Over the past five years, the music industry has witnessed a dramatic rise and fall of various digital streaming devices. Apple music in today's era has two major competitors now: Spotify and Pandora. Both streamlining devices are user friendly and offer free/paid services. It was interesting to read about how each streaming device is doing in terms of popularity. After reading many articles, I observed that while Spotify was extremely popular for marketing purposes, Pandora is slowly becoming "the app to use" for music purposes. It was also very interesting to read about how popular streaming devices has gotten over the years. It went from downloading music to your iPhone/Ipod playlist, to Songza, to Apple music, to Spotify, and now Pandora.
http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/13/14889122/pandora-premium-music-streaming-service-preview-interview
I have used both apps, Pandora obviously through the use of a VPN to spoof my address. The services are different but offer similar content. Through the use of Spotify family plan me and my roommates have Spotify for filthy cheap.
ReplyDeleteSpotify also works with phone companies or the other way around, so there are many deals to make it cheaper. Apple music on the other hand, has also introduced student account which is like 5 bucks- way cheaper than spotify and pandora. I believe these music companies are trying to bring up ways to be on the top. Tidal too tries to sign musicians, so they have rights to be the only music company that can share their music.
ReplyDeleteTo start off, I'm team Spotify. However, I'm not super familiar with Pandora and I have never used Apple Music. Like Stuart, I too am also part of a family plan where I pay about $3/month for Spotify Premium.
ReplyDeleteIn another Communication Studies class I'm in this semester, we looked at hackers and how with the 2000s companies like LimeWire and Pirate Bay, people were illegally uploading and downloading music. Now we just stream it. But there has been some backlash from artists such as Taylor Swift (see: http://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-swift-explains-why-she-left-spotify-2014-11 then http://time.com/3940500/apple-music-taylor-swift-release/). We have seen the evolution of consumers and music go from from vinyl, CDs, Walkmen, then the ability to download individual songs, and now streaming music on our smartphones.
What I like about Spotify is this magic that is "Discover Weekly." Basically, every Monday morning, Spotify gives each of their users a new personal playlist that was curated through an algorithm. These music recommendations are songs that these users haven’t listed to on the streaming platform, but are similar to what they enjoy listening to. Overall, “Discover Weekly” is well loved by many and it feels as though Spotify knows me. I don’t know if Apple Music or Pandora has something similar, but this key features really gives Spotify a huge competitive advantage. They have also done something similar at the end of 2016 called “Year in Review”, another personalized playlist but using our data, they create a curated playlists based on the top songs we listened to.
I also admire the company for what they did with their user data. They cleverly took these numbers and created a fun global advertising campaign. http://www.adweek.com/creativity/spotify-crunches-user-data-fun-ways-new-global-outdoor-ad-campaign-174826/
Interesting that you mention that Apple Music now has two major competitors, including Spotify. I feel like not a lot of people may know or remember this, but Spotify has actually been around for much longer than Apple Music - almost 10 years longer. This just goes to show how much of a monopoly Apple has in the music industry - people always believe that the company is revolutionizing music when, in reality, they are just riding the waves that other companies (and even the government) have created. Their ability to integrate technologies that have already been created/used into such a user-friendly software is probably what makes people so willing to call Apple the best there is.
ReplyDeleteIt's therefore really interesting to find out that Pandora is becoming the go-to music app, especially considering I had never even heard of it.
Thanks for the information :)
Spotify includes many features that are not supported on Apple Music. Also, I have seen many instances when Apple music doesn't have the new release of a song while Spotify does. Like Stuart said, with the use of a family plan you are able to minimize the cost of Spotify to almost nothing, where as Apple music will cost you around $9.99/month. In this case I would have to say Spotify is definitely the smarter choice of app. I have yet to use Pandora or do any research on it, but if they seem to be innovating based off Spotify's platform and functionalities then they are on a path to success.
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