neoncat

Pema said:

Yes, they have Google Maps - which I use all the time, I don't trust Apple Maps - but that's not a money maker. They also have Google Docs - a mere blimp on their financial statement. And oh yes, YouTube. Does that make money?  

Google Maps location information (when you tap a business result, for example) has layers from free through sponsored. Which locations appear "automatically" in relation to y our location and zoom level are also sponsored. Apple is moving in the same direction with Apple Maps data.

YouTube reported over $30B in revenue in 2023 (through a combination of advertising and the YouTube Premium subscription program) and is generally considered to be second only to Google's search advertising business in terms of profitability. 

Like all other cloud compute providers (Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS), GoogleCloud has seen an immense surge in business as a result of companies spinning up cloud-based AI compute. While this may (or may not) be sustainable in the long-term, the immediate gains in terms of revenue and profit for all three companies are real. 

Yes, Google is over-reliant on its search-based advertising business, much in the same way that Apple is over-reliant on the iPhone. Either company could face an existential threat if development of new technologies, or changes in consumer preference, cause irreversible swings away from these products. The chance of that happening in either case is slim, however, due largely to inertia and because both companies continue to build moats. Paying Apple to keep Google Search front-and-center is a form of moat. Apple fighting tooth and nail to avoid the opening of their App Store ecosystem is a form of moat. Neither company is going to go quietly as challengers to their cash cows gather in the distance. 

Xed said:

2) If you really want to have a conversation about music distribution and your insights into that industry then you could focus on that. Most of your comment was an irrelevant mention about a musician that doesn’t appeal to you to multiple odd mentions of an age group and attire for reasons that escape me. If there was a salient point to your comment it needs to be more clearly stated.

OK, yes, I'm prone to rhetoric. My bad, and I'll own that. I used the promotional activity supporting Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish, as examples. We're responding to an article specifically about Taylor Swift, I'm not sure it's so out of bounds to focus on that. That I made it a point to react to an imagined Swiftie backlash was probably unnecessary, you're right.

As for Apple Music: Did you know that Apple has no affordances for self-represented artists or non-major labels to create marketing partnerships? Let's say you're a self-represented artist who does not release albums but individual tracks (you may scoff, but this is the fastest growing segment of the music industry). Apple Music is the only major streaming service that provides no promotional hooks to non-album, non-represented releases. Not even pay-to-promote. Until recently, it was impossible to even establish a relationship with Apple Music if you were non-represented/ASCAP (again, Apple was unique in this regard). My comparisons to Top 40 radio was to imply that Apple is fostering the same sort of closed-loop, self-referential music pool that forcibly restricts discovery to specific artists only. It promotes major label/brand-centric music, as does so primarily to associate its own brand with that of certain hot artists. 

Taylor Swift doesn't need Apple's help to have a wildly successful album. Her tangible benefits from the partnership are minimal, any more so than Labron James needs Nike to be a successful, HoF athlete. Apple, however, believes its association with Taylor Swift improves the appearance of Apple Music. That brand synergy, I believe, is more important than how Apple creates a platform for musicians and music discovery (much as how Nike has dropped any pretense of quality in its products—look at the disaster unfolding with the MLB uniforms). Ultimately, it's us Apple Music users who suffer as a result of Apple's singular focus on brand rather than the function and quality of their service. The time spent by Apple constantly promoting these partnerships and explaining how hard they work to promote artists who don't need their help, to me, rings of a desperate need to be seen as "cool" rather than "good." (hence my sniping about "boomers" ... rhetoric!)

Again, to be clear: My opinion based on my work for artists and record companies that operate contrary to the baseline norms of music promotion. Obviously I'm going to react negatively to entities who operate using traditional methods. You should therefore take my opinions in that context. If major label and album-centric is what you want your streaming service to be, and you put no or low value on music discovery, then Apple Music as-is serves your needs and what I represent does not. And that's fine, genuinely. It should, after all, always come down to experiencing the music we love (including Taylor Swift!) Apple's constant need to insert its brand into that relationship is what I am reacting to and as a music lover resent. 

Oh, sick burn dude! But sorry, no, squarely Gen X. I own a boutique PR and marketing firm targeted at the independent music industry (among other content sectors), so obviously I have an agenda and a viewpoint, one based on the marketplace I work in and the artists I serve and the reactions from those artists and their record companies I see to how Apple Music does business. Your viewpoints and experiences may be different, and I respect and support that. We're here to have a discussion, right? So you can learn from me and I can learn from you, right?

Oh sorry. Apple Music is the best!

And therein lies the core problem with Apple Music: It is to streaming services what Top 40 was to radio in the 80s. Apple is far more concerned with whether Apple Music appears to be aligned with what is "now" than building a vital and comprehensive music service, much less fixing the oft-documented problems with the garbage that is Music.app. The end result is not something that comes across as cool and essential, but rather a bunch of boomers wearing tight-fitting jeans and inviting themselves to industry parties. 

Before the Swifties descend upon me like a ton of bricks: Tay-Tay is not, er, my cup of tea, but she's an amazing business person and I don't find her music actively terrible, or anything. It's the form of Apple's myopic partnerships, not the individual artists.

Another example would be the weird amount of attention they kept giving Billie Eilish, who admitted in a couple interviews she found it all "very strange," and that it was entirely a construct between Apple and her record company. She had nothing to do with it, despite Apple continually selling it as a partnership between her, individually, and Apple. Again—boomers in jeans making sure to be seen rather than thinking about: Is this what my users actually want?

If there's a lord above (which there isn't, but let's just pretend), then when you squeeze Apple Pencil™, it'll make a delightful giggle noise like when they'd poke the belly of the Pillsbury Dough Boy in those old TV commercials.