[HN Gopher] Music subscriber market shares Q2 2021
___________________________________________________________________
Music subscriber market shares Q2 2021
Author : YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo
Score : 84 points
Date : 2022-01-20 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.midiaresearch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.midiaresearch.com)
| aparticulate wrote:
| sluggish 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.
| circa wrote:
| If you think Apple's TASTE is bad, you should try TIDAL. Its
| really bad.
| sleepyhead wrote:
| 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.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I really don 't like Apple Music's TASTE in music._
|
| I'm with you there.
|
| Apple (and really all the streaming services) are constantly
| crowing about how many millions of songs they have. How about
| some metric for how many _good_ songs they have?
|
| 80% of my wife's record collection is not available on Apple
| Music, so I'm left ripping her records in what used to be my
| spare time.
|
| The only reason we have Apple Music is for when an artist she
| follows puts out a new record, so she can listen to the album
| to decide if it's worth buying.
|
| Also, Apple Music's Siri integration is horrendous. For
| example, no matter what request I shout to it, Siri can only
| play one particular song by Weird Al Yankovich. My guess is
| that there's something with the quotation marks commonly used
| in his name screwing up Apple's search mechanism.
|
| I have high hopes for Apple's new classical streaming service.
| It has a chance to redeem itself there.
| prox wrote:
| I recently bought https://jriver.com/ Jriver Media Center and
| it is a audiophile dream. I am going back to ripping my old
| CDs and having my own local library.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >80% of my wife's record collection is not available on Apple
| Music
|
| I'm really curious what kind of music is in her collection?
| I'm always amazed at the obscure stuff that _is_ available...
| obscure jazz, klezmer, classical recordings, etc...
| cauthon wrote:
| I totally agree with you. I miss Google Play Music. In addition
| to a superior queue UI (hey Spotify, let me play a song next),
| they had the best playlists and song recommendations I've found
| on a streaming service.
| Steltek wrote:
| I miss GPM's UI. While I'm a pretty firm YTM customer (price,
| features, catalog, artist payout feelgoods), the UI is pure
| trash and annoys the hell out of me. From playlists, queues,
| browsing, and recommendations, it's all awful.
|
| Thankfully music is mostly "search for that song", "play a
| mix from this playlist", or "play just this playlist" so no
| one needs to suffer through it for long.
| MajorBee wrote:
| 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, Beyonce or
| Drake pop up on millions of subscribers' weekly playlist would
| eat in their margins.
| afsafsaf wrote:
| Discover Weekly is a playlist meant to surface less known
| artists that you might like.
| zuminator wrote:
| Apple Music comes "free" with my phone service, and I use it
| sometimes. YouTube Premium is a must for me, and it comes with
| YouTube Music, which I use very occasionally. Yet I still
| subscribe to, and overwhelmingly use Spotify. It just seems much
| more organized and discoverable than the other two services. Also
| I don't make personal playlists because I enjoy listening to
| unknown music interspersed with my favorites, and Spotify seems
| to be the best at giving me the right mixture of that.
|
| There are some music genres that Spotify is somewhat deficient in
| compared with Apple, but it's been getting better in that respect
| little by little.
| daigoba66 wrote:
| I still miss Rdio.
| cardosof wrote:
| Correct 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.
| msbarnett wrote:
| Amazon Music is a throw-in on Prime, so technically I "have" it
| as a subscriber to Prime, but I've literally never used it.
|
| Of all of the players in this space, it's not clear to me that
| Amazon's "subscriber share" reflects anything at all
| considering that it's not something you subscribe to on its own
| and not generally considered a major benefit of the
| subscription it's included in. Would be interesting to see what
| the actual usage statistics look like.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| I'm a prime user and wasn't even aware of Amazon music.
|
| I'm guessing that when Alexa plays music it counts as an
| Amazon music user.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I expect Apple Music to continue to erode market share of these
| competitors... Apple One is just too compelling to be avoided,
| once you are in the Apple ecosphere. We had a Spotify family
| plan, but its a domino thing - once you start using one service,
| like AppleTV, it becomes a no-brainer to just switch everything
| over to apple rather than pay for different services. Is Spotify
| better for some people? Possibly, but for many (like myself)
| Apple Music was "good enough."
|
| I do agree with schoolornot's post that Apple wasted a lot of
| time and let Spotify get farther ahead than they should have. It
| definitely feels like Apple has been agonizingly slow to push out
| and improve services.
