Apple Music on Track to Overtake Spotify in U.S. Subscribers • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Music on Track to Overtake Spotify in U.S. Subscribers

#191

Post by doikor » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 11:04 AM UTC

rahoulb wrote: post #139

I tried Apple Music for 6 months, and spent that time diligently training it to my tastes. My latest "favourites mix" had 12 songs that I had to mark as "dislike" after all that training. Likewise the "for you"playlists are garbage - just because I like a couple of songs by guitar bands doesn't mean I want to listen to hours and hours of them. Apple Music on Apple Watch 3 is amazing - leaving a phone at home is stran…

I'm on the same boat. My 3 month trial for Apple Music just ended and switched back to Spotify. Most of the time I don't want to bother to choose what I listen to and for that the discovery features in Spotify just seem to work.

Re: Apple Music on Track to Overtake Spotify in U.S. Subscribers

#192

Post by josteink » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 11:06 AM UTC

ck425 wrote: post #174

yeahdef wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another perspective: I am less concerned with music discovery or seamless device hand-offs. I know what I want to listen to. As a former club DJ, I accrued a large amount of records that are simply unavailable via streaming networks. I recently starting ripping a lot of those vinyl records to mp3. I have tried spotify, google play music, and Apple Music. Apple Music is the clear winner when it comes to the importing,…

Didn't Apple have major issues with overwriting and syncing up imported music?

I've also had issues with Apple-products (iTunes) erasing the MP3-metadata for my entire collection in the past.

It had taken me ages to build up in the first place and fixing it afterwards was a painstaking manual labour which took weeks and weeks and weeks.

Needless to say, I won't allow another Apple music-product near any of my files ever again.

Edit: This thread brings back memories. I can't tell how many times iTunes have formatted or deleted all music on my iPods and iPhones over the years, forcing me to re-copy or re-sync everything. Again

I really, really, really won't let Apple touch my music-files ever. So much wasted time....

Re: Apple Music on Track to Overtake Spotify in U.S. Subscribers

#193

Post by josteink » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 11:12 AM UTC

hellweaver666 wrote: post #159

sgustard wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a fully Mac/iOS household, and I had no idea until I saw this article that Apple Music was a thing that competes with Spotify. That's probably due to iTunes and iCloud being such a confusing mess that I just don't use Apple services and I haven't launched those apps in years.

It is indeed a mess. After sharing an iCloud account for years my wife and I decided to upgrade our Apple Music to a family account so we could have separate music (and listen to music on different devices at the same time). Apple decided this must mean we also want separate iCloud accounts and upon logging into her own Apple Music account, also proceeded to remove our 15 years of family photos and a couple of years…

> proceeded to remove ... can't see the photos ... When Apple Music expired it wiped all the playlists ...

Adding my own experiences with iTunes-wiped devices and music-collections...

The only consistent thing with Apple and music/services is them accidentally wiping or deleting your data from both your devices and their services.

Applied this consistently, it's clearly a design decision.

What kind of company designs things to behave this way? Really?

Re: Apple Music on Track to Overtake Spotify in U.S. Subscribers

#194

Post by simongr3dal » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 11:35 AM UTC

ethiclub wrote: post #165

putlake wrote: post #107

I rarely read the full thread on HN but read this one to see if anyone had mentioned Echo or Alexa-enabled devices. Surprising that no one did, esp given how many they have sold. We are an Apple household primarily but also have a Google Home and recently bought an Alexa-enabled car charger (Anker/Roav Viva). The only service that will work across the board is Spotify. In that regard Spotify is like Netflix -- availa…

Not to sanction further consolidation or oligopoly issues, but Spotify has long seemed like a logical acquisition for Amazon. - Fix Prime's song catalogue size issue (still an issue?) - Grab massive market share and upsell/bundle other services - Provide bargaining power to Spotify - Get access to very advanced IP - Integrate with voice ui further (i.e. smarter voice commands including play list creations, complex re…

I’m definitely not more knowledgeable, but in my experience Amazon hasn’t been as good as e.g. Apple at making their services accessible internationally. It’s getting slightly better now with Twitch Prime and Amazon Prime video, which is in the same category. But I fear being neglected if they made an acquisition.

Re: Apple Music on Track to Overtake Spotify in U.S. Subscribers

#195

Post by CamperBob2 » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 11:43 AM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #99

ClassyJacket wrote: post #6

Sad. The UI of Spotify is much better - less taps to get where you want to go, dark theme, and it actually has song handoff between devices and a dedicated desktop app for the Mac, none of which Apple Music has. I can't help but think this is because of Apple's monopolistic practice of only allowing Apple Music to integrate with Siri.

dark theme Yeah, that goes great with my dark desktop. I love not knowing where the Spotify window actually is. /s

(Seriously, other people are OK with this stupidity?)

