“Until now, there have been two players in subscription music: Spotify and everybody else,” Ethan Smith and Daisuke Wakabayashi report for The Wall Street Journal. “That is expected to change on Tuesday, with the launch of Apple Music, offering unlimited, on-demand access to tens of millions of songs for $10 a month.”
“Apple Inc. will rely on its brand, its installed base of users and its marketing prowess to differentiate itself and attract the millions of users it needs to create a successful competitor in a market that so far has had a small, if enthusiastic, user base,” Smith and Wakabayashi report. “Apple said its new streaming music service will be available from Tuesday morning in the U.S. as part of an update for its iOS software. The company is betting that it can convert a meaningful percentage of its 800 million iTunes accounts—most with credit cards attached—to the service.”
Smith and Wakabayashi report, “It faces a formidable competitor in Spotify, which had 4.7 million paying subscribers in the U.S. as of last December, according to data shared with music publishers.”
MacDailyNews Take: The moment Apple Music’s trial period ends, Apple will have 4.7 million subscribers in the U.S. within 4.7 seconds. If Spotify is formidable competition, we’d hate to see what the weak competition looks like. Oh, speak of the devil…
“Google Play Music was a distant No. 2 in the U.S. among paid streaming services, with about 815,000 subscribers,” Smith and Wakabayashi report. “Rhapsody, the decade-old granddaddy of subscription services, had 705,000 subscribers in the U.S. for the version of its service comparable to Spotify Premium or Apple Music.”
MacDailyNews Take: Pfft to both. Apple Music launches within hours in over 100 countries. This is NASA vs. a mule cart in a race to the moon.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The bloodbath doth commence in 3…2…
Three months from tomorrow, there will be two players in subscription music: Apple and a sad handful of also-rans left blinking in the dust, gasping for air.
Listener supported KCRW
Santa Monica-Los Angeles
One of the better radio stations in the US and smart enough to not hand money to rappers.
I just tuned it in. C-rap “music.”
@DavGreg You are not Apple Music’s target market.
I guess the people with money to spend, a broad range of music tastes and a house stocked with Apple devices would not be someone they would be interested in marketing music services to.
Not sure I understand your post — or your objection. Do you want to be able to access KCRW via Apple Music??
No objection, just saying KCRW.com is what I’ll be listening to streaming. Beats 1, based upon the ‘celebrity’ DJs announced, holds no appeal for me. Your mileage may vary.
KCRW is a very eclectic station- both the live stream and the online content- that is very popular and would be something Apple might want to emulate for future channels.
Jason Bentley, Anne Litt and others know music very well and are widely consulted for soundtracks and scoring because of their knowledge. Not so sure about Eminem.
next, kill youtube free music, kill ipods.
any screenshots for OSX of this app?
It will be Apple Music… and everybody else, starting tomorrow.
I might use the free version, not paying for the subscription model. I pay only for the music I want to own not any streaming service even if it is from apple.
Maybe you don’t pay for a streaming service, but MILLIONS of people pay to listen to Sirius, which, for some reason, is never mentioned as a competitor. I for one would happily drop my Sirius service if Apple Music is what I hope it will be.
And speaking of paying for programming, millions of listeners support NPR member stations. I know, it’s not exactly the same thing, but there is a decades long history of people paying for listening to what they want to hear, and it goes back over 40 years, well before streaming services.
I would drop Sirius if I could get Apple Music streaming to my car. Alas, I don’t think we’re there yet. I know, some are starting to advertise their cars as mobile hot spots, and that will be cool once it is as common as FM/cassettes used to be, but for now, I’ll continue enjoying Sirius for a few more years.
And I, too, love NPR and other member supported stations – Christian, music more than talk. I don’t listen to much else most of the time.
With all of that said, I still largely fall more in line with Nishanth – I buy CDs of what I like, spending well over that $10/month amount. But being able to have those same full discs available streaming on Apple Music may finally make me a streamer more than an owner. We’ll see.
What a great idea – satellite Apple Music. Yeah I wondered about the mobile way to listen to Apple Music but I guess you can download for those situations but it’s not quite the same thing as complete access when on the road.
I do the same thing with buying the occasional CD and have a huge CD library converted to Apple Lossless (sounds amazing in my new 2015 car). But for some stupid reason my expensive $1,000 Pioneer CarPlay unit uses only SDHC cards stuck at only 32Gb. USB sticks can go higher but what’s up with using about the lowest current SD standard when it’s obvious people want higher capacities for a big basic music library in the car? Hopefully a firmware update will fix this.
It is really nice that you can opt out immediately. I’m in for 90 days and that’s it.
There’s two bulls standing on top of a mountain.
The younger one, Google, says to the older one: “Let’s say we run down there and f#*k one of them cows”.
The older bull, Apple, says: “No son. Lets walk down and f#*k ’em all”.