| izacus wrote:
| One player is missing on this table, the biggest one: YouTube.
| Not Music, just YouTube. They're beating all others in play
| counts by a magnitude.
| Tenoke wrote:
| That's what I use 99% of the time though perhaps I should check
| out what YouTube Music is about.
|
| Edit: Checked it out and some of the songs in my playlists are
| grayed out in Music perhaps because it thinks those are non-
| music videos but nonetheless it looks inferior for my purposes.
| sedeki wrote:
| I don't see YouTube Music mentioned anywhere in the report?
| deadmutex wrote:
| "YouTube Music was the only Western DSP to increase global
| market share during this the period. YouTube Music particularly
| resonates among Gen Z and younger Millennials, which should
| have alarm bells ringing for Spotify, as their core base of
| Millennial subscribers from the 2010s in the West are now
| beginning to age."
|
| It's also in the chart.
| circa wrote:
| I 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.
| speedgoose wrote:
| Do you notice the difference between lossless and 320kbits/s
| ogg vorbis ?
| DashAnimal wrote:
| 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.
| criddell wrote:
| I've been trying to use Apple Music with their web client and
| it's astonishingly slow. I can't understand how it could be so
| bad.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| Yeah it's not good. I've only used a handful of times and
| every single time it just stopped playing in the middle of a
| song for no reason. It also sucks that they can't be bothered
| to create apps for anything other than their own stuff and
| Android. I can use Amazon music or Spoify with my Garmin
| Watch but not Apple Music.
| criddell wrote:
| I think you can still use iTunes on Windows.
| bvm wrote:
| Am i the only tidal user left?
| sleepyhead wrote:
| Surprised they are so small. I use Tidal and I'm very happy
| with it. I switched after Spotify gave a ton of money to the
| podcast moron Joe Rogan and haven't looked back since (in
| addition to it being problematic to give money to someone like
| Joe Rogan, I also dislike how they are trying to own podcasts).
|
| I do wish I were able to use my Tidal iPhone app as a remote
| like Spotify can and that their AI suggestions would improve
| (Spotify has become really good here).
| ravenstine wrote:
| Nope! I'm a happy Tidal customer.
| topaz0 wrote:
| I wondered the same thing. I use tidal and think that it is
| good.
| netr0ute wrote:
| It seems like the kinds of people using Tidal either jumped to
| Bandcamp or just download all their music.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| I am long term bearish on Spotify, and if I could isolate Apples
| music business or Amazons, I would take the following trade all
| day:
|
| long (aapl music)(amzn music)(youtube music), short Spotify.
|
| Their recommendation engine is just not that good. Youtube Music
| has a far superior one.
| michaelmarion wrote:
| I agree on the recommendation piece, but Apple's playlist and
| library management is atrocious, especially on desktop. Why
| can't I drag-and-drop music into a playlist in the sidebar?
| Apple Music also feels (to me, at least) much slower than
| Spotify. Most likely this is due to the more aggressive client-
| side caching that Spotify does, but it's worth the trade-off,
| in my opinion.
|
| These are solvable problems for Apple, though. They need to
| more cleanly separate the legacy iTunes Store and pay-per-song
| UX from the Apple Music streaming paradigm. Maybe even have
| separate apps for them.
| rodgerd wrote:
| The most frustrating thing in Apple Music for me is that it's
| album-centric. I can't just say "put this artist in my
| library". No, I have to put every individual album, EP, and
| single that I want.
| bradly wrote:
| I still don't understand how a business can be unprofitable for
| 16 years. At one point don't you say, "whelp, this isn't going
| to work"?
| gorjusborg wrote:
| https://www.barrons.com/articles/spotify-has-finally-
| found-a...
| bradly wrote:
| Oh nice. They are getting close! Still unprofitable, but
| maybe year seventeen is the sweet spot.
| [deleted]
| gorjusborg wrote:
| All I have to say to that is that I'd lend you my Spotify
| shares to complete the trade.
| fourseventy wrote:
| I was a long time user of Google Play Music until they killed it
| and moved everyone over to the inferior YouTube Music product. I
| suffuer through it mostly because it comes bundled with YouTube+
| which removes ads.
| refulgentis wrote:
| It's doing fairly well - the report says its the only service
| that grew last year. I loved that Google Play Music still had a
| trad aughts iTunes approach to things, but it was confusing and
| out of sync with the market. YouTube Music is pretty awesome
| IMHO.