Re: Apple Music on Track to Overtake Spotify in U.S. Subscribers

#196

Post by robert_foss » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 12:01 PM UTC

ashraymalhotra wrote: post #163

freddie_mercury wrote: post #62

Spotify (after years) still doesn't exist in the country I live in. Google Play (after years) still doesn't exist in the country I live in. Apple Music has been available from day one. They also have country-specific pricing, instead of expecting the right price for Americans to be the right price for a developing country.

This. This is the only reason I continue to tolerate Apple Music. My job requires me to travel extensively across countries. With Apple Music, I can be assured that music in my playlists works across countries. When am in the US, I honestly find YouTube Music to be the best (probably since it has a lot of my listening data already hence gets the prediction accurate). But Apple Music still remains the only music subsc…

If you pay for Spotify in a region, the selection should be the same wherever you physically are.

Re: Apple Music on Track to Overtake Spotify in U.S. Subscribers

#197

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 12:09 PM UTC

avianlyric wrote: post #180

jacquesm wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing music at work comes with some pretty weird legal implications so I can totally see why some companies would block online music services so they don't accidentally crate public performances of copyrighted works.

They would have to try pretty hard to create a public performance in a workplace. Public performances need to be accessible to the public without any sort of signup or invite, and just the act of being an employee means you have an invite/signup.

Well you'd be surprised. Where I live we have this semi governmental entity that collects fees for music played in the workplace and they will happily use a set of speakers connected to a computer as proof that music has been performed publicly. It's totally nuts but they have a lot of power here.

https://www.bumastemra.nl/faq/hoe-betalen/ (Dutch)

Re: Apple Music on Track to Overtake Spotify in U.S. Subscribers

#198

Post by fortythirteen » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 1:07 PM UTC

I have grown increasingly disgusted with Spotify pushing a political agenda inside their app. The last place I want to have politics shoved in my face is my music streaming service, whether I agree with the stance or not. Yet it seems, at least once a month, the banner of the desktop app is decidedly pushing a playlist promoting one side of the political agenda du jour.

With them recently banning the personal playlist of a conservative Australian senator, simply because they don't agree with his politics[0], I'm about ready to jump ship.

[0] - https://thewest.com.au/politics/federal-politics/spotify-ban...

Re: Apple Music on Track to Overtake Spotify in U.S. Subscribers

#199

Post by qwerty456127 » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 1:07 PM UTC

rahoulb wrote: post #186

qwerty456127 wrote: post #182

BTW why won't some business fairness commission attack Apple for using their cellphone market domination to thwart competition and promote other products of their own like iMusic (e.g. the way they did with Microsoft when MS started shipping Internet Explorer built in Windows systems)?

Don't get me wrong - as I've stated elsewhere on here, I don't like Apple Music and it annoys me greatly. But Apple Music is only usable with an optional subscription payment and can easily be uninstalled (pseudo-uninstalled) from an iPhone. It does integrate with Siri, which other music services cannot do, and it streams music on the Apple Watch, which other music services cannot (or will not) do. But it's not essen…

> It does integrate with Siri, which other music services cannot do, and it streams music on the Apple Watch, which other music services cannot (or will not) do.

Any idea why? I think they would probably add this if Apple would provide a reasonable way to. Does anybody know if Siri and Apple Watch expose nice APIs that would let you integrate your iPhone app with them?

> And the iPhone has a 30-40% market share or less on unit sales (depending on where you are).

Although the iPhone-vs-Android comparison can seem to be in favour of Android, Android means many independent manufacturers competing and much more free market for the apps. No single phone manufacturer but Apple has such a market share, having 30-40-50% of the market under unconditional control of a single company means a way more of actual power and commercial value per percent for them than if it was about shares of multiple companies running same technologies summed.

Here ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16279975 ) is what I have been told in a neighbour thread: "With the iOS market share hovering slightly below 50% in the US, it's iMessage that is the main messenger, at least where I live... I don't use Whatsapp nor was I ever invited by someone to use it, but I heard it's basically the iMessage equivalent in the EU and in other places where the iOS market share is lower."

I don't mean to argue nor am I a proponent of regulations. Just sharing thoughts. Thank you for the answer.

Re: Apple Music on Track to Overtake Spotify in U.S. Subscribers

#200

Post by sah2ed » Mon, Feb 05, 2018, 1:16 PM UTC

josteink wrote: post #193

hellweaver666 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is indeed a mess. After sharing an iCloud account for years my wife and I decided to upgrade our Apple Music to a family account so we could have separate music (and listen to music on different devices at the same time). Apple decided this must mean we also want separate iCloud accounts and upon logging into her own Apple Music account, also proceeded to remove our 15 years of family photos and a couple of years…

> proceeded to remove ... can't see the photos ... When Apple Music expired it wiped all the playlists ... Adding my own experiences with iTunes-wiped devices and music-collections... The only consistent thing with Apple and music/services is them accidentally wiping or deleting your data from both your devices and their services. Applied this consistently, it's clearly a design decision. What kind of company designs…

> Applied this consistently, it's clearly a design decision.

Perhaps the design decision assumes the separation is due to a divorce? In that case, keeping them separate is a reasonable decision since neither party would want to be forced to endure further shared memories on any device.