Is Adele proving Apple’s music strategy is wrong?

“Until the release of Adele’s newest album ’25,’ the future of the music industry was obvious and could only go in one direction: streaming,” Pim Keulen writes for Seeking Alpha. “We could rely on a couple of certainties. Physical sales would become irrelevant at some point or a niche market, like vinyl, at best and streaming would overtake digital download sales.”

“Even an innovative company as Apple was not resistant to the streaming trend,” Keulen writes. “In fact, some may call the introduction of Apple Music, the company’s very own subscription-based streaming service, on June 30 of this year quite late. One of the reasons for Apple to introduce the streaming service was an ongoing decline of digital downloads through its successful platform iTunes.”

“How different does the music business look at these ‘certainties’ after the first sales figures of Adele’s latest album came in? Music Business Worldwide reported ’25’ overtook the all-time week one sales record in the United States within just 4 out of 7 days. Adele sold over 2.4 million albums during the first four days after launch,” Keulen writes. “Adele and her management team decided not to distribute the album through streaming channels, leaving Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer and other services in the cold. The move is even bolder than Taylor Swift who only withdrew her repertoire from Spotify.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Adele is the outlier, not the rule. Apple’s music strategy, which, by the way, also includes over 1 million of those 2.4 million of Adele’s “25” album sales via iTunes Store, is sound (pun intended).

SEE ALSO:
Why Adele isn’t streaming her new album on Apple Music or Spotify – November 20, 2015
Adele rejects streaming music services, including Apple Music, for ‘25’ – November 19, 2015
Adele’s new album ’25’ may break ‘impossible’ sales record – November 19, 2015