| lewisinc wrote:
| I use the Vinegar extension for Safari which replaces the
| YouTube player for a simple HTML5 <video> tag and consequently
| removes the ads. Don't know if there's alternatives for other
| browsers, but worth looking into if this is all that's keeping
| you there.
| st3ve445678 wrote:
| Firefox with ublock origin extension also removes all ads
| from youtube.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| Long time user of Google Play Music as well and I gotta
| say...while YouTube Music is slightly inferior (edit: to GPM),
| it's not even close to inferior enough to convince me to go
| back to Spotify.
|
| Granted, it does look like Spotify finally fixed the thing that
| got me to leave in the first place (10K library limit) but
| there's nothing so bad about YTM that I'd bother to pick up and
| move again.
| amanzi wrote:
| Depending on your point of view, YouTube Music _is_ far
| inferior to Spotify. The key advantage to Spotify is that
| they have apps for all platforms and have a much better
| integration story than YouTube Music. For example, I can
| stream directly from the Spotify app on Android to my Sonos
| speakers, I can use a Spotify app on my Samsung TV, I can
| integrate Spotify on my Home Assistant server, and I can sync
| Spotify playlists to my Garmin watch for offline access. None
| of that is possible with YouTube Music.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| Some of those things I can do (I can stream directly from
| the YTM app to many different devices in my house, I don't
| have any Sonos stuff though)
|
| Some of it I never even thought of doing (no Home
| Assistant, Garmin watch)
|
| Some of those things I explicitly do not want to do (my TV
| is hooked up to a Windows PC with wireless keyboard, using
| an app directly on the TV sounds like a strict downgrade in
| usability)
|
| I'd say it's less of a "point of view" thing and more of a
| "how do you interact with computers and the IoT" thing
| Steltek wrote:
| The biggest problem with the GPM -> YTM transition was that
| my kids were suddenly locked out of music (as Google didn't
| allow kids accounts to have YT and YTM fell under that). This
| was a serious problem and I don't understand why they let it
| happen.
|
| Thankfully, I got an email not 5 minutes ago saying that kids
| can use YTM again. Remarkably good timing on that one.
| [deleted]
| amanzi wrote:
| Same. Ad-free YouTube is essential for me, and getting YouTube
| Music as part of the bundle is a nice bonus. I have the family
| plan but my kids are always bugging me to get a Spotify family
| plan instead. If I do ever cave and pay for Spotify, I'll have
| to keep the YouTube premium plan anyway since I can't go back
| to watching the obnoxious ads on YouTube.
| 09bjb wrote:
| Both Opera's built-in adblocker and uBlock Origin on other
| browsers takes care of most of this nicely for me.
| Steltek wrote:
| But if you're gonna pirate content, I don't think paid
| music subscriptions are right for you either.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Kind of sucks that if you build any really successful app on iOS
| then Apple will come in and force their way into your market and
| have deep analytics on your own app when doing so. Spotify->Apple
| Music, Netflix -> Apple TV+, Peloton-> Apple Fitness.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| I am using a music streaming service which is totally free and
| offers me genres without any subscription lock-in. Additionally
| it doesn't track my listening habits and thus enables me to
| discover new music as I am not in a listening bubble.
|
| I like that streaming service a lot
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| Apple 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 random
| song you may have never listened to.
|
| This, even if you were listening to another song on YouTube Music
| or any other music app as your last played audio.
|
| On more than one occasion, I've accidentally played some idiotic
| pop song that Apple Music pushes into this experience while
| commuting with AirPods and noise cancellation on while holding
| the phone firmly grasped in my hand.
|
| It's ridiculous how many of these little UX tricks they adopt
| that boost the metrics of their internal products while openly
| denying the competition access to the same.
| __david__ wrote:
| 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.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Try hooking up AirPods to your iPhone and do nothing else. The
| Lock Screen changes to have an Apple Music player with a random
| song you may have never listened to._
|
| Just tried it and had a different experience. The lock screen
| showed the last thing I was listening to last night: The
| SiriusXM app.
|
| It's funny because this sometimes catches me by surprise. I'll
| go to sleep listening to Sirius. Then I'll get into the car 18
| hours later, and when the phone auto-connects to the car radio,
| it suddenly starts playing 40's Junction when I'm merging into
| traffic.
|
| Happens all the time, but I'm still surprised every time it
| does.
