Apple Music passes 11M subscribers as iCloud hits 782M users

2

Comments

  • Reply 21 of 58

    I like Craig. And I like the fact that when he was asked about radars he admitted external communion isn't as good as it could be. I wish Gruber would have pushed Cue a bit more on iTunes. I didn't get the sense he really gets how awful and bloated it is. Also there's no way Cue set up a new TV like a customer would because if he had he would have said its not shipping until it has remote app and/or BT keyboard support.
    .. I think the software just has a horrible UI, which people are misconstruing as bloat. 
    Yeah.. but the app used to be pretty. Now it, and Photos, are just butt ugly. I had a joy using iTunes and iPhoto every day, not so currently. It isn't Apple Music fault but the arrogance of Apple interface designers. Some time they do an exceptionally good job, like the Watch OS, other times they are just too arrogant.
    I must say though, that the music player in iOS Music app currently is the most beautiful they've ever done.
    edited February 2016
  • Reply 22 of 58
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    ireland said:
    I disagree. The Bluetooth keyboardists are a vocal minority and they're adding that feature now. Have some patience. Apple TV has larger problems like Siri Remote only available in limited countries, still no TV Show content plan to compete with Netflix and a remote that cannot decide which way is up.
    You can't tell which way up the remote is without looking? You haven't noticed that the volume is a rocker switch and the touch surface feels completely different to the space at the other end?


    ai46
  • Reply 23 of 58
    bellsbells Posts: 140member
    brakken said:
    jason98 said:
    Imagine how many paid Apple Music subscribers could they have if they combined it with 1TB iCloud tier for the same $10?
    10x of what it is now easily!
    No amount of money will help me enjoy Apple Music simply because I really dislike the format. I'd pay money to return to the Music app as the iPod app!  11m of 700m+ users surely indicates dissatisfaction with this service.  
    11 Million paying customers out of 700 million over all users seems pretty good. Especially when there are so many free services. Apple even offered a free service. I for one love the Apple Music interface. I prefer it over everything else.  I'm not paying though because I am cheap. 

    I, however, agree with Jason's idea, and have emailed Cook the same. Apple needs to borrow a page from Amazon's book. Bundle services together. Apple Music, plus iCloud Backup, plus free Apple Movies of the week for a reasonable monthly price would make me interested. It is hard for me to pay 9.99 a month, when Netflix costs less. Movies and videos in my mind are more valuable. 
  • Reply 24 of 58
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    bells said:
    brakken said:
    No amount of money will help me enjoy Apple Music simply because I really dislike the format. I'd pay money to return to the Music app as the iPod app!  11m of 700m+ users surely indicates dissatisfaction with this service.  
    11 Million paying customers out of 700 million over all users seems pretty good. Especially when there are so many free services. Apple even offered a free service. I for one love the Apple Music interface. I prefer it over everything else.  I'm not paying though because I am cheap. 

    I, however, agree with Jason's idea, and have emailed Cook the same. Apple needs to borrow a page from Amazon's book. Bundle services together. Apple Music, plus iCloud Backup, plus free Apple Movies of the week for a reasonable monthly price would make me interested. It is hard for me to pay 9.99 a month, when Netflix costs less. Movies and videos in my mind are more valuable. 

    Well, we know that we they have 11m users; we don't know how many of the rest would buy a music subscription anyway. It's a bit light saying."We have ten million people who shop here, and only one million of them bought beard trimmers." It's a meaningless stat unless you know how many customers overall have beards, and actually want then trimmed. 

    I think they should bundle music match with the subscription service. It seems a bit pointless having one without the other. I also think (though I have no proof) that most of their customers are opting for the family service. And I assume when Apple says 'paying subscribers' they're not counting the users who are attached to the same family plan.
    edited February 2016
  • Reply 25 of 58
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    jason98 said:
    Imagine how many paid Apple Music subscribers could they have if they combined it with 1TB iCloud tier for the same $10?
    10x of what it is now easily!
    The music subscription doesn't count against the iCloud data usage allowance, so I imagine this would make a difference to geeks, but no one else. Apple also doesn't want to start doing stuff that they might have to withdraw later because increased usage and abuse makes it a pain to maintain and pay for, which is exactly what happened to Microsoft. 
    patchythepirate
  • Reply 26 of 58
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member

    I dont think bloated is the right term to use with iTunes. I think the software just has a horrible UI, which people are misconstruing as bloat. 
    I still call it bloat. Tries to do too much. The other thing I don't like is the music app on iOS devices has basically become an Music app. What about people that aren't interested in subscribing to Music?  One shouldn't have to going to settings to turn it off. I think Music should have been a separate app available on the App Store that could be deleted. Obviously Apple thinks the only way it can get a large number of Music subscribers is to turn the default (and non-deletable) music app into an Music app.

    This.

    This is the reason tech companies never listen to people who live in online forums: someone comes up with a bad idea and it's echoed around until people start to think it's actually a good idea.

    The problem with us forum dwellers is that we don't think in terms of usability; we think in terms of storage space and file organisation. We are not representative of Apple's core user base, and we seem to lack the ability to see their point of view. Here's how a normal everyday user would see your idea of a separate app for subscription-based music and music purchased the traditional way.

    "So I want to play music; Apple gives me an app that plays music, and I've also got this other app… that plays music?" Because unlike you and me, normal users don't give a hoot how their music is organised on a file system. They certainly don't care to see their music organised along the lines of where it came from. That kind of thinking belongs to a time where people organised files under the app that they used to work on it. Kids today will organise music by genre, band, stuff like that. What they don't want is 'rock-subscribed' and 'rock-iTunes store'.

    As someone who is focussed on files and storage, you are probably happy to sit down and launch a separate app because you can remember which files came from the subscription service and which ones belong to your own collection.

    Apple's core customer base would sit down and think, "I'd like to play Water Fountain. Okay, now did that come from Apple Music or did I buy that from the iTunes Store? Okay, let's try the Apple Music app… Nope, not in there. Must be the other one. Dammit. I could've searched, then the right app would get loaded for me. Jeez, why do I need two separate apps to play music from the same company?"

    Eddy Cue (and I know you're a huge fan) would think: "You want us to include two apps for playing music, and then you complain about bloat? You've just bloated everybody's brain flow!"

    Apple's developers would think: "Right so now you the users to load to two apps into a memory that essentially do the same thing. Sounds wasteful."

    Apple's customers would think: "Oh great, now I have to organise everything twice."

    And that's why you won't see them split Apple Music from iTunes: because real people don't want it.

    I don't subscribe to Apple Music, so here's what I did; I went to the preferences and moved the 'Show Apple Music' slider to the the 'off' position. Do people not know they can do that?


    edited February 2016 WiseGuy
  • Reply 27 of 58
    Rayz2016 said:
    jason98 said:
    Imagine how many paid Apple Music subscribers could they have if they combined it with 1TB iCloud tier for the same $10?
    10x of what it is now easily!
    The music subscription doesn't count against the iCloud data usage allowance, so I imagine this would make a difference to geeks, but no one else. Apple also doesn't want to start doing stuff that they might have to withdraw later because increased usage and abuse makes it a pain to maintain and pay for, which is exactly what happened to Microsoft. 
    Don't agree. iCloud backup is really convenient for everyone, no matter if you are a geek or not. It just not worth $10 alone.
  • Reply 28 of 58
    There is something about things they release - bugs aside - more a feeling which from time to time is lost. This experience of putting the user in focus - not the feature or apple wanting to sell.

    ATV4 - the Apple way would have been to ship a updated Remote app at the same time. Just befause they are detail, detail, detail.

    iTunes app - if you do not want AppleMusic it still feels like Apple insists on showling it back in focus from time to time. The software even is at risk of loosing it's useabiliy if one does not want Apple Music. That feeling. The touch. Which has chenged.

    iPhotos is the same - you turn it on and it syncs photos fine but at some point one is forced to pay more or it does not work. And it feels like that free good software has become a bloated advertising gimmic.

    I understand that the rental business model is tempting and in many cases also a perfect way to provide good solutions. But the execution must be different. We expect a better feeling. Or at least I do.


  • Reply 29 of 58
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    jason98 said:
    Rayz2016 said:
    The music subscription doesn't count against the iCloud data usage allowance, so I imagine this would make a difference to geeks, but no one else. Apple also doesn't want to start doing stuff that they might have to withdraw later because increased usage and abuse makes it a pain to maintain and pay for, which is exactly what happened to Microsoft. 
    Don't agree. iCloud backup is really convenient for everyone, no matter if you are a geek or not. It just not worth $10 alone.

    Ah, I was about to agree with you then, because I remembered the photo library. Turns out that the photo library is not included as part of  the iCloud backup if you're syncing to the cloud. Most users these days will write a few documents and take thousands of pictures, a bit like me. I've got about 12000 pictures and a thirty or so videos, a few letters, a few books I've written and the iPad, iPhone backups. All of this hasn't made much of a dent in the 200GB of storage I bought for a couple of quid a month. (In fact, I think I downgraded.)

    So we're going to have to agree to disagree. Besides, from a marketing and clarity perspective, i would like to see any freebies related to the music service, rather than offer something that I still think the majority won't really use. Free iTunes Match for starters, and free tracks to keep after you're subscribed for a year; something like that.
    edited February 2016
  • Reply 30 of 58
    irelandireland Posts: 17,798member
    Rayz2016 said:
    You can't tell which way up the remote is without looking?

    The criticism it receives is when picking it up in the dark each end is too similar and touching the wrong end cause accidental scrolling. Hence why people add an elastic band on the end.
  • Reply 31 of 58
    I also listened to the whole thing. 

    I I have to say it made me smile. At some points both came across as how I first saw Apple: almost naive and childish, but in a nice way. Like "hey, we're just these guys and fiddle around with this stuff, you know". 

    It it gave me a warm feeling hearing somethings g that sounded like the "old Apple" still kicking and alive. 

    OTOH, becoming big is not an excuse, as they tried to put it. Sure they are right IMO that with a much bigger user base and more being in focus a lot of things are amplified. yhis Bluetooth keyboard was an interesting one. According to what they said it's a very small but vocal developer mo purity that actually uses it. On the other hand, what became of releasing stuff whe. It's ready?

    Other than that, they pretty much dodged  questions on iTunes and iCloud. I would expect that in maintaining all spirit of the past they'd be able to take a step back, and dump some massive resources on software so Eddy does not rely on family feedback, or finds quite obvious flaws such as the purchasing message he mentioned. 

    Maybe it's because I like Craig more, but I felt Eddy not so on top of things. 

    but again, overall a very nice interview. I like to feel the humans behind a glossy face of. Corporation. 
  • Reply 32 of 58
    Rayz2016 said:

    I still call it bloat. Tries to do too much. The other thing I don't like is the music app on iOS devices has basically become an Music app. What about people that aren't interested in subscribing to Music?  One shouldn't have to going to settings to turn it off. I think Music should have been a separate app available on the App Store that could be deleted. Obviously Apple thinks the only way it can get a large number of Music subscribers is to turn the default (and non-deletable) music app into an Music app.

    This.

    This is the reason tech companies never listen to people who live in online forums: someone comes up with a bad idea and it's echoed around until people start to think it's actually a good idea.

    The problem with us forum dwellers is that we don't think in terms of usability; we think in terms of storage space and file organisation. We are not representative of Apple's core user base, and we seem to lack the ability to see their point of view. Here's how a normal everyday user would see your idea of a separate app for subscription-based music and music purchased the traditional way.

    "So I want to play music; Apple gives me an app that plays music, and I've also got this other app… that plays music?" Because unlike you and me, normal users don't give a hoot how their music is organised on a file system. They certainly don't care to see their music organised along the lines of where it came from. That kind of thinking belongs to a time where people organised files under the app that they used to work on it. Kids today will organise music by genre, band, stuff like that. What they don't want is 'rock-subscribed' and 'rock-iTunes store'.

    As someone who is focussed on files and storage, you are probably happy to sit down and launch a separate app because you can remember which files came from the subscription service and which ones belong to your own collection.

    Apple's core customer base would sit down and think, "I'd like to play Water Fountain. Okay, now did that come from Apple Music or did I buy that from the iTunes Store? Okay, let's try the Apple Music app… Nope, not in there. Must be the other one. Dammit. I could've searched, then the right app would get loaded for me. Jeez, why do I need two separate apps to play music from the same company?"

    Eddy Cue (and I know you're a huge fan) would think: "You want us to include two apps for playing music, and then you complain about bloat? You've just bloated everybody's brain flow!"

    Apple's developers would think: "Right so now you the users to load to two apps into a memory that essentially do the same thing. Sounds wasteful."

    Apple's customers would think: "Oh great, now I have to organise everything twice."

    And that's why you won't see them split Apple Music from iTunes: because real people don't want it.

    I don't subscribe to Apple Music, so here's what I did; I went to the preferences and moved the 'Show Apple Music' slider to the the 'off' position. Do people not know they can do that?


    One I don't think most people know they can turn off Apple Music (I don't think there's anything in the app that tells them so). Two, I actually was never a big iTunes user, don't have a lot of my own music to manage.  I'm mostly an Apple Music customer. But the app on my phone is called Music, not Apple Music. Yet when I open it up the first three selections at the bottom are for Apple Music (would be the first four if Connect is enabled). My music is all the way at the every end. To me this is a bit arrogant. Not everybody want to (or can afford to) rent music. Some people just want a simple app that plays the music they own. Since the app is called Music that's what it should be. Then have another app for those who are Apple Music subscribers and that app can integrate the music those people own with what they're renting from Apple Music.
  • Reply 33 of 58

    I also listened to the whole thing. 

    I I have to say it made me smile. At some points both came across as how I first saw Apple: almost naive and childish, but in a nice way. Like "hey, we're just these guys and fiddle around with this stuff, you know". 

    It it gave me a warm feeling hearing somethings g that sounded like the "old Apple" still kicking and alive. 

    OTOH, becoming big is not an excuse, as they tried to put it. Sure they are right IMO that with a much bigger user base and more being in focus a lot of things are amplified. yhis Bluetooth keyboard was an interesting one. According to what they said it's a very small but vocal developer mo purity that actually uses it. On the other hand, what became of releasing stuff whe. It's ready?

    Other than that, they pretty much dodged  questions on iTunes and iCloud. I would expect that in maintaining all spirit of the past they'd be able to take a step back, and dump some massive resources on software so Eddy does not rely on family feedback, or finds quite obvious flaws such as the purchasing message he mentioned. 

    Maybe it's because I like Craig more, but I felt Eddy not so on top of things. 

    but again, overall a very nice interview. I like to feel the humans behind a glossy face of. Corporation. 
    Craig is great; and when he was asked about radar he was honest about its shortcomings as far as a tool for people outside of Apple. I didn't get the sense that Eddy was really honest about anything. Nice guy, interviews well but still seems pretty clueless. Craig and Phil seem much more on the ball.
  • Reply 34 of 58

    I also listened to the whole thing. 

    I I have to say it made me smile. At some points both came across as how I first saw Apple: almost naive and childish, but in a nice way. Like "hey, we're just these guys and fiddle around with this stuff, you know". 

    It it gave me a warm feeling hearing somethings g that sounded like the "old Apple" still kicking and alive. 

    OTOH, becoming big is not an excuse, as they tried to put it. Sure they are right IMO that with a much bigger user base and more being in focus a lot of things are amplified. yhis Bluetooth keyboard was an interesting one. According to what they said it's a very small but vocal developer mo purity that actually uses it. On the other hand, what became of releasing stuff whe. It's ready?

    Other than that, they pretty much dodged  questions on iTunes and iCloud. I would expect that in maintaining all spirit of the past they'd be able to take a step back, and dump some massive resources on software so Eddy does not rely on family feedback, or finds quite obvious flaws such as the purchasing message he mentioned. 

    Maybe it's because I like Craig more, but I felt Eddy not so on top of things. 

    but again, overall a very nice interview. I like to feel the humans behind a glossy face of. Corporation. 
    Craig is great; and when he was asked about radar he was honest about its shortcomings as far as a tool for people outside of Apple. I didn't get the sense that Eddy was really honest about anything. Nice guy, interviews well but still seems pretty clueless. Craig and Phil seem much more on the ball.
    I agree. 

    I took the interview as an occasion to re-watch the WWDC 2015. The first part around OS X and iOS 9 was focused on features, and Craig presented with his usuasl mix of passion and humor, self-confient (Jesus, anyone remember his first appearance during a SJ keynote? I recall how his hands were shaking over the magic trackpad back then).
    Good part.

    Then the part around watchOS. I still don't get how this guy fits into the Apple DNA :)

    And the final part around Apple Music. Man, what a cheesy show from all, including Eddy. He always appears to me a bit in lala land and not really grounded. Perhaps what you meant by being "on the ball".

