This move makes totally sense if you consider that Apple is trying to control the streaming market the same way it controlled the download to own one. I'm sure the labels will do whatever they can to avoid it.
Spotify is a (big) thorn in Hook's foot and Ek would die rather than sell Spotify.
That also explains why Apple is not releasing the 30% tax for music streaming and why Spotify released an app with its own payment system to grab attention. It's war.
He really said that? I thought everyone at the time was pretty much agreed they were buying it for the streaming service, not the headphones.
>> "That also explains why Apple is not approving the last Spotify app update. It's war."
They're not approving it because supposedly Spotify built in their own payment system which is a clear violation of App Store guidelines. Could be wrong but that's what I read.
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/05/08/beats
"The problem with this theory is that those licenses (to my understanding) aren’t transferable in the event of an acquisition. Music label executives may be dumb, but they’re not that dumb."
>> "They're not approving it because supposedly Spotify built in their own payment system which is a clear violation of App Store guidelines. Could be wrong but that's what I read."
Maybe but I think it was a strategy. Spotify wanted to grab attention. The origin of the issue is really the fact that Apple is not releasing the 30% tax for music streaming services. This is unsustainable in the music business where there is close to 0 margin. The labels take most of the revenue.
To be fair, Apple has a long history of blocking apps with the own payment and subscription system.
... and you've lost me. I mean, the 3.5 mm jack solution is used by audiophiles for connecting headphones costing several iPhones to equipment costing dozens of iPhones. If it was in any way a problem for audio fidelity, these people would've gone for a new solution long ago.
Exactly. If. I tried it and canceled once the The Life of Pablo was on Spotify a little over a month later. Their "growth hacking" is not sustainable and their user base is fragile. Jay is smart to flip while Tidal hits a peak from the chain of major releases from its biggest artists.
Also, the average music fan doesn't care about audiophile-level sound quality. I think they're just trying to emphasizing that point for differentiation since Spotify has a stronger catalog in general.
As long as Apple ships a small adapter with the phone, I have no problem with it.
> 10 #1 albums in a row, who better than me?
> Only The Beatles, nobody ahead of me
> I crush Elvis and his Blue Suede Shoes
> Made the Rolling Stones seem sweet as Kool-Aid too
At this point he is a dominant force in music... and we're not even talking the commercialized aspects beyond albums themselves. Jay is a genius.
I really can't interpret this as anything other than Jay-Z trying to be like Dr. Dre.
The difference is Dr. Dre's company actually created a product people wanted, and he deserves the success.
As for Tidal, how is this not different from union workers going on a strike? Except that people going on a strike do have legitimate reasons. For the "exclusive" artists who were on Tidal they're all rich people already. They just wanted to make more money.
They created absolutely 0 value with this company, all they did was create a collective with enough critical mass to matter and monetized on it. And when I say "monetize", it's us the fans that they monetized. It's almost like a betrayal.
I've long thought that elite-brand athletes (LeBron, Durant, etc) should collectively start an alternative social media network that gives them more functionality that suits them, rather than just play on Instagram, Twitter and the like.
You already see things like The Players' Tribune - a media presence by players giving them direct control over things like signing announcements and so on.
Spotify was never going to have me as a subscriber but Apple Music was so much better (for me) that it was a no-brainer.
But then I always preferred Pandora over Spotify anyhow (different use cases I know, but still).
Tidal has licenses with a lot of artists but those wouldn't transfer to Apple Music, they would have to renogitate with them. And the whole reason artists are choosing Tidal is because they dont want Apple Music and want to be with a company all about the artists. If Apple wants to be all about the artists, it doesn't need Tidal for that, it can simply update it's relevant policies.
One could say the want to buy them to get rid of the competition but I don't see Tidal being much competition since while artists may launch with them most like Adele end up on all the services anyway.
Or the most likely reason is this is simply a an unfounded rumor.
Now buying Pandora to replace their Genius feature would be amazing, but Pandora works so well because the amount of music is so small in comparison and Apple right now is anti algorithms publicly and all about human curation, so doesn't look like a pandora acquisition will be coming anytime soon as much as we want it.
It seems like Apple have created a monopoly within their own ecosystem. Whether their ecosystem is too big to be monopolised will be up to the lawyers as regulations are put in place. I expect American government to allow Apple to keep their monopoly as it'd be "unfair" to not let a company do what it likes with their own products.
