History has many examples of companies that, at some point, looked unassailable only to gradually decline as rivals gained ground and started wowing the crowds more. Think Myspace, Nokia and BlackBerry. Could Spotify be the next big name to add to this list? There are many other music streaming services, but Apple’s recently-unveiled offering seems to pose the biggest threat yet to Spotify.
Spotify has been a great success story in streaming music; it has 75 million active users, 20 million of which pay for the premium, commercial-free service. Spotify also has plenty of other impressive figures to show off; for example, it offers more than 30 million tracks for streaming.
However, despite being a brand new service, Apple Music already matches, and in some places even betters, Spotify with much of what it offers. Users can stream from over 30 million tracks from the iTunes library. Apple Music is also, like Spotify, available on both desktop and mobile devices and charging $9.99 per month for high quality music free of interrupting commercials.
Where exactly does Apple Music better Spotify? For a start, the music choice includes Taylor Swift, who recently withdrew her music from Spotify. There is also the better price for a family package; Apple Music charges $14.99 per month for one package used by six accounts, whereas Spotify just offers a 50% discount for each additional family member using the same family account. This currently makes Spotify much pricier for a six-member family to use. Apple Music is also integrated with Siri, making it easier for users to start listening even to tracks where they don’t remember the song or artist names.
An especially big reason why Spotify should consider Apple Music a serious threat is that, as we began to mention in our original news article about Apple Music, it will automatically appear on all iOS devices that run OS 8.4, which will become available for download very soon, or higher. It is, after all, basically a significantly bolstered version of the Music app that already comes with all current iOS devices.
Earlier this year, Apple announced that it had sold over a billion iOS devices. Even taking account of these devices that are no longer used or are owned as multiple devices by the same people, it puts Apple Music in a very good position to quickly catch up to Spotify in subscriber numbers. Many iOS device users, especially those who are relatively inexperienced with music streaming, are likely to turn first to Apple Music due to both its higher immediate visibility and the enticing three-month free trial.
