A market so small, it makes the market for cactuses to suck on look big.....
(seriously, the market is small and will not grow until all streaming services become interoperable or include a lease to buy scheme; will people want to spend $1,200 over 10 years for the privilege of having to stay with Apple until they die and thus spend another $8,000 on them? When instead, you could have bought 100 albums and listened to them for the rest of your life without spending another penny. And yes, I am aware the same happened when we went from vinyl to CD, but that was a MAJOR upgrade in quality and convenience).
The estimates is there are 41 million users who pay for streaming music.
I expect that number to double in the next 12 months.
And then quadriple in the next 24 months.
By mid 2016 there will be about 150,000,000 paid streaming accounts. I think Apple will have 80-100 million of those.
And who the hell thinks about 10 YEAR WINDOWS?
Who the hell thinks about paying $8500 on 10 YEARS of cell service?
Who the hell thinks about paying $12,000 for cable/internet for 10 YEARS?
Who?
Hardly anyone. All people care about is it cost $9 a month. Can they afford that? Yes. Hell, they may not be even alive 10 years from now.
Your thinking is collector/1990's thinking. Same thing goes with people who collect DVD's and Blurays. Most people don't want to OWN movies. They want to stream them on Netflix. It don't matter that if they could own hundreds of movies instead. They like the convience and low monthly cost of subscription plans.
But I do think the price of AppleMusic has to go down. I think $4.99 for individual plan is the sweet spot. At that price I see Apple selling 100,000,000 subs in 2 years.
Disagree on how fast you think streaming music subs will grow overall.
Agree that if Apple dropped the price to $4.99 they would clean up, but disagree they would hit 100 million subs in 2 years even at $4.99. The family plan as it stands now at $14.99 is pretty competitive and compelling. At $4.99 would that make Music a loss leader for Apple? That seems very un-Apple to me. I am not sure and these are all just our opinions and conjecture.
Both agree and disagree that people don't want to own physical collections of media. People may not want the physical disc nearly as much as in the past, but lot of us still want to have a local copy on a hard drive that is not reliant on the cloud.
Again you make some good points but some of your assumptions seem to be a bit of a stretch to me. That is just my 2 cents.
Just out of curiosity, on what are you basing your expectations of streaming music market cap over the next 1 to 2 years? Will Apple simply inherit 80-100 million users from....? In fact, where did your estimate of 41 million users come from? If you're going to extrapolate hard numbers as you have, you can't use a faith based baseline and black box prediction methods.
Its obvious Apple is trying to move people to the cloud instead of on device. The whole industry is moving toward that direction.
In fact if you have large music libraries why would you sub to AppleMusic in the first place?
Obviously switching carriers is a silly answer, and one I doubt Apple would suggest. Besides, T-Mobile has damp ass coverage in northern NJ. And regardless of carrier, cellular is simply not reliable. Even wifi hopping sucks, as I use Optimum Online in my region, with long stalls or dropped connections for even browsing the web.
My wife and daughter commute to NY, and between car, train and subway, they are more disconnected from their music than connected with this new system. That can't be a smart model.
The point stands, there is no reason to enforce this to use a Paid service - Apple Music.
Why would someone with a large library not be a candidate to try out new genres and artists,precisely the purpose of Apple Music? And renting music should be less costly than buying...
Like I said, for those in environments and /or with unlimited plans that make streaming truly ubiquitous, great, use it. This does NOT describe large segments of the population or geos.
At $4.99 would that make Music a loss leader for Apple? That seems very un-Apple to me. I am not sure and these are all just our opinions and conjecture.
Apple and the labels will make it up with volume.
I think the labels will stop the free tiers and with 100 million+ users they will be willing to get lower royalties. This really is a long-term strategy for Apple and the labels. In 5 years they could get 400,000,000 subs. That's 24 BILLION in annual revenue. In 2014 Global music revenue was only 14 billion. Throw in music rights, physical copies, downloaded copies, and concerts and they could DOUBLE global music revenue in 5 years.
This is a MASSIVE opportunity for Apple and the labels if done correctly.
Plus streaming has much lower cost structure than physical media and gives a more consistent revenue stream.
Make it up in volume?
Selling at a loss and making it up in volume worked for no one ever. The labels would do just as well sticking with the ad supported model and make it up in volume.
400 million subs in 5 years? Your optimism is astounding.
There just aren't that many people that care enough about music to support your ambitious predictions in my opinion.
Tap the "Music" icon.
Tap the "sort by" option and select "Artists" so your list is sorted by artist.
Tap an artist.
Tap "Shuffle".
I am sorting by artist and if I select a artist from 'my music' and that artist has say five albums I've loaded on my device I don't see a shuffle button until I choose a album.
Selling at a loss and making it up in volume worked for no one ever. The labels would do just as well sticking with the ad supported model and make it up in volume.
400 million subs in 5 years? Your optimism is astounding.
There just aren't that many people that care that enough about music to support your ambitious predictions in my opinion.
They won't be selling at a loss.
100 million subs at $10 = $12 billion
vs
400 million subs at $5 = $24 billion
If they keep the price at $10 they won't get even close to 400 million users in 5 years. But if they go to $5 they will get a ton of users. You might even get the phone companies to subsidize it.
And the costs to service 400 million vs 100 million users is very small compared to the added revenue.
In a subscription model you do make it up with volume. Just look at the App store. They barely broke even in the first 2 years. But now they are raking in multi-billions in profits each year.
There are very few actual facts in our conversation and your numbers are very ambitious. I have a hard time buying into them.
Also with an ad supported model you can make it up in volume as well.
Regardless, its fun to think about and kick the ball around. And that is all we are doing is making it up and positing our conjectures.
Looks like music added through Apple Music does not get the option to shuffle all songs from all albums of one artist. But if all the albums are added via iTunes/iMac then the shuffle button is available.
I go to albums, select an artist with more than one album. Then I tap onto the ellipse ("…") next to the artist's name and select "add to up next". As consequence, al titles are added in alphabetical order of the songs. Now I clear "next up", go to the first song and tap the shuffle icon. Now all song of that artist are added in random order. Again, I clear the list, go back to the song and tap on shuffle again, this time disabling it. As a consequence, all titles are added again, this time album by album and in the albums' playorder.
That's.... not so intuitive. Or as sog would say: A good opportunity to learn something.
There are very few actual facts in our conversation and your numbers are very ambitious. I have a hard time buying into them.
Also with an ad supported model you can make it up in volume as well.
Regardless, its fun to think about and kick the ball around. And that is all we are doing is making it up and positing our conjectures.
Add supported model is going bye-bye in a matter of months. The labels know it was a horrible deal but they used it to get a user base.
Worldwide there is about 250,000,000 streaming accounts.
41,000,000 are paid accounts.
When Spotify/Pandora/ect cut off the free plans do you think these accounts will just stop streaming all together? I doubt it. I say at least 30% will pay the $5 fee. That right there gives you 100,000,000 paid accounts.
Bottom line is this: Streaming is the future. No one can deny that. Owning physical or even digital copies is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Sure people will still buy music but not like in the past. With today's tech why would you? I've bought alot of music in the past and I only listen to about 20% of it today. The other 80% is trash. I don't think I'm alone in this.
At $5 per month it would be an easy sell:
1. Carriers like AT&T could offer 1 year free to lure in new buyers.
2. Apple could package AppleMusic with AppleTV service with a discount.
That number of worldwide accounts include cross platform services right?
So maybe when Apple Music becomes available on Android we might see the ambitious numbers you are thinking of.
I go to albums, select an artist with more than one album. Then I tap onto the ellipse ("…") next to the artist's name and select "add to up next". As consequence, al titles are added in alphabetical order of the songs. Now I clear "next up", go to the first song and tap the shuffle icon. Now all song of that artist are added in random order. Again, I clear the list, go back to the song and tap on shuffle again, this time disabling it. As a consequence, all titles are added again, this time album by album and in the albums' playorder.
That's.... not so intuitive. Or as sog would say: A good opportunity to learn something.
'Not so intutive' is such nicespeak for 'utter bs and a waste-of-time.' One in 10,000 users will even bother.
I have my doubts about whether AM will be successful at all in its current form. Possible, but not a given.
Well, 8.4 sure screwed up audiobooks. I hope that 8.4.1 fixes that problem. Early feedback says the problem has been remedied in the public beta of 9, but I miss being able to use my audiobooks in a native iPhone app. Now I have to use Audible to play a book properly.
