“Spotify has 75M active users and, despite doubts in many quarters about its ability to convert free users to paid subscribers, it has succeeded there too. The company announced this week that it now has more than 20M paid subscribers, half of them added in the past 12 months, at a rate of one every three seconds,” Ben Lovejoy writes for 9to5Mac. “It seems hard to imagine that any new entrant into the market, even one with Apple’s clout, could steal its crown. And yet early market leaders often look unassailable – until they are left behind. Look at Nokia or BlackBerry.”
“Apple isn’t ‘doing an iPhone’ here: it isn’t launching something everyone can immediately see is significantly superior to existing services. Nor is Spotify sitting idly by while Apple goes after its market. But there are still reasons to think that Apple could have a dramatic impact on Spotify’s future,” Lovejoy writes. “The obvious one is Apple’s reach… A separate but related reason is the Apple ecosystem. For anyone who already stores their downloaded music in iTunes, there’s a real appeal in the way Apple blurs the line between your own music and the music available to stream.”
“There’s no doubt that Apple has chosen the best streaming music service out there, and that it intends it to prove wildly successful. There’s also no doubt that Apple has the clout to pull off that aim,” Lovejoy writes. “I don’t see Spotify disappearing anytime soon. But I do think it’s going to struggle to maintain growth, and I also feel significantly less confident than I did back in February that Spotify’s long-term future is assured. One thing’s for sure: the moment Apple Music launches, Spotify will wave goodbye to my subscription.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: People who’ve tried both Spotify and Beats Music get it – and this is before the much improved version, Apple Music, debuts. Users will have three months to compare services. This story does not end well for Spotify.
As we wrote yesterday: The sheer numbers — library breadth, user base (not to mention quality of user base, i.e. ability and willingness to pay for services), marketing might, country availability — are all overwhelmingly in Apple Music’s favor.
SEE ALSO:
Lefsetz: Apple Music is toast – June 12, 2015
Apple Music’s secret weapon that almost no one’s talking about – June 11, 2015
Apple confirms that Apple Music will stream at 256kbps – June 11, 2015
Spotify founder: Uh ok, we don’t need to be number one in music streaming – June 11, 2015
Why Apple Music will gut and publicly execute Spotify – June 10, 2015
Spotify CEO claims to be ‘ok’ with Apple Music – June 9, 2015
Jimmy Iovine and Eddy Cue: Apple Music gunning for Spotify, YouTube, and terrestrial radio – June 9, 2015
Something about Apple Music betraying Apple’s brilliance by ignoring ‘The Harry Potter Theory of Marketing’ or some such nonsense – June 9, 2015
Bob Lefsetz on Apple Music: What team is Jimmy Iovine on? – June 9, 2015
Apple Music’s huge advantage over Spotify – June 9, 2015
Apple Music is a major mess and it won’t beat Spotify or something – June 9, 2015
When Apple Music arrives, what happens to iTunes Match? – June 9, 2015
What Apple Music says about how Apple views musicians – June 8, 2015
Apple’s revolutionary Apple Music just might prove its skeptics wrong – June 8, 2015
Apple unveils revolutionary Apple Music service – June 8, 2015
probably not the end but it’ll break their rib cage
Apple Music may not even make a dent in Spotify’s market. Apple last effort ‘Apple radio’ has been largely ignored and Beats Music nothing to write home about even before Apple bought it.
This feels like a ‘me-to’ project Iovine & Co and I think he’s taken T Cook for a ride on this. Apple’s whole direction in terms of music and streaming has been completely rudderless without S Jobs..
It’s probably the end of the beginning.
The first death will be Tidal, which would likely have either limped along or died even without Music coming out. Pandora is weaker than Spotify, and would be my guess to be the next blood on the stream. But I think Spotify will carry on and run a close second to Music, if for no other reason than Music will be pre-installed on all iPhones.
The biggest problem I had paying for beats or spotify is that they would download the music for their playlists but I would also have my music taking up twice the space…
Apple Music solves this problem.
I used Beats before I tried Spotify.
I gave up on Beats. I like Spotify better then Beats.
I really hope Apple can improve the old Beats and incorporate what I like about Spofity.
I’ve never considered a streaming service but three months free will certainly be worth a try. I hope there is not weirdness with installed music vs cloud music like there is with iTunes Match. That was a deal breaker for me after 1 year.
Yep, same stupidity in the market and among the punditry as with Blackberry following the introduction of the iPhone.
The article from the other day may well nail it: the size of the catalogue. Apple has more songs (actually, recordings; many aren’t songs but various classical or jazz pieces) in the catalogue than ANY other service. This, more than anything, will likely keep people on after the 3-month trial.
I know MDN wants anything and everything not Apple to fail, but Spotify has a good offering right now and they still have a compelling argument to choose them.
Apple Music will no doubt do fantastic. Will they kill Spotify? Not likely.
What ever happened to Neil Young’s Pono Store?
Dunno, but it’ll certainly mark the beginning of the end of many musician’s reasons for bothering to record music.
Won’t be the end of Spotify, but will add competition. It’ll certainly be the end of Tidal and beginning of the end for Pandora.
I like the Apple Music family plan idea — it’s needed in Spotify too. I just want to see if the integration with a regular catalog and iTunes Match is not wonky. Hopefully, on-the-fly playlist (based on artists and songs) will work well too.