| gilrain wrote:
| Have you tried deleting Apple Music from your iPhone? Should
| solve all your issues...
| gerash wrote:
| I recently switched to iPhone from Pixel. The overall UI touch
| responsiveness and battery life is an upgrade but the OS features
| are neither upgrade or downgrade.
|
| I also got Apple Music trial for 6 months while having a YT
| subscription. Even though the app seems just fine and nice
| looking but why would anyone pay for it vs. YouTube Music? With
| YouTube you get a larger selection of songs (including all user
| uploaded stuff to YT) and it removes ads on YT. So what exactly
| is the rationale to pay for Apple Music?
|
| I believe Apple Music being the default option on Apple devices
| plays the biggest role in its market share
| ssully wrote:
| I was a Google Play Music user on iOS. I switched to Apple
| Music after Play moved to Youtube Music. Compared to Google
| Play Music, I found the entire experience to be worse in
| Youtube Music and got zero benefit from the switch. After using
| Youtube Music for a few months I did a 3 month trial for Apple
| Music and just never went back.
|
| Also does Youtube Music premium remove Youtube ads? That was a
| thing with Google Play Music for years, but I thought they
| removed the benefit with the switch? Looking at the
| subscription page [1], they only mention ad-free music.
|
| [1]: https://music.youtube.com/music_premium/musicfeed
| Case81 wrote:
| Not sure about Apple Music but I simply don't use YouTube Music
| because it's actually missing a LOT of stuff for me. Off the
| top of my head, some Beatles remasters and obscure synth
| artists
| hbn wrote:
| Yeah, and I've had artists I follow release new music, and it
| seems to sometimes not land on YTM the same day as Apple
| Music and Spotify. Certain albums just never showed up.
|
| And you know what, I can't blame them for not caring about
| keeping up with Google's services. Who knows how many days
| YTM has before it's axed and replaced with something else.
| josteink wrote:
| > So what exactly is the rationale to pay for Apple Music?
|
| Googles absolute failure to provide family plans for people
| using Google-apps/Gsuite as their family domain and accounts.
| You have to buy individual subscriptions to everyone.
|
| It's literally not an even an option.
| msbarnett wrote:
| > So what exactly is the rationale to pay for Apple Music?
|
| For $20 my wife and I both get Apple Music, Apple TV+ (several
| shows we enjoy on there), 200GB Cloud Storage, and subscription
| access to a bunch of video games.
|
| 2 subscriptions to YouTube Music by itself would cost us the
| same $20, with none of the other benefits (and it has a muuuuch
| lousier selection of stuff I like, at least - plus a lot of the
| user-uploaded content has audio quality on par with some 96khz
| mp3 I'd have gotten off of napster two decades ago, whereas
| Apple's increasingly streaming lossless)
| Steltek wrote:
| Youtube Music has a family plan for $15/m for 5 users and all
| users also get YT Premium (nee Red). It's a way better deal.
| msbarnett wrote:
| Ehhhhh there's just the 2 of us, so with none of the other
| benefits, which to me are worth $5, it's not an interesting
| deal. Plus neither of us spend any time on YouTube so that
| whole "Premium" ad-free thing is just meaningless access to
| absolute junk content.
| deadmutex wrote:
| > 2 subscriptions to YouTube Music by itself would cost us
| the same $20
|
| FYI: There's a family plan... ~$18 for 5 people in the
| household. And no ads on YT!
| [deleted]
| Closi wrote:
| Would be interesting to see this broken down by region - Spotify
| is very dominant in the UK in my experience for example, but not
| sure if there will be pockets / countries where it swings the
| other way.
|
| Personally I find Apple Music just a bit clinical, and it's just
| not as universal (for instance Spotify works just as well on a PC
| as a Mac - iTunes for Windows though? ugh).
| wwweston wrote:
| I pulled the trigger on an Apple Music subscription this year
| because it pays artists better.
|
| Spotify still considers a penny per stream "entitled" according
| to an exec giving one of the most absolutely tone-deaf AND
| nonsensical justifications for their choices ("we solved piracy
| by more or less adopting piracy's business model and legitimizing
| it!") [0]
|
| Apple stepped up to that level. [1]
|
| Revenue streams from recordings matter for supporting artists.
| There's still some issues with the economics of buffet streaming,
| but a penny a stream starts to at least approach the right
| magnitude.
|
| [0] https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/06/29/spotify-
| executiv...