Comments
A market so small, it makes the market for cactuses to suck on look big.....
(seriously, the market is small and will not grow until all streaming services become interoperable or include a lease to buy scheme; will people want to spend $1,200 over 10 years for the privilege of having to stay with Apple until they die and thus spend another $8,000 on them? When instead, you could have bought 100 albums and listened to them for the rest of your life without spending another penny. And yes, I am aware the same happened when we went from vinyl to CD, but that was a MAJOR upgrade in quality and convenience).
The estimates is there are 41 million users who pay for streaming music.
I expect that number to double in the next 12 months.
And then quadriple in the next 24 months.
By mid 2016 there will be about 150,000,000 paid streaming accounts. I think Apple will have 80-100 million of those.
And who the hell thinks about 10 YEAR WINDOWS?
Who the hell thinks about paying $8500 on 10 YEARS of cell service?
Who the hell thinks about paying $12,000 for cable/internet for 10 YEARS?
Who?
Hardly anyone. All people care about is it cost $9 a month. Can they afford that? Yes. Hell, they may not be even alive 10 years from now.
Your thinking is collector/1990's thinking. Same thing goes with people who collect DVD's and Blurays. Most people don't want to OWN movies. They want to stream them on Netflix. It don't matter that if they could own hundreds of movies instead. They like the convience and low monthly cost of subscription plans.
But I do think the price of AppleMusic has to go down. I think $4.99 for individual plan is the sweet spot. At that price I see Apple selling 100,000,000 subs in 2 years.
Disagree on how fast you think streaming music subs will grow overall.
Agree that if Apple dropped the price to $4.99 they would clean up, but disagree they would hit 100 million subs in 2 years even at $4.99. The family plan as it stands now at $14.99 is pretty competitive and compelling. At $4.99 would that make Music a loss leader for Apple? That seems very un-Apple to me. I am not sure and these are all just our opinions and conjecture.
Both agree and disagree that people don't want to own physical collections of media. People may not want the physical disc nearly as much as in the past, but lot of us still want to have a local copy on a hard drive that is not reliant on the cloud.
Again you make some good points but some of your assumptions seem to be a bit of a stretch to me. That is just my 2 cents.
Anyone?
Just out of curiosity, on what are you basing your expectations of streaming music market cap over the next 1 to 2 years? Will Apple simply inherit 80-100 million users from....? In fact, where did your estimate of 41 million users come from? If you're going to extrapolate hard numbers as you have, you can't use a faith based baseline and black box prediction methods.
Can you shuffle all the songs of one artist anymore? I can't find that option.
Anyone?
YES.
Tap the "Music" icon.
Tap the "sort by" option and select "Artists" so your list is sorted by artist.
Tap an artist.
Tap "Shuffle".
Obviously switching carriers is a silly answer, and one I doubt Apple would suggest. Besides, T-Mobile has damp ass coverage in northern NJ. And regardless of carrier, cellular is simply not reliable. Even wifi hopping sucks, as I use Optimum Online in my region, with long stalls or dropped connections for even browsing the web.
My wife and daughter commute to NY, and between car, train and subway, they are more disconnected from their music than connected with this new system. That can't be a smart model.
The point stands, there is no reason to enforce this to use a Paid service - Apple Music.
Why would someone with a large library not be a candidate to try out new genres and artists,precisely the purpose of Apple Music? And renting music should be less costly than buying...
Like I said, for those in environments and /or with unlimited plans that make streaming truly ubiquitous, great, use it. This does NOT describe large segments of the population or geos.
At $4.99 would that make Music a loss leader for Apple? That seems very un-Apple to me. I am not sure and these are all just our opinions and conjecture.
Apple and the labels will make it up with volume.
I think the labels will stop the free tiers and with 100 million+ users they will be willing to get lower royalties. This really is a long-term strategy for Apple and the labels. In 5 years they could get 400,000,000 subs. That's 24 BILLION in annual revenue. In 2014 Global music revenue was only 14 billion. Throw in music rights, physical copies, downloaded copies, and concerts and they could DOUBLE global music revenue in 5 years.
This is a MASSIVE opportunity for Apple and the labels if done correctly.
