Ondrej Holzman In recent days, there has been a lot of talk about Apple's new music service. It is to come in June, to be based on Beats Music, and the Californian company is to speak for the first time in music streaming. But at the same time, there is speculation that she is still unable to sign contracts with all publishers and is also under the scrutiny of the US government, especially because of her negotiation practices.
Apple has a very strong say in the music world. He has already done it several times in history, he literally changed the entire industry with iPod and iTunes, and now he also has the very influential Jimmy Iovine in his midst. He acquired it as part of the acquisition of Beats, and it is Iovine who is expected to play a significant role in the launch of a new music streaming application, which Apple will take on established services like Spotify and also finally move with the times in music. iTunes sales are falling and streaming seems to be the future.
But as the introduction of the new Beats Music service, which is expected to undergo a complete rebranding including a new name, is approaching, voices are appearing about unfair conditions at Apple. For example, Spotify doesn't like how subscriptions work in the App Store. Even before that, there were also reports that Apple wanted to work with the biggest publishers ensure, so that completely free versions, which now work thanks to ads, disappear from the streaming industry.
For Apple, the cancellation of free streaming would significantly simplify the path to a new market, since its service will most likely be paid only and will build on exclusive content. Apple does too tried to negotiate, to make his service slