Spotify teams with Samsung in face of growing Apple Music threat

“Spotify Technology SA has a new ally in its competition with Apple Inc.: Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s biggest smartphone maker,” Lucas Shaw and Mark Gurman report for Bloomberg.

“The Spotify app will be available when customers set up their new Samsung phones, a deal that could boost the music-streaming service’s user base, the companies announced at an event in New York Thursday,” Shaw and Gruman report. “Spotify will also be integrated into Samsung’s smart TVs and speakers.”

“Spotify operates the world’s largest paid music service, but it faces increased competition from Apple Music,” Shaw and Gruman report. “Apple said earlier this month that its service has surpassed Spotify in subscribers in select territories.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: We love the smell of fear in the morning.

Not-so-minor fact: Samsung phone owners are not the cream of the crop demographically as the vast majority of Samsung phones sold are cheapo, low-end, Android, glorified feature phones; i.e. not the type to pony up for subscriptions (or anything else, for that matter).

Spotify is a poor man’s Apple Music. The demographics in this race, as ever, greatly favor Apple in the long run. — MacDailyNews, January 3, 2018

Apple Music has rendered Spotify’s future decidedly dimmer.

The best customers are those who pay. As demonstrated by years of data, from disparate sources, those paying customers are also significantly more likely to be iPhone owners than those who’ve settled for poor iPhone facsimiles. A healthy portion of these coveted customers will leave for Apple’s comprehensive offering which offers better family rates, more music, likely exclusives, and seamless integration across all Apple devices. It’ll even work with crappy Windows PCs and Android phones eventually (not that those are likely to be Spotify’s paying customers, but whatever, some of them will join Apple Music and maybe even graduate to Apple devices because of it).

Spotify could quickly be left with an unprofitable system, with a dwindling music library because they cannot afford to pay music royalties. — MacDailyNews, June 9, 2015

Also, Spotify has now stooped to teaming up with a convicted serial IP-thief, thereby tarnishing its brand. Certainly, any Apple user who currently uses Spotify will now think twice about upgrading to Apple Music, driving Apple’s cream-of-the-crop customers — who are notably more likely to sign up for subscriptions — further into the Apple ecosystem (where they belong).

You’d have to be stupid to subscribe to Spotify when it has 33% fewer tracks than Apple Music for the same price. Apple Music boasts a catalog of 45 million songs; Spotify has a mere subset of just 30 million. Don’t be stupid. If you’re still subscribing to Spotify, it’s past time for you to cancel it and upgrade to Apple Music. (See also: How to move your Spotify playlists to Apple Music.) – MacDailyNews, February 6, 2017

Spotify’s move was made from fear and desperation. 🙂