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22387453/apple-music-
| arti...
| Steltek wrote:
| I signed up for Google Play Music for the same reason, artist
| payout, long ago.
|
| It looks like Youtube Music is still the highest among the
| major brands.
|
| https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2021/09/why-youtube-musics-m...
| callahad wrote:
| Deezer has been pretty staunch in their advocacy for "User
| Centric Payment Systems" (https://www.deezer.com/us/ucps) where
| your monthly subscription gets proportionally split between the
| artists you stream, rather than being put into a common pool
| which then pays out based on global listening stats.
|
| They can't unilaterally move to UCPS without renegotiating
| licensing deals with labels, but they do decent advocacy work,
| including publishing a personalized dashboard at
| https://www.deezer.com/us/ucps/me which, for me, opens with "Hi
| callahad, during December 2021 your Deezer subscription
| generated: 97% of royalties for artists I didn't stream, 3% of
| royalties for artists I did stream."
|
| It's apparently working, since seeing numbers presented that
| starkly prevented me from switching to Spotify (and got me to
| post this comment...)
| rodgerd wrote:
| I used to use Tidal for the same reason, but the ongoing MQA
| debacle pushed me over to Music. I have to say that I preferred
| Tidal's recommendations.
| deadmutex wrote:
| > Apple Music subscription this year because it pays artists
| better.
|
| I wonder if this is a growth tactic. If Apple was more
| altruistic, one could argue that they would pay their App store
| 3rd party devs (by taking less of a cut via the App store)
| better too.
|
| So, I am going to chalk this up as a possible business decision
| for growth.
| music_throwaway wrote:
| I really respect your decision to choose your streaming service
| based on how they each pay out artists. I work for an
| independent label and the most recent analysis we did shows
| that in the US, Apple was paying out roughly just under $0.007
| (7/10 of a penny) / stream, while Spotify was paying out around
| $0.004. These rates go down as you bring a more international
| user base, depending on where in the world the music was
| consumed. Of those payouts, depending on the clout of the
| artist, they're typically only seeing their 15-20% royalty of
| those payout rates on the recorded music side (music publishing
| is a different story). So it's even worse than it seems!
|
| A big reason that Apple is able to pay out higher rates is
| they're fully a premium business model with no ad-supported
| tier (they have a free trial period though). Due to Spotify's
| ad-supported tier, artists are able to reach a more cost-
| sensitive consumer, but at a lower overall blended rate per
| stream.
| kenhwang wrote:
| Do you have numbers for Tidal or Amazon Music? I'd guess
| they'd land somewhere between the two.
| YesThisIsJay wrote:
| I have recently decided to try Apple Music as apart of trial of
| Apple One trial (not likely to go beyond that) my biggest gripe
| with it is the usability on any platform outside of iDevice/Mac.
| It seems to be a 'pleasant enough' experience on my iPhone/ATV,
| but once I transition to my PC for work. A place where I would
| listen to music for a lot of my day. The PC client is trash, they
| have a semi capable web client, but it was just feeling Apple
| Music lite.
|
| One thing with Spotify is that I appreciate the effort across all
| platforms (well, at least the ones I've used)
|
| iTunes on Windows feels like they stopped working on it back in
| 2008 and now have some interns trying to support it.
| beardedman wrote:
| 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.
| azalemeth wrote:
| I have a huge and old MP3 library that is an amalgamation of my
| CDs, and some of my parent's CDs too. I think it's about two or
| three months of classical music. I suspect that many HN readers
| also have similar stories.
|
| None of this will show up in a market survey like this.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I 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 can use Spotify with my Echo's
| in ways that don't work with Apple Music. Yes, you can play Apple
| Music through the Echo's but only using your voice. With Spotify
| I can throw music to an Echo or a group of them and control it
| all from my phone.
| JimBlackwood wrote:
| 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.
| whiddershins wrote:
| I have an artist with a name conflict and even though I have
| control of the "official" artist distribution page for my
| work and have reached out to Spotify (and Apple) repeatedly,
| this other artist with the same name keeps appear amongst my
| tracks.
|
| Super frustrating.
| hbn wrote:
| Spotify is a nonstarter for me because I can't upload my own
| music. I don't want to be beholden to whatever they decide I
| can listen to, and there's lots of music I want to listen to
| that's not in any streaming catalogue.
|
| edit: note I say "upload," not syncing local files to my phone.
