“Apple will soon have a viable and complete streaming service that will put the hurt on the competition, particularly Pandora,” Sean Chandler writes for Seeking Alpha. “Will the majority be charmed by the on-demand, choose-your-own music streaming services, or will people opt in for intelligent services that curate music for them? Services such as Spotify and Beats Music believe in the importance of both (as do I), whereas Pandora insists on the latter. ”
“Spotify has proven that its method will be the dominant form within streaming as it previously revealed it is able to convert one out of every four people to its premium, paid service, as of May of this year. Spotify’s ten million paid subscribers far exceeds Pandora, who only had 3.3 million paying users during the same period,” Chandler writes. “At that time, Pandora had approximately 75 million active users, which means only one out of every 23 users insisted on paying for a subscription. I believe these figures indicate that the people who are willing to pay money for music insist on buying through on-demand streaming services.”
“If Apple can create a compelling integration of Beats Music, it will be at a huge advantage, as was the case when iTunes Radio launched. In a mere eight months, the integration of iTunes Radio within iTunes swiftly captivated 40 million listeners,” Chandler writes. “with Beats Music, I am confident Apple will make the first (wildly) successful integration of music streaming into a product ecosystem. When this happens, all third-party solutions will always start one app download behind.”
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