    Oh, and the interview with JG again gave me the impression that somehow the original "tentpole" idea of the new ATV was content streaming, and after Eddy and his team after years were unable to close the deal they ceded to what we have now. I am not saying it is bad, and the upcoming new remote app sounds promising. And I am not implying that eg SJ might have closed the deal. He just doesn't give me the impression as eg SJ, Craig or Phil.
  • Reply 35 of 58
    brucemcbrucemc Posts: 1,541member
    brakken said:
    jason98 said:
    Imagine how many paid Apple Music subscribers could they have if they combined it with 1TB iCloud tier for the same $10?
    10x of what it is now easily!
    No amount of money will help me enjoy Apple Music simply because I really dislike the format. I'd pay money to return to the Music app as the iPod app!  11m of 700m+ users surely indicates dissatisfaction with this service.  
    It doesn't necessarily indicate a deep dissatisfaction with the service. I haven't signed up as I have built up a music collection over years of CD and iTunes purchases, and don't feel I would get value for the money, as I don't have a lot of time to devote to music discovery. I am sure there are 10s of millions in the same place. 
    anantksundaram
  • Reply 36 of 58
    cnocbuicnocbui Posts: 3,613member
    I like Craig. And I like the fact that when he was asked about radars he admitted external communion isn't as good as it could be. I wish Gruber would have pushed Cue a bit more on iTunes. I didn't get the sense he really gets how awful and bloated it is. Also there's no way Cue set up a new TV like a customer would because if he had he would have said its not shipping until it has remote app and/or BT keyboard support.
    I dont think bloated is the right term to use with iTunes. I think the software just has a horrible UI, which people are misconstruing as bloat. 
    A 320 Mb app isn't bloated?
    edited February 2016
  • Reply 37 of 58
    11 million is an ok number. At $12.50 per account per month (some blend of individual and family memberships), it's $1.65B a year in revenue. That's a rounding error for a $250B in revenue company. 

    I had expected that, when the dust settled, it would be much higher, closer to, say, 50 million. 


  • Reply 38 of 58
    lkrupp said:
    Free doesn’t pay the bills as Pandora has found out the hard way and now offering itself up for sale.
    Surely Spotify will soon follow suit. None of these standalone streaming companies will survive. There's no "path to profitability".
  • Reply 39 of 58
    brakken said:
    I still call it bloat. Tries to do too much. The other thing I don't like is the music app on iOS devices has basically become an Music app. What about people that aren't interested in subscribing to Music?  One shouldn't have to going to settings to turn it off. I think Music should have been a separate app available on the App Store that could be deleted. Obviously Apple thinks the only way it can get a large number of Music subscribers is to turn the default (and non-deletable) music app into an Music app.
    One million percent agree. I rarely listen to Music: random songs removed, Genres gone, repeatedly being begged to subscribe. I already paid for the music I want to listen to, and for the phone. With $200b in the bank, I fail to see the necessity. 
    If there were a way I could trash iTunes in favor of another less complicated music player I'd be very tempted to do so. Regrettably, iTunes is necessary for app updates.
    edited February 2016
  • Reply 40 of 58
    AppleInsider said:

    Cue said that Apple's 782 million iCloud users contribute to a crush of photo uploads, iMessage communications and iTunes and App Store purchases. At peak operating status, the company's cloud currently processes over 200,000 iMessages per second, a number that translates to more than 17 billion per day. In addition, combined iTunes and the App Store purchases clock in at more than 750 million per week.
    It appears that Apple has the where-with-all to scale iCloud out, nicely.
    FoundationDB: 14.4 Million Write Transactions per Second
    FoundationDB has released a new version of their database product, aimed at enabling a new generation of Internet of Things and device-driven interactive applications to be built that keeps a single view of a massive distributed database while allowing a constant stream of read and writes to the data.
    “One of the hardest things to scale is write transactions,” says Dave Rosenthal, CEO and Founder of FoundationDB, who has been working on version three of the database from for the past year. “Scaling transactions with lots of writes happening all at the same time is difficult: in the past, we have been able to manage 300-400,000 random writes to the database every second. That’s a pretty good number, but there have been some businesses pushing bigger numbers than that.”
    Rosenthal cites a recent Netflix post that last year stood out as the industry’s best practice. In the documented test, Netflix were able to run Cassandra at scale on a thousand core cluster that maintained 1.1 million writes per second.
    “That was one of the really cool benchmarks that caused a lot of people to stand up,” says Rosenthal. “It was about three times faster than our 2.0 product.”
    According to Rosenthal, many doubted FoundationDB’s ability to take on that level of transactional capacity, especially given FoundationDB’s architecture which is built on a single node.
    foundationDB transactional writes per second
    With the announcement of Version Three, FoundationDB launched their new transactional processing engine: “Thas been a massive project for us. It is based on a totally new scalable design. The benchmark we are showing is running 14.4 million transactions per sec, so that is an order of magnitude faster than the Netflix test.”

    http://thenewstack.io/databases-high-volume-transactions-scale-part-two/


    edited February 2016 ai46
Sign In or Register to comment.