“After allegedly attempting to stop Spotify from streaming free music, Apple Inc. is reportedly ready to announce its own on-demand streaming music service,” Louis Bedigian reports for Benzinga. “Unlike Spotify, Apple’s service isn’t expected to offer a free listening option. This might explain the firm’s concern with Spotify, but it also begs an important question: can the Mac maker persuade consumers to pay $10 a month for music Spotify provides for free?”
“‘Free Spotify isn’t gonna be free forever,’ Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, told Benzinga. ‘And really the business model is all about getting enough people to pay,'” Bedigian reports. “Moorhead said that consumers always pay a price somewhere, whether it’s in the form of a monthly fee, advertisements or some other element. ‘There are no free lunches out there,’ he said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We don’t know about free Spotify users, but if Apple’s service offers exclusives and features that Spotify cannot to their paying customers, those people will switch to Apple Music.
SEE ALSO:
For Apple Music to succeed, iTunes download sales must be sacrificed – June 2, 2015
Apple’s all-in bet to be watershed moment for music; $10/month unlimited subscription service and more – June 1, 2015
Apple in talks to sign Drake, Pharrell Williams, and David Guetta as iTunes Radio DJs – June 1, 2015
Kanye West’s long-delayed album release may be connected to Apple Music’s launch – May 21, 2015
Apple’s music streaming service to have Ping-like social network for artists – May 14, 2015
Apple’s new streaming music service to offer free song sampling, free trial, other free features – May 8, 2015
I’m a regular subscriber to Spotify standard (not Premium). If Apple gets this right, and you can use any device (iOS) to stream from, I would jump ship for $10/month. This is the same price as Spotify Premium wants to stream from portables anyway.
ITunes Match. 25$ a YEAR gets me all my music streaming. Just a thought.
I have and pay for iTunes Match, Spotify and Pandora. Pandora has much better streaming radio stations than iTunes Match and Spotify has much more music in general. Not counting your own music that may be in iTunes Match. It’s not really even a fair comparison iTunes Match is so far behind.
Spotify is built into my receiver and many other devices as well so I won;t be getting off it anytime soon.
Perhaps Apple should blend the two together as a bundle – iTunes Match plus Apple Music for $10 per month. For current iTunes Match subscribers, the delta cost for adding Apple Music functionality would be $95 rather than $120.
I need a way to stream it in my car whenever I want, otherwise no deal
Plug your phone’s headphone jack into the Aux port on your car radio, or connect it via Bluetooth.
i use an iPad mini
If your iPad mini has a cellular connection, then use the headphone jack or Bluetooth, just like Apple Fan suggested for your phone.
If your iPad mini does not include cellular data capability (or you do not have an active data plan), then your fundamental issue is that you need some type of wireless connection in order to support mobile music streaming.
I meant Jooop suggested…
I would switch, I’m a Spotify premium user, but I have over 100 plays list, and almost 1,000 “starred” songs, I don’t want to have to re-do all of that. You know what I mean? If there was a way to re-create all the play-list at least and suchI would defiantly switch over.
Take it easy; nothing to get agitated about. Spotify wouldn’t consider it “defiant” if you left them for the Apple king.
That post doesn’t sound “agitated”. It’s an honest challenge that Apple will have to address. It’ll be incredibly difficult to ask people to recreate metadata that they created over months…even years for a parrell service at the same cost (or for some people, more cost).
I’m sure there will be a fix, but I wouldn’t think twice until there is.
That’s my only worry! Starting all my playlist over. I think that’s why a lot of people haven’t left Spotify for Beats. If we’re getting the same content why switch over when you have years worth of music!
I think citizen was just playfully referencing Daphne’s use of the word “defiantly” which made better sense as “definitely”, like your “parrell” as “parallel”; but whatever.
I would rather buy new albums and listen to my own music than stream random junk I really don’t want to hear.
This whole discussion isn’t about streaming “random junk”. We’ve had that since iTunes Radio (and Pandora).
Spotify (and, presumably, the upcoming Apple service) let you listen to albums and songs of your choice. You don’t have to pay for each album / song independently, though; with the monthly plan, you can listen to any album / song you want (assuming it is in their catalogue).
There won’t be a free version? So this doesn’t replace iTunes Radio?
BTW, if anyone at Apple is listening, iTunes Radio plays the same stuff all the time, and I’m about to dropkick it if I heard the same ad one more time. The longer you listen the lamer it is.
But I’d like a free ad-supported version of whatever this will be called. Not a big fan of subscriptions.
You may want to consider Android and Google. Their business model is based around offering service where consumer doesn’t pay anything.
Most Apple customers tend to prefer a service where they are the (paying) customer; not a product for sale to a paying customer (an advertiser).
Googles business model is “free” as long as you don’t consider having them mine your personal data “not paying anything”
I use Apple radio because I can do so for $25 a month. But the heck I will pay $10 a month to hear music. Apple radio’s repeat rate is pathetic. And I can’t get it to play many of the tunes I want, even though they are available.
$120 per year is a LOT of songs which I could keep forever.
And is Pandora going to keep their free service?
$120/year is only 7 songs per month if you’re paying $1.29 to download each song. But if you had an all-you-can-eat subscription plan, you would certainly consume far more than 7 songs in a month.
If you are lucky enough to stream where you have wifi. I spend a couple of hours a day commuting in the car and I’d blow through my data plan if I had to stream everything.
Does anyone know if satellite radio has enough bandwidth to handle on demand services ?
Don’t forget Jobs’ opinion on this:
“The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful.”
— Rolling Stone, Dec. 3, 2003
Maybe Apple has an entirely NEW spin on music subscriptions, but I’m still skeptical. We’ll see next week, I hope.
Apple will have the money and time to experiment on what works best for them to have a successful streaming business model. Apple will not be depending upon their streaming service for survival like Spotify and Pandora does. Why is everyone so worried. If other companies are running financially poor streaming businesses why shouldn’t Apple try to build a profitable streaming business. I think it is possible. Spotify and Pandora will eventually be forced by the music labels to stop freemium if Apple does find a way to pay artists more money using a paid subscription. Apple can afford to play the long game. Apple can offer a free or reduced fee trial period with new hardware to jumpstart the business.
Waste of energy.
Better to spend money putting together fiber network with 10 dollars a month for users.
Wireless network for $10 a month for users. 100,000,000 user (easy) @ $20 (home and cell) , $2,000,000,000
$24,000,000,000 a year that’s a much better direction, not to mention business connectivity. google has the right idea, wrong pricing, but they can easily change that.
ITunes Radio is still horrible. I have it basically for free because of iTunes Match but I won’t use it “free” so why would I pay? I did like the beats app but it was too expensive. I wish they’d separate out the “radio” from the iTunes and let you play what you want. When I get in my car and it connects to Bluetooth, Daryl Singletary’s song A-11 starts every time. The first one in alphabetical order.
I used to like the song but it always starts with that song even though I don’t have it locally on the phone.
All Apple needs is a better iTunes Match (Music) social / discoverable / better search… it’s already streaming and the price is right.
Honest people will.