During the much debated Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, some very interesting pieces of news have been unveiled. Apart from the natural OS upgrades, HomeKit, the controversial Apple Watch and more, company representatives have declared that a new music streaming service will be launched under the Apple signature. This caused trials and tribulations in the media, as Apple music streaming service challenges Spotify to go public and declare that the new launch will not necessarily pose a threat for the market leader in this field of industry.
War of musical monopoly seems to have started, with two tech heroes laying some very heavy cards on the table. First of all, we have Spotify, the streaming giant that just came from closing its latest round of $526 million in funding. This offers the company a market share value of $8 billion.
Their funding initiative seems to be a quite strategic movement from their part, as it ended shortly after Apple has announced the unveiling of a new music streaming service that is set to be launched next year.
Apple tries to win a market that is worth some great deal of profit, while Spotify faces serious challenges from one of the most prolific tech companies.
Apple throws with hard gear, as it aims to develop an on-demand streaming service, a worldwide radio station and a social network for musicians and fans. In other words, beat that, Spotify.
And it surely tries to do that, as they are coming clean with some declarations stating that the industry leader, Spotify, has more than 20 million subscribers worldwide who pay for the service. This represents a 100% increase compared with last year. Spotify presently has 75 million active users worldwide. Beat that, Apple.
It will indeed be a hard task for Apple to accomplish, as music represents a rounding error in the overall plan of Apple, which has the money, namely $178 billion in cash to invest in upcoming services. What they miss is a clear overview and a strong strategy to force their way into the music stream markets. It will be delicate to say the least, as the iTunes platform went down with 13% loss in download sales in 2014. The company needs to transit away from that model and it’s the chance of their redesigned streaming music service to take over and break the records.
However, the music industry seems to be shrinking as years go by, with most users gaining access to free information, escaping from the claws of costs or prices. However, in this field that faces constant fluctuations, as people don’t pay that much for music anymore, Spotify shows us that it can develop strong strategies to convince people that music has a price worth paying for. This is exactly the reason why Apple thinks it can gain its fair share of profits, launching the Music platform for an affordable price, with a three month free trial period.
Music is now a battlefield and we are holding our braces to see who the winner will be, after all the cards have been laid down on the table.
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