| I want a built-in streaming catalogue + cloud music locker that
| all my devices stream from, not something I have to manually
| transfer files between for every device
| NobodyNada wrote:
| You can upload your own music, it's a bit janky sometimes but
| it works: https://support.spotify.com/us/article/local-files/
|
| In Spotify's settings on your PC, you can configure
| directories to look for "local files". Then, you can make
| playlists of local files and they will sync to your other
| devices over your local WiFi network.
| zora_goron wrote:
| You can import local files to Spotify [0] and if you download
| the playlist for offline use on your mobile device, they'll
| be synced over from your desktop [1].
|
| [0] https://support.spotify.com/us/article/local-files/
|
| [1] https://community.spotify.com/t5/iOS-iPhone-iPad/Syncing-
| Loc...
| joshstrange wrote:
| That's completely fair and I even pay for iTunes Match even
| though I don't really use it anymore, it and Apple Music
| never meshed well in my experience but maybe it's gotten
| better. There is a way to listen to your own music in Spotify
| (even mobile) [0] but it might be a little shaky, I doubt
| they care much about it. I've used it before but only on
| desktop.
|
| [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-upload-music-to-
| spoti...
| hbn wrote:
| I've read up on Spotify's custom library stuff, and it
| seems to just be a weird hack that only works on one
| device. What I really want is a music locker I can stream
| to any device to fill in the gaps that aren't available in
| the streaming library.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| We had it all with Google Music
| robbiep wrote:
| 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)
| deanc wrote:
| I got a HomePod mini last week. I have used Spotify probably
| about 20-30 times by tapping it with my phone or using
| AirPlay from the control Center. Zero issues. The lack of
| _native_ Siri support is a joke though. Spotify really need
| to pull their finger out on that one.
| joshstrange wrote:
| 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).
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| The thing that kills Spotify for me is how pushy it is combined
| with the frequent unnecessary UI changes.
|
| The lack of an API that allows track playback is a huge, huge
| bummer too (look up the saga of libspotfy if curious) --
| shockingly, Apple Music is more open in this regard, with
| multiple alternative third party clients being available thanks
| to JS and native Mac/iOS SDKs.
| e40 wrote:
| I'm curious what UI changes you're talking about. I can't
| remember the last time there was a UI change, and I've been
| using them for 5+ years.
|
| In fact, as I was reading these comments I was thinking
| they've been totally stagnant UI-wise, and the only hate I
| for the iOS app is the pop ups for events, etc. I make a
| point to never read any text in them and dismiss immediately.
| kenhwang wrote:
| The big one pinning podcast recommendations to the home
| screen above the fold with no option remove it. Same with
| unremovable "recommended" playlists that mix music with
| podcasts. Podcast settings are at the top of the list in
| settings too.
|
| But because podcasts are treated equally to music on every
| page and user backlash to remove podcasts, they added
| [Music] and [Podcasts & Shows] filter buttons to the header
| of those pages, wasting page real estate. But the slap in
| the face is it doesn't even remember to keep those filters
| applied.
|
| Plus, even if you actually like some podcasts, it'll
| randomly swap out [Your shows] section for podcast
| [Recommendations] instead.
| schoolornot wrote:
| Eddy Cue should be fired for allowing Spotify to reach such
| critical mass. Music and playlists is such a sticky ecosystem
| that people don't just up and switch services at a whim. The 381
| million users that Spotify accumulated over the years will never
| switch to another platform. Apple lost so many years with trying
| to spin Beats into something that it wasn't, rewriting clients,
| and putting out garbage like "Your Station".
| manmal wrote:
| Their Music clients are also still far away from what I'd
| expect from a Trillion dollar company.
| hbn wrote:
| I actually like the iOS Music app (though their queue system
| isn't as intuitive as Google Play Music/YouTube Music) but
| their webapp and Mac app are hot garbage.
|
| I recall seeing an article that said the Mac app was being
| rewritten in the new macOS betas.
| my123 wrote:
| The iOS and Android apps are both kinda okay, but the web,
| Mac and Windows ones just suck.
| Macha wrote:
| I actually disagree here, iTunes music is DRM free so users
| still have it without the subscription service, and the music
| streaming services all have most of the tracks unlike video
| streaming so there's no moat to be built. Bad for Apple, good
| for consumers.
| Graffur wrote:
| Strong statements. I just cancelled Spotify and will likely go
| to another provider when I choose to get a music streaming sub
| back.
