Everybody loves music, but few of us want to buy the stuff. That's the stark truth that has ravaged the recording industry over the past 15 years. Lately, it's even begun to draw blood from Apple Inc.
And so comes Apple Music, the company's new Internet music streaming service for phones, tablets, and personal computers. Priced at $9.99 a month or $14.99 for a family plan, Apple Music offers 30 million songs from every musical genre, a live online radio station pumping out fresh hits 24/7, a "Connect" feature to let fans communicate with their favorite artists, and a unique connection to Apple's Siri voice-control system that lets users of Apple devices play a song by simply asking for it.
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In all, Apple Music has enough firepower to challenge the leading music subscription services such as Pandora and Spotify. It also reminds us that Apple is very good at playing defense. For this is Apple's bid to retain its immense influence in a global music industry that it so recently transformed, and that's being transformed once again.
In the late 1990s, illicit Internet sites like Napster made it easy to steal music. Apple rescued the recording industry with its iTunes music store, a cheap and legal way to purchase digital music.
Still, listeners had an alternative — thousands of audio streams available free over the Internet. As broadband Internet services became commonplace, millions of us simply logged on to listen. Soon companies like Pandora offered streams tailored to the listener's personal tastes, seasoned with revenue-generating ads, as well as ad-free services that charged listeners a monthly fee.
Apple left them to it, and why not? The streamers made barely a dent in iTunes music sales. But in 2013, according to Nielsen SoundScan, sales of downloaded music fell nearly 6 percent, the first decline since iTunes was born. It dropped another 13 percent last year. But the audience for streaming music jumped 54 percent in 2014.
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Perhaps Apple's brilliant success in selling music had blinded it to this new competitive peril. But with nearly $200 billion in the bank, it could afford enough bulldozers to dig out of this hole. And it's not a very deep hole anyway. Even with the recent surge, only about 41 million people worldwide pay for digital music streams. Being late to the party doesn't matter when nearly everybody else is late too.
Apple will install the software for its new service on nearly every gadget it makes — hundreds of millions of iPhones, iPads, and Macintosh computers. Apple Music is also easily added to Windows PCs, and later this year, there'll be an app for devices running Google Inc.'s Android software. Besides, Apple Music is free of charge for its first three months. The few who already subscribe to Spotify or Pandora or Rhapsody may not shift their allegiance. But for millions of incoming newbies, Apple Music will become the default choice in subscription streaming.
Apple's also counting on innovation to bring in listeners. The most enticing of them is the link to Siri. You can ask it to play AC/DC or Brahms or the number-one song in the US in March of 1983. Other gimmicks are less impressive. The much vaunted Beats 1 live radio station is fine if all you want is thumpy, propulsive dance tunes. But there's a whole universe of music well beyond the reach of a single channel. Apple Music has the usual pre-packaged audio streams — rock, R&B, gospel, classical and the like. But they offer skimpy pickings compared to what you'll find at Spotify or Rhapsody. And for now, the Connect service offers very little fresh content from your favorite musicians.
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Never mind. Apple Music will be much better in a few months, and it's quite good now. And that three-months-free deal is irresistible.
But for many of us, this will change when the bill comes due. Why pay Apple or anyone else $120 a year for music, when the Internet's awash in free tunes of every type? Just run a Google search, or visit radiosearchengine.com, to find music in any genre.
Subscription music only makes sense for hardcore fans. Luckily for Apple, those are the very people who've rung up billions in purchases at the iTunes store over the years. If it converts these customers from music buyers to music renters, Apple will dominate the subscription streaming market. And that's exactly what'll happen. Apple Music isn't perfect, but it's good enough to rule.
Pandora | Rhapsody | Spotify | Apple Music | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Listeners | 79 million | 2.5 million | 75 million | NA |
Subscribers | 3.5 million | 2.5 million | 20 million | NA |
Monthly price | $4.99 | $9.99 | $10 | $9.95 |
Songs | 1 million | 30 million | 30 million | 30 million |
Unique feature | Compatible with a vast array of devices, including TVs, videogame consoles, and some cars | unRadio service gives easy access to Internet streams from traditional radio stations around the world | Social listening feature lets you easily share music with friends | Play music with Siri voice control; "Connect" service offers interaction with artists; Beats 1, a live 24-hour Internet radio channel |
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at hiawatha.bray@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeTechLab.
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