Spotify's song radio feature is killer for me. I've found so many great new (very niche) artists. Of course royalties can always be better.
Music subscriber market shares Q2 2021
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Re: Music subscriber market shares Q2 2021
#82Big surprise for me is Amazon music... with 13%! I don't know anyone that uses it. Maybe it's a regional thing?
I'm under the impression that Amazon Music is US-only. It's decent if you're heavily invested in the Amazon Echo / Alexa ecosytem.
Re: Music subscriber market shares Q2 2021
#83I made the switch last September from Spotify back to Apple Music. 1 reason and 1 reason only. Lossless. Why Spotify still doesn't offer this as an option is beyond me. I get that its a small amount of people who care but still why not offer it? I would pay a little more to use their service.
You know, I used to care about lossless but more and more the proof has been stacking on that MP3 compression is an amazing technology and I just don't have the ears to discern. I would love to know how you do in this test: https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/...
For me, it was enough to prove that lossy is good enough for everyday listening.
Re: Music subscriber market shares Q2 2021
#84I am all in on Apple and only a few dollars away from the Apple One bundle being worth it for me but I just don't like Apple Music. The UI is just too difficult to use and it feels slower than it should be, definitely slower than Spotify. While I have no love for Spotify's podcast ventures and dislike them trying to push me to listen to podcasts on their platform, I do love it for music and it "Just Works". Also I ca…
I agree that Spotify is a much better ‘listening experience’ (ie discoverability etc) but the problems I have between Spotify and my HomePod(s) is almost enough for me to switch back to music - it is infuriating, needing to reboot the HomePod to get it to play anything again (apparently an issue with Spotify not supporting airplay 2 but the flow on effects are weird)
Yeah, I've thought that if I ever go all-in on the HomePods then I might use Apple Music just for them (like I said, I'm close to getting the Apple One bundle once my last trial runs out) but the Echo's are a lot more open and play nice with Home Assistant. If I want to replace all my Echo's with HomePods (mini I guess since that's all there is) it would close to $1K and I'd have to use Home Assistant's HomeKit integration and every experience I've had with HomeKit (or HomeBridge) has been bad. Sure it works great for a few weeks, maybe months, but then it just stops working and you have remove and re-add everything (and re-add them to the right rooms, the HomeKit setup is so terrible).
Re: Music subscriber market shares Q2 2021
#85sluggish UI aside, I really don't like Apple Music's TASTE in music. Spotify's playlists are reliably more niche. Apple is far more "GRAMMY/Top 40"-oriented and that's just not interesting to me. Also, Apple should have bought Rdio.
If you think Apple's TASTE is bad, you should try TIDAL. Its really bad.
Music curation was actually what made Tidal (Wimp) great in the first place. They didn't have the tech that Spotify had, and at the time the Spotify AI wasn't very good either, so the Tidal curated lists were really good and much better than the AI-generated (?) ones from Spotify. Things changed after Jay-Z stepped in, Tidal recommending Jay-z & friends is one example. Don't know if manual list curation is still a priority for them.
Besides, perhaps your taste in music is not aligned with most others.
Re: Music subscriber market shares Q2 2021
#86sluggish UI aside, I really don't like Apple Music's TASTE in music. Spotify's playlists are reliably more niche. Apple is far more "GRAMMY/Top 40"-oriented and that's just not interesting to me. Also, Apple should have bought Rdio.
I have a slightly more cynical take on why Spotify pushes niche bands and music so much (in fact, I can’t even remember the last time I saw an “established” band in my Discover Weekly playlist) — Spotify doesn’t have to pay out that much per listen for these niche bands, while having, say, Beyoncé or Drake pop up on millions of subscribers’ weekly playlist would eat in their margins.
Discover Weekly is a playlist meant to surface less known artists that you might like.
Re: Music subscriber market shares Q2 2021
#87Apple Music only has significant usage because of their anti competitive behavior. All apps on the App Store have to go through rigorous review and are restricted to Apples discretion in being granted access to OS features while Apple themselves use undocumented features to compete as a platform. Try hooking up AirPods to your iPhone and do nothing else. The Lock Screen changes to have an Apple Music player with a ra…
I just tried this and my lock screen shows me 4 thumbnails that I know are my most played songs/playlists but the main app and play button are the video that I most recently watched (and paused) in firefox. I know when I listen to postcasts using Overcast (since I like their UI better than Apple's), it shows up in the lock screen. This is reliable for me. It also becomes the default thing to play if I hook up to my CarPlay. So I don't think these are necessarily anti-competitive practices—it may just be you are hitting a weird bug or edge case.
Re: Music subscriber market shares Q2 2021
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Long term, Spotify and Netflix are in trouble. Amazon and Apple are in this space, and they can use their trillion dollar market caps to decimate single-revenue stream companies. The Department of Justice should do something about this. Neither Amazon nor Apple should be in these businesses. They do too much and apply price pressure unfairly. If this continues, $1T+ tech will be the entire economy. Netflix, Spotify,…
I agree with you, which is why I subscribe to Netflix and Spotify, but man... - Netflix's so-so content while being costlier - And Spotify push to have podcasts instead of decent radio are not helping...
netflix: costlier so-so content AND a soul crushingly annoying interface. I am 100% sure that I will never want to watch the vast majority of the items available, and yet I must scroll past them over and over and over in four to ten different rows during the same session even.
Re: Music subscriber market shares Q2 2021
#89I am all in on Apple and only a few dollars away from the Apple One bundle being worth it for me but I just don't like Apple Music. The UI is just too difficult to use and it feels slower than it should be, definitely slower than Spotify. While I have no love for Spotify's podcast ventures and dislike them trying to push me to listen to podcasts on their platform, I do love it for music and it "Just Works". Also I ca…
I’m with you here. While I don’t have the same issues as you, Apple Music sometimes feels like a beta version to me. Spotify does too, sometimes.
One giant annoyance with Apple Music is their artist matching/suggestions. I have a few artists with very generic common names. Anytime another artist with the same name releases another album, it’ll be wrongly matched to the artist I listen to for a few weeks. More annoyingly, I keep getting the other artist in my recommendations constantly!
Two examples would be SIERRA (techno) and ALEX (synthwave). SIERRA often gets mismatched with Sierra and now I keep ending up with weird spanish music in my recommendations. With ALEX it’s with ALEX&RUS which is some russian rap duo. Super annoying.
Re: Music subscriber market shares Q2 2021
#90Correct me if I'm wrong: the first and second ones in market share aren't the most interesting part. What's insightful is that Amazon is at third. Spotify is a pure player in the space and with it's years of growth it makes sense to be #1. Apple, while not a pure player as Spotify, has a good share of the mobile devices market and smartwatch, and that and music go hand in hand. Amazon? To Amazon music is just another thing in their miryad of things, and they're still at the top.