Plus streaming has much lower cost structure than physical media and gives a more consistent revenue stream.
Make it up in volume?
Selling at a loss and making it up in volume worked for no one ever. The labels would do just as well sticking with the ad supported model and make it up in volume.
400 million subs in 5 years? Your optimism is astounding.
There just aren't that many people that care enough about music to support your ambitious predictions in my opinion.
EDIT: removed extra "that" typo for clarity
I am sorting by artist and if I select a artist from 'my music' and that artist has say five albums I've loaded on my device I don't see a shuffle button until I choose a album.
Make it up in volume?
Selling at a loss and making it up in volume worked for no one ever. The labels would do just as well sticking with the ad supported model and make it up in volume.
400 million subs in 5 years? Your optimism is astounding.
There just aren't that many people that care that enough about music to support your ambitious predictions in my opinion.
They won't be selling at a loss.
100 million subs at $10 = $12 billion
vs
400 million subs at $5 = $24 billion
If they keep the price at $10 they won't get even close to 400 million users in 5 years. But if they go to $5 they will get a ton of users. You might even get the phone companies to subsidize it.
And the costs to service 400 million vs 100 million users is very small compared to the added revenue.
In a subscription model you do make it up with volume. Just look at the App store. They barely broke even in the first 2 years. But now they are raking in multi-billions in profits each year.
There are very few actual facts in our conversation and your numbers are very ambitious. I have a hard time buying into them.
Also with an ad supported model you can make it up in volume as well.
Regardless, its fun to think about and kick the ball around. And that is all we are doing is making it up and positing our conjectures.
YES.
Tap the "Music" icon.
Tap the "sort by" option and select "Artists" so your list is sorted by artist.
Tap an artist.
Tap "Shuffle".
Nope.
As long as there is just one album of the selected artist, you see the shuffle button.
If you have more than one album you have to select and album first.
So this is is what I found:
I go to albums, select an artist with more than one album. Then I tap onto the ellipse ("…") next to the artist's name and select "add to up next". As consequence, al titles are added in alphabetical order of the songs. Now I clear "next up", go to the first song and tap the shuffle icon. Now all song of that artist are added in random order. Again, I clear the list, go back to the song and tap on shuffle again, this time disabling it. As a consequence, all titles are added again, this time album by album and in the albums' playorder.
That's.... not so intuitive. Or as sog would say: A good opportunity to learn something.
There are very few actual facts in our conversation and your numbers are very ambitious. I have a hard time buying into them.
Also with an ad supported model you can make it up in volume as well.
Regardless, its fun to think about and kick the ball around. And that is all we are doing is making it up and positing our conjectures.
Add supported model is going bye-bye in a matter of months. The labels know it was a horrible deal but they used it to get a user base.
Worldwide there is about 250,000,000 streaming accounts.
41,000,000 are paid accounts.
When Spotify/Pandora/ect cut off the free plans do you think these accounts will just stop streaming all together? I doubt it. I say at least 30% will pay the $5 fee. That right there gives you 100,000,000 paid accounts.
Bottom line is this: Streaming is the future. No one can deny that. Owning physical or even digital copies is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Sure people will still buy music but not like in the past. With today's tech why would you? I've bought alot of music in the past and I only listen to about 20% of it today. The other 80% is trash. I don't think I'm alone in this.
At $5 per month it would be an easy sell:
1. Carriers like AT&T could offer 1 year free to lure in new buyers.
2. Apple could package AppleMusic with AppleTV service with a discount.
That number of worldwide accounts include cross platform services right?
So maybe when Apple Music becomes available on Android we might see the ambitious numbers you are thinking of.
Only time will tell.
Nope.
As long as there is just one album of the selected artist, you see the shuffle button.
If you have more than one album you have to select and album first.
I didn't realize that since my ~1,000-song library doesn't contain more than one album from a single artist.
I was hoping. But lookalike i will have to wait for9.
'Not so intutive' is such nicespeak for 'utter bs and a waste-of-time.' One in 10,000 users will even bother.
I have my doubts about whether AM will be successful at all in its current form. Possible, but not a given.
and if it hits $150 will you self ban?
what can I say. I'm optomistic of Apple's future.
Sure. I'll take your bet.