If however the government decided this was a monopoly and regulations to be put in place, I expect Apple to get around this by "opening up" their eco system by making customers resign all Apple support for their products if they decide to "break out". Which is fair enough.
There's no such thing as a "monopoly within an ecosystem".
Either you cover the majority of the full market (not of your market), and you're a monopoly, or you don't.
If you don't, then within your own platforms, shops, and premises it can be your way or the highway.
Nobody has a right to tell you what to sell or not sell, and how much to charge for things in your own shop -- kind of like with a physical shop. It's not Apple wanting Spotify to be sold through their platform/store and asking them -- it's Spotify wanting to take part in Apple's marketplace.
Amazon has been making inroads in this market [1], while Spotify and Pandora (most of Pandora's listeners are not paid subscribers) are the other incumbents [2].
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8... [2] https://www.statista.com/chart/3899/paid-subscribers-of-musi...
Apple services, from iTunes to the App Stores and iCloud are actually generating tens of billions of dollars per year.
Apple is just buying Tidal (if they do) for the userbase (and some content deals).
>Jay-Z is a $%^$ing hack
Good thing any such acquisition is not implying anything about Jay-Z's worth as an artist then.
There already exists a range of audio equipment and headphones that use the lightning port on existing iOS devices.
A pair of headphones has space for something the size of a Fiio E5 (potentially several times that size), but there's no way Apple or anybody else is going to built that quality internal to a phone.
Earbuds won't have the space for that hardware, so I expect the phone will still have an onboard DAC and an analog output mode over the lightning connector for use with cheap/small lightning earbuds and to allow a passive lightning/3.5mm adapter.
EDIT: As an addendum, I'm expecting we'll see a lot of bluetooth headphones with the iPhone 7, following in the Apple Pencil's "plug into lightning to pair and charge" setup. Hopefully also using the wire for data while they're connected.
I think that's the point of lightning - they can derive power through the port. As for size I think there's already a few products out there that manage it. I saw one reviewed a few weeks ago.
>I can’t see Apple keeping the “Beats” brand around for headphones. If Apple wanted to sell expensive high-end headphones, they don’t need to spend $3 billion.
So it's not like what the parent implied -- whether Gruber saying it wasn't for the licenses also meant Gruber though it was about the headphones.
Plus, Gruber could be totally right about the licenses not being transferable.
Apple didn't buy Beats neither for the licenses nor for the licenses. It bought them for the users, the know-how, and the connections (through Iovine and Dre).
Then: > The origin of the issue is really the fact that Apple is not releasing the 30% tax.
I'm honestly not sure if you're contradicting your first statement or if I'm misunderstanding your choice of words.
Is Apple failing to pay out? Seems like I would have read about it if they reneged on their contract with a highly visible third party.
I definitely agree it was a strategy. No way Spotify thought they would get away with that, it's a PR exercise. The issue isn't Apple's 30% though - it's Spotify's business model. Apple charges all publishers the same flat rate. If you can't sustain your business on it either leave the App Store or force your users to register through your website. I can see how it sucks for Spotify but it is not unfair in my opinion (unless Apple had a monopoly on streaming music, then it would be anticompetitive but for now it's an advantage they have and should be free to use).
The only way to command the labels is to control the market. Apple did it with the iPod and iTunes. They were able to set the .99c price for any song. The labels were upset about it.
Apple is trying to reproduce that with streaming. They're initial goal was to release a cheaper suscription ($7.99/month).
I know Apple Music gets hate for it's UI but it's nirvana compared to the horrible, grating, death by 1000 papercuts UI that Spotify has.
So that contributes a LOT to my impression of Spotify.
I find their radio offerings better than Spotify, and the curated playlists to be of higher quality and better variation. The For You tab alone is better than a lot of what I found on Spotify.
The importing of my existing library and linking of it into the service with all sorts of metadata made for a seamless experience that I haven't found from any other service either.
Basically... it's just a little bit better (for me) in every possible way, while being nicer to use.
1. I can add music to my streaming library that is not on their service and that music isn't treated any differently than the stuff in their catalog from a UI standpoint.
2. It integrates better into the Apple ecosystem, which I've already tied myself too. For example, play music using Siri and Apple TV support.
Also, I'm not a fan of Spotify's UI.
2. Spotify works great with Google Now and Chromecast.
Also, I'm not a fan of Apple Music's UI.
It happens.
In my opinion, a lot of users of streaming media services are neither enthusiastic customers nor entirely forgetful. Their opinions of the services they pay for aren't consistent from day to day, either.