its proportion of Premium users to have any hope of financial viability. If it is cut back to its free tier, then the game is up. And one can predict that Apple will get plenty more artists and labels choosing to put new material on Apple (and the paid tier of other services) before releasing it to the free tier of Spotify. Since comprehensiveness of catalog is one of the deciding factors in choosing a paid service, Spotify will be starved of new subscribers unless it drops its resistance to exclusives for paid subscribers. Daniel Ek says that will be over his dead body, so the outcome could be a win-win!

    • Paul Resnikoff

      But Spotify needs to increase its proportion of Premium users to have any hope of financial viability.

      That’s true, if you view Spotify as a stand-alone business. If you view Spotify as a IPO, Wall Street pump-and-dump, it’s an entirely different proposition (sort of like Pandora).

      If it is cut back to its free tier, then the game is up.

      Correct, which is why Daniel Ek is adamantly opposed to killing the free tier. That’s what our sources have relayed to us.

      And one can predict that Apple will get plenty more artists and labels choosing to put new material on Apple (and the paid tier of other services) before releasing it to the free tier of Spotify.

      That’s speculative, though perhaps. Spotify does connect to a lot of people.

      Since comprehensiveness of catalog is one of the deciding factors in choosing a paid service, Spotify will be starved of new subscribers unless it drops its resistance to exclusives for paid subscribers.

      The whisper now is that Spotify will be willing to compromise on that, with so-called ‘gating,’ in which some content is only available to premium subscribers. That is coming ahead of contract renewals in October with all three majors.

      Daniel Ek says that will be over his dead body, so the outcome could be a win-win!

      I have only heard that Ek is extremely resistant to killing free, but may be open to the ‘gating’ compromise.

      • GGG

        At this point, I don’t see any reason not to allow gating. It’d be stupid not to. I don’t think I’ve seen one positive piece about Spotify in like 2-3 years. Giving even the slightest wiggle room to artists/labels, though gating is pretty substantial, would put them that little bit more in the good graces of acts, which can help their image enormously.

        I don’t know if I’d speculate constant negative press is keeping people away from Spotify really, because the average person clearly doesn’t give a shit about artists’ well-being, but I imagine positive press would draw people in.

  10. Anonymous

    Actually, Apple Music will likely destroy Spotify, and you’re doing your readers a disservice by pretending it won’t.

  11. David

    Paul, this isn’t an article. This isn’t journalism and neither is the majority of what you post on this website.

    • Paul Resnikoff

      This is actually a far more complicated discussion than you realize. And your perspective is far more myopic than you can imagine within that context. I’d urge you to look at the broader shifts in whatever that term ‘journalism’ now means (hint: it’s changed a bit since 1923, and for that matter, 2003…)

      On this piece, let me just say that I could have written 3,000 words but chose not to.

      • Anonymous

        That’s nice. Too bad you decided to post an inaccurate headline, one that has no basis in logic or reason, with nothing at all to back it up.

        That’s just desperate click-bait. Are you desperate, Paul?

  12. Jochen

    ITunes has close to a billion users. And when I tried out Apple Music last night, I have to say that they’ve done a good job. Being an iTunes user makes the transition from Spotify to my own desktop really easy. And my own library now perfectly blends in with Apple’s catalog, up to a point where I can barely distinguish the two. So for users, all barriers are removed. For artists, we will see and lobbyists will have to continue to fight. But they are too busy right now sueing customers in court. They might be high-paid execs, but they continue to sleep through every major shift in customer preferences. And they still count, don’t they?

  13. Furtherlane

    Paywall or not, people already using Spotify (ie music aficionados) will not switch to Apple Music. However, Apple Music will draw-in a much wider demo. Think AOL in the beginning. For those uninitiated with streaming services, Apple Music will be their first experience (and they will be hooked on having 30MM songs in their pocket). Also, despite numerous posts that detail how to cancel auto-renew on Apple, the masses won’t bother (much like people who couldn’t bother to cancel their AOL accounts).

    • There is something...

      I’m a Spotify Premium user, and I’ll probably switch after the 3 months trial. Why ? Because now I have everything in one place, and Apple Music let me stream my own library (with many songs not available on any streaming service), something Spotify won’t let me do. Convenience is always the keyword for me, that’s why I pay for a service and as of today, Apple Music looks much more convenient.

      • Tim Wood

        That’s one of the stronger, more cogent points on this board.

      • Anonymous

        People get so hung up on price….

        Convenience is absolutely everything. People pay for convenience.

  14. Appearing Tonight

    Spotify’s endless ‘free tier’ will only last as long as their current contracts with the major labels last. Word has come from above to knock off all this ‘free stuff’, it is only a matter of time. The CEOs that aren’t on board will be shown the door like we are seeing now at one of the international majors . . . . .

  15. Oli-e

    love the radio, BEATS1. That’s where the BUZZ and STICKINESS is. And it’s HUMAN and FREE! (wonder which rights grid that involves? and how much $ that can generate?).
    I think Apple’s networking intention is to continue building on the radio platform (more select countries like Canada) and monetize the shit out of it in a very cool way with selective ads/sponsorships (gating), that eventually integrate with their new Televisions and AppleTV at some point.

    Gotta love the APPLE!

    iPhone. iTypos. iApologize.

  17. HansHa

    Paul have you tried the service in the meantime? Apple Music doesn’t kill Spotify but it kills digital downloads for ever. Musicians can say goodbye to their iTunes sales. Cannibalization on steroids

  18. Anonymous

    HUGE fail on Apple’s part. I still haven’t activated Apple Music because of this very reason.

    Skip the 2nd page, give everyone access, and after the trial is up THAN show this page. It’s very simple.

  19. Daniel PJ

    You are forgetting two very important points…the first is that people already pay for many things from Apple and trust the brand – and Apple know this, which is why they have been so open about how to cancel the subscription – they know most people will wait a while before doing it. Added to this is that every time you purchase music from Apple, you will no doubt get a reminder that rather than just pay £9.99 for one album, you could instead get every album, it is going to be an absolute no-brainer for most people to just do the easy thing.

    Second is that Apple have three months to persuade people to pay for streaming through them, and if you think Apple are just going to waste those three months and hope for the best then you not at all as clued up as you think.

    Just to add a bonus third point. At this stage, Apple is not trying to steal Spotify users, they are trying to turn non-Spotify users on to premium streaming. They will no doubt humiliate Spotify’s numbers on day one of the paid era and then start to work their way through the Spotify user base. I see Spotify being the streaming service for Android and that will be it. With the exclusives and quality of the other services such as radio – which will remain free, there is no competition. And you do need to remember that – Apple Music is not all going to cost – it is just the streaming part. There is free model of Apple Music.

  20. John M

    What the hell is this? It’s like some Tolkienesque riddle. Why is this even on the internet?