| shaan7 wrote:
| I dread the day when iTunes stops letting you buy DRM-free music.
| I don't know anywhere else I can do that easily (and is the only
| Apple service I use).
| __david__ wrote:
| Nowadays I tend to use bandcamp.com over iTunes for purchased
| music. It tends to only have smaller artists on there but they
| also sell flac/wav, which I like better than buying compressed
| music (I listen to things compressed but if I'm buying it I
| want it future-proof).
| pgrote wrote:
| Pandora isn't on the list, but I am unsure they are global. When
| they were purchased by Sirius I wanted to move to a Sirius
| subscription, but found out they would not port over your Music
| Genome Project information over. You would have to train it
| again. No other service has a feature that works so well.
|
| We keep it just for that reason.
| YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote:
| I have used Pandora over VPN for like 10 years but decided to
| just drop it because it's not worth the hassle of getting the
| US app on iPhones anymore. They have the coming soon page for
| Germany up since 2014 and still nothing. I miss it.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| "Other 10%" seems weird... are there really (at least) 10 more
| music services that captured 1 or less percent of the market?
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| There are a lot of services which are region specific
| ssully wrote:
| I am curious what Google Play Music's share was before they shut
| it down in favor of Youtube Music. Myself and a few friends were
| using it until they shut it down; we basically split between
| Spotify and Apple Music based on what OS we were using.
| steve-benjamins wrote:
| I'm an indie artist and here's the avg split on my plays per
| week:
|
| Spotify: 25,000
|
| Apple Music: 600
|
| ... Not trying to make a statement-- just sharing cause it's
| interesting!
| reaperducer wrote:
| Since the big topic of discussion on HN has been how much
| artist make from those streams, can you give us a ballpark
| figure of how much you get from each service?
| cujo wrote:
| How much do you make from each of those services?
| gfiorav wrote:
| Big surprise for me is Amazon music... with 13%!
|
| I don't know anyone that uses it. Maybe it's a regional thing?
| YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote:
| Anecdotal but my parents use the one integrated in prime
| because they mainly listen to old music.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Does Amazon give out Music accounts as a bonus when users
| subscribe to some other service, similar to Amazon Prime
| customers getting streaming? Maybe that can account for
| incidental and not intentional subscribers.
| fullstop wrote:
| Some purchases on Amazon come with "3 months of amazon
| music", which surely adds to their numbers.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| Yes they do. Prime comes with a limited version that "only"
| has a couple million songs. At least in some countries. They
| also have a higher tier called Music Unlimited that's more
| on-par with the other guys content wise but cheaper if you
| already sub to Prime. Also have a tier that only works on
| Echos but gives access to the larger catalog for even less.
|
| I switched to just using the included service with Prime.
| It's good enough for me and I get Prime super cheap as a
| student.
| yumraj wrote:
| It's free with Prime and cheaper than other alternates for the
| paid version if you have Prime. For casual listening it's not
| bad at all.
|
| It also supports so called HD and Ultra HD, which I believe
| Spotify still doesn't support, while Apple does.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Does Apple or Spotify have some sort of extra feature over
| Amazon that would appeal to non-casual listeners?
|
| I had Apple for a bit, switched over to Amazon because of the
| Prime discount... while I'm aware that morally I should de-
| Amazon my life, the service is pretty convenient.
| fullstop wrote:
| For me, Spotify is everywhere. It works on Google Home,
| Echo, Xboxes, PC, Linux, Android, etc.
|
| For quite a while, Google Music wouldn't work on Echo
| devices and Amazon Music wouldn't work on Google Home.
| Spotify worked everywhere, had native applications, and a
| decent value for a family plan.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Interesting. I've got Linux, Windows, and iOS here. The
| main annoyance of Amazon is that they don't appear to
| have a native client for Linux. At least not in my repo.
| I don't really mind the web interface, the higher
| bitrates are limited to the native client for some silly
| reason.
|
| As it is... I just end up plugging my phone into my
| dac/amp as a (pretty stupid, IMO) workaround.
| paxys wrote:
| It is not free with Prime, just $2 cheaper ($8 vs $10/mo).
|
| I think what is driving Amazon Music subscriptions is the
| proliferation of Echo devices. It is easy to auto-subscribe
| from the speaker itself (sometimes too easy, to the point of
| being accidental), e.g. when you ask it to play a song.
| yumraj wrote:
| As sibling comment also noted, there is a free tier that
| we've been using forever.
