

Inside Spotify's Plan to Take on Apple Music - danso
http://www.fastcompany.com/3049231/tech-forecast/inside-spotifys-plan-to-take-on-apple-music

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ajtaylor
I've been pleasantly surprised at my Discover Weekly picks, the existence of
which was pointed out to me by my 12 yr old daughter. Now I'll have to look at
the Fresh Finds playlist to see if I can find new bands that tickle my fancy.
The continual stream of new playlists is one of the main reasons why I have no
plans to switch from Spotify to a competitor.

For instance, Feelin' Good [1] has been my commute playlist this week. It's
gems like these that make Spotify so useful for me and well worth the $20/mo
for a Family plan.

[1]
[https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/1B9o7mER9kfxb...](https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/1B9o7mER9kfxbmsRH9ko4z)

~~~
eastbayjake
Completely agree. I think Spotify's biggest value-add is curated playlists --
I love that I have the ability to listen like Pandora radio if I want to be
passive, but otherwise I can have fully-granular control over which songs I
want to listen to without having to skip through a playlist.

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rm_-rf_slash
Can Spotify plan on making local file synching not suck anymore? Over the
course of a year they removed every common sense feature that made adding
local files convenient, from drag-and-drop to simple filtering. Given that I
discover most music through Plug.dj, and that most of those tracks are remixes
unlisted on Spotify, the only thing going for them is the audio defaults to a
louder volume. Once I can find a decent script to transfer my playlists, I'm
not looking back.

~~~
lobster_johnson
Agreed. This year they even removed the ability to search among local files
(!). Previously, you could at least go to the "Local Files" view and hit cmd-F
(Filter). Filter now only works for playlists. The app search field doesn't
match local files, of course.

It's an incredible oversight in an app which, by definition, has only a subset
of the world's music; they are practically asking people to use iTunes to
supplement their streaming selection.

iTunes has both local files and streaming, they really need to compete on that
level. Fortunately for Spotify, Apple has made the Music UI as bad as the rest
of iTunes; if Music had as good a UI as Spotify I would switch, easily.

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aaronbrethorst
I'm surprised that the text "Beats 1" doesn't appear once in the article or in
here. I think that Beats 1 (and the inevitable Beats 2, etc.) is, by far, the
crown jewel of Apple Music, and should be what Spotify is focusing on. This
morning, for instance, I got to hear Zane Lowe interviewing Dr Dre about his
first album in 16 years. _Fresh Finds_ , even if it had the new Dre album,
still wouldn't offer up what Beats 1 gives me.

Were I in charge of Spotify, I would've taken the $100mm spent on Echo Nest
and bought Pitchfork instead, along with hiring every music critic I could
find. Forget Fresh Finds; give me Robert Christgau's top picks of the week and
a 24/7 radio station anchored by Pitchfork's podcast people.

~~~
threeseed
Beats 1 is outstanding IMHO and actually the main reason I cancelled my
Spotify subscription.

Dre/Iovine's connections are certainly helping here (some very impressive
interviews and guest DJs) and the fact you have London, LA and New York
perspectives means you have can keep in touch with the latest music trends
from the places most of them start. As well as save songs from their playlists
directly into your own.

If they expand it to places like Berlin, Seoul, Melbourne, Ibiza etc. it's
going to be damn compelling.

------
boh
Honestly the only thing Spotify (or any other music streaming service) has to
do to compete is just be slightly cheaper. Each major streaming service is
pretty much the same and doesn't foster a lot of loyalty. If Apple Music is
$9.00 tomorrow, I'm switching.

Features like "Fresh Finds" are pretty shallow and will neither entice new
users or keep existing ones around. Too much emphasis has been placed on
generating playlists which are never that interesting.

None of the major streaming services get social right, a feature that would
greatly enhance the music streaming experience and get users to stick around.
The only one that comes close is Soundcloud, and while yes it's not a
subscription streamer like Spotify, it has a good community around music.

~~~
cm2012
Is it really worth even 5 minutes of your time for $1-$5 a month?

~~~
boh
$12-$60 a year, every year, is worth 5 minutes yes.

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mcmullen
Spotify is bundled with mobile phone contracts in the UK - my wife won't even
try the Apple Music free trial because it's another UI she has to learn and
Spotify is free with her contract. I think that sentence summarises my view of
Apple's chances in the market: so long as they (Spotify and others) are
slightly cheaper than Apple Music and are friendly with people like the big
telcos, I don't see Apple Music adding much more than better branding and
higher prices.

~~~
threeseed
Apple Music has a few things going for it.

1\. It is integrated with the Music app. So you can have your existing and
Apple Music in the same place. And of course it can be accessed via Siri,
Apple Watch etc.

2\. The UI is excellent compared to Spotify which is still dreadful after all
this time.

3\. Beats 1 definitely brings something new. Especially since they are so well
connected in the music scene. And of course with Dr Dre being on board you are
routinely seeing exclusives not just from him but other people or Iovine know
e.g. Compton the Soundtrack.

~~~
wil421
>2\. The UI is excellent compared to Spotify which is still dreadful after all
this time.

This was the case in ios a couple years ago but not any longer. I'd argue the
UI/UX is much better. It's so easy to queue something up I just swipe the song
to the left and if I want to save the song, do left swipe. The only thing with
Spotify is you can get buried in menus and have to keep clicking back.

~~~
mcmullen
Spotify need to work on an easier way to create and edit playlists - better
search within the playlist and an easier UI would be a massive improvement.

------
fokinsean
I love Spotify, but I am constantly hopping between them and Pandora whenever
I want to use radio. Spotify's radio is terrible. It is about as good as a
traditional radio where they repeat the same 10 songs every hour. Hopefully
they can leverage some of this tech into improving the radio as well.

~~~
wil421
I'm in such a huge bubble with Spotify. Everytime I use radio I get the same
bands and songs. I feel like I can't get it to ever play anything new.

~~~
fokinsean
Yeah it's impossible. There's a band that consistently comes on one of my
stations even though I have given it a thumbs down at least a dozen times.
Pandora definitely wins as far as radio goes, but when I want to hear a
specific song Spotify is awesome. However I also noticed that quite a few
albums have migrated to Apple Music from bands that I frequently listen to
which is a bummer. Then again that's what youtube is for :)

------
georgerobinson
I've been using Apple Music since it launched here in the UK. I recall
cancelling my Spotify subscription the same day and promptly signed up for my
3 month free trial to Apple Music.

Whilst there is nothing I particularly dislike about Spotify, I found it's
'Offline Mode' particularly clunky.

When I play a song on Apple Music that I have in a playlist or album, I can
replay tracks without the need for a persistent 3G/4G/WiFi connection. Whilst
you can do this in Spotify, I understand you have to manually click a button
to enable offline playback.

Furthermore, Apple Music will shows me which tracks are cached for offline
playback, since those which are not are greyed out and un-clickable, whereas I
don't recall seeing anything like it in Spotify. This feature is particularly
useful on the tube (London Underground for people in the USA/Europe/Rest of
World) where you have intermittent WiFi at stations (in fact, by the time your
phone has connected to the access point on the platform the train is already
pulling out of the station - so you've got to be fast!).

However, I feel like Apple could have done better with the Apple Music
experience on iPhone and iPad. For example, what is the 'For You' tab all
about? Just some bouncing spheres with labels of different genres? I quite
like the 'New' tab since I can quickly find popular music, but it feels too
much like the iTunes Store, where you click-to-buy.

Yet, I really like the artwork they've set up for artists, and I think the
player is excellent. I can't say I use 'Connect' that much, but it is an
incredibly convenient way to follow artists you like and, if you're lucky,
hear some B-sides that didn't make it onto the album.

I haven't yet decided whether I'm going to continue my trial with Apple Music
or go back to Spotify. I just want a solid music streaming service that will
1. let me listen to the artists I love and 2. help me find other artists who I
will love. I feel like neither of the two fully satisfy those requirements
just yet.

Edit: I forgot to talk about Beats 1. I'm really enjoying listening to Zane
Low on Beats 1 radio after his move from Radio 1.

~~~
threeseed
The "For You" tab is one that took a while to understand but actually one of
their best features.

It's actually human curated playlists based on the artists you have already
listened to or liked. It's definitely a point of difference between Apple
Music and the other streaming services.

~~~
criley2
I would say the same about Spotify's Browse tab, and the Genre&Mood sections
and the Discover sections.

All human curated and constantly updated playlists, nothing in other services
compares, although I cannot use Apple Music since it is walled-garden only.

~~~
threeseed
I think you misunderstand. "For You" is human curated but personalised for
you. It will for example show an artist retrospective if I like a similar
artist or a playlist that overlaps two genres I listen to frequently. I like
Spotify's playlists but these are a step above.

And Apple Music is coming to Android/Windows so it won't be a walled garden
for too much longer.

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ArtDev
Spotify only lets you play music on ONE device at a time, even if you are on
the same ip address. Lame.

I would try iTunes Music but, like a lot of people, I avoid Apple like the
plague.

The Grooveshark playlist interface was far superior to Spotify!

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cthyon
Pretty cool idea. I wonder how effective it is at actually filtering which
artists will breakout. Also I wonder how this will affect the music discovery
process in a meta sense i.e. will 'breakout' playlists like this accelerate
the discovery process by turning mainstream attention to under the radar
music? Or will it ironically take the music too mainstream too quickly and
kill the hype before it has a chance to really take off?

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dchuk
Spotify needs to fix their radio situation. I see their engineering posts
about the machine learning algorithms they're using to intelligently recommend
songs, yet all I ever hear is about a dozen songs on loop, no matter what the
starting seed is for a station.

Apple Music's stations have been great so far, despite the rest of the UX of
their app (and iTunes) being absolutely god awful, something Spotify does have
a relative leg up on.

~~~
threeseed
> despite the rest of the UX of their app (and iTunes) being absolutely god
> awful, something Spotify does have a relative leg up on

You are definitely in the minority here. Spotify's UX is regarded as one of
the worst around. Slow, clunky and the web/native hybrid approach really
doesn't work.

~~~
dchuk
yeah, hence why I said relative leg up on. Spotify is slow on desktop and
annoying on mobile and they just don't seem to care. But compared to the mess
that is iTunes on desktop and Music on iOS, it's a lot better.

iTunes looks like it is developed by a bunch of isolated teams who aren't
allowed to see the other sections of the app while working on their own.

~~~
ArtDev
The Grooveshark UI was soo much better!

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swozey
I've been trying to use Apple Music but for some reason, even on my gig
internet, it will take several minutes to start playing a song. By then I've
switched back to Spotify and picked a song.. a few minutes after driving down
the road Apple Music will kick in and interrupt Spotify with their song.

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joe5150
I'm certainly in the minority, but as much as I have enjoyed using the Apple
Music trial, I doubt I'll stick around when it's over because unlike Spotify
and Rdio, I still can't scrobble to Last.fm with Apple Music.

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ende
Spotify's strategy should involve bringing back third party apps.

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gearoidoc
Been with Spotify for about 3 years but the radio shows from Josh Homme and St
Vincent are a HUGE reason I'll likely switch when the free trial expires.

~~~
rob_lh
I was reading the interview with Jimmy Iovine today and everything he said
about curation rang true to me, but when I listen to Radio One, it's too much
Top 40 and talking about the music. I love Spotify because it's just the music
- just get to it, let me find whatever the curator saw in the music instead of
explaining it to me. I get so mad listening to people in a studio talk about
music they love or just filling time that could be another song with what is
most likely an ad. It's my single biggest gripe with SiriusXM too, but at
least I've been really happy with their curation.

~~~
gearoidoc
Yep, that totally makes sense too - however, the two shows I mentioned are
quite different from your typical radio show for the following reasons:

1\. For the St Vincent Mixtape Delivery Service, Annie Clark takes one story
from a collection sent in by listeners. Its real life stuff such as a roadtrip
a persons planning or a major life event they're going through. The tracks
suit it and theres a call between Clark and the person who sent in their
story. Gah, thats a bad description but trust me when I say its very unique.

2\. Josh Homme is Josh Homme - he's funny as fuck and makes great picks. Also
had Alex Turner on interviewing too. Basically two of my heroes.

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meeper16
It's all about true music recommendation and discovery systems. These are
systems that mimic how your friends my recommend or discover music for you.

------
oisino
The fact Apple Music has 1/3 of the paying customers that Spotify has already
shows you the power of distribution. The ability for them to build it into
their on boarding flow for all new iphone purchases gives them an amazing edge
especially in upcoming markets like China.

~~~
dchuk
Apple Music has literally no paying customers yet, as they are all on free
trial. I'm sure they will see a considerable churn from current numbers once
people start getting charged and canceling.

~~~
donarb
All of Apple's previously paying Beats customers are in the 3 month free
trial. Once that trial ends I'll bet those customers continue paying. I know I
will.

~~~
dchuk
When Apple acquired Beats Music, it was "believed to count just 300,000 paying
subscribers."[1] That's about 3% of the current total Apple Music subscribers.

[1] [http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/12/apples-beats-
music...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/12/apples-beats-music-rival-
spotify-hits-15-million-paid-subscribers)

~~~
donarb
Yea, those were the reported numbers up to the end of December. I'll bet that
their subscriber numbers started going up after that as users joined following
Apple's acquisition, I know I did.

~~~
dchuk
Why would Apple acquiring them incite an uptick in subscribers?

