“Apple Music hits its three month anniversary next week and, to paraphrase an old Warren Buffett saying, we’re about to see how many people are listening naked when the tide goes out,” Aaron Pressman writes for Yahoo Finance. “Apple’s streaming music service costs $10 a month and does not have a free-with-advertising tier, a popular option on Spotify, Deezer and many other rivals. Apple’s service kicked off on June 30 with a 90 day free trial for anyone who signed up. But those early adopters will have to decide whether to begin paying for the service September 30.”
“The New York Post reported on Monday that 15 million have signed up so far, citing anonymous sources,” Pressman writes. “The music industry has been desperate for Apple’s premium subscription service to take off, encouraging more people to pay for music again and offsetting plummeting sales of digital and physical songs. Without Apple, the streaming music wave is already slowing. The number of U.S. paid subscribers increased only 2% to 8.1 million in the first six months of this year compared to 2014, according to figures released by the Recording Industry of America on Monday. Streaming revenue was up 23% to $1.03 billion. Apple Music opened on the last day of the period.”
Pressman writes, “It doesn’t seem like Apple is going to approach Spotify’s 20 million or more paid subscribers.”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple Music will be three months old. Spotify turns 7 years old on October 7th. Hardly a fair comparison.
“‘The great hope,'” adds Geoff Mayfield, a consultant who used to work for Universal Music Group, ‘is that the success of Apple Music doesn’t come at the expense of Spotify and that it will be additive rather than just moving people from one paying subscription to another,'” Pressman writes. “The music industry has placed its hope in Apple’s no-free model. Whether that bet will ever pay off remains debatable.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: To turn off Apple Music’s automoatic renewal:
In iTunes:
1. Click on your account
2. Select “Account Info”
3. Select Settings>Subscriptions and click “Manage”
4. Set Automatic Renewal to “Off”In iOS’ Apple Music app:
1. Tap your account
2. Tap “View Apple ID”
3. Select Subscriptions and tap “Manage”
4. Hit the toggle button to turn of automatic renewalSEE ALSO:
Apple Music has 15 million users in its first three months; plus how to turn off Apple Music auto renewal – September 22, 2015