|
| They also have a much cheaper option for students, I think
| $1/month or something like that.
|
| Not sure if every Prime user uses Amazon Music, and how
| they count their user base.
| jasode wrote:
| _> It is not free with Prime, just $2 cheaper_
|
| There's a free tier Amazon Music of 2 million songs
| included with Prime membership. That's the free music
| streaming my friend was using for 5+ years. She then
| upgraded to Amazon Music Unlimited for extra $80/year.
|
| Can't tell if the article's 13% for Amazon Music is
| counting the free tier users.
| paxys wrote:
| In that case every Prime member is a subscriber, and that
| number should be a lot larger.
| zwaps wrote:
| What is the meaning of HD and ultra HD for music?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'm sure it is just a marketing term that they've come up
| with.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/music/unlimited/why-hd
|
| HD: 'CD quality audio (aka, "lossless")'
|
| Ultra HD: 'Better than CD quality audio (up to 24 bit, 192
| kHz)'
| drawkbox wrote:
| Lots of Amazon music, in addition to Prime usage, is probably
| used with Alexa as well as that is the default music player on
| Alexa/Echo.
|
| Just like Siri/Homepod uses Apple Music and "Hey Google" /
| Google Home/Helper uses Google Play/Youtube music.
| echelon wrote:
| 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, and all of the other "little companies"
| should sue the ever-loving bejesus out of these monsters for
| anti-competitive practices.
| rzanella wrote:
| 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...
| giglamesh wrote:
| 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.
| echelon wrote:
| Spotify is trying to add new revenue streams and revenue
| growth.
|
| Netflix is fighting content being taken away - they didn't
| have their own, and now content owners realize the value of
| their catalogs. There are also lots of new players (HBO,
| Disney, Peacock, Amazon, Apple). Once Netflix builds a
| bigger catalog, they can relax and curate better.
|
| Amazon and Apple don't have these problems. They can
| purchase studios to artificially build their catalogues. If
| they weren't buying content, Netflix would be paying less.
| In fact, Netflix would probably be the beneficiary of
| studio consolidation if the giants were not writing checks
| too.
|
| Spotify and Netflix don't have a grocery store or hardware
| business unit to help speed up investments.
|
| It's vastly unfair to have horizontally scaled command of
| several industries, especially when they have built in
| synergies you can abuse.
| dopa42365 wrote:
| Spotify owns 50% of Tencent Music (pretty much Chinese
| Spotify). Tencent owns 20% of Universal Music Group, and a
| few percent of Warner Music as well.
|
| They're all connected; you have that illusion of choice, and
| no matter what you pick, everyone wins (yay)!
| nostromo wrote:
| Increased competition is a good thing. I'm glad several
| companies are in this space.
|
| It's only a problem if a single provider is a monopoly and
| uses that to squeeze out other companies in order to raise
| prices. We're very far off from that because there are so
| many companies competing and none of them control the market.
| echelon wrote:
| > It's only a problem if a single provider is a monopoly
| and uses that to squeeze out other companies in order to
| raise prices.
|
| The giants behave different to monopolies in the past.
|
| Amazon makes its catalogs available for free, which makes
| businesses like Netflix and their offerings look expensive.
| They subsidize the costs using revenues from different
| business units, which is not only unfair, it's not actually
| competition.
|
| It's not even necessarily about money. Giants care about
| attracting and keeping people on their platform.
|
| Once actual healthy businesses dry up, revenues paid to
| creatives will go down. They've already begun picking apart
| other studios and assimilating their businesses, and this
| will only accelerate.
|
| > Increased competition is a good thing.
|
| Not when music, movies, and art become just features of the
| tech giant platforms. It dumbs everything down and ensures
| the tech giant opinions are the ones that get amplified.
| [deleted]
| cbhl wrote:
| 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.
| pgrote wrote:
| We subscribe simply because it is the only service that works
| on family plans without any friction on Echo devices. Tried to
| get Pandora and Spotify to work, but there was always a problem
| or the skill would fall apart over a period of months.
| hwbehrens wrote:
| My wife and I share a single Spotify account, so when she's
| listening, I switch to the free tier of Amazon Music. I wonder
| if that counts toward that 13%?
| circa wrote:
| There is a couples account option and I think its very close
| to the same price of a single sub.
|
| Edit: its called Spotify Duo and its $12.99 vs $9.99
| https://www.spotify.com/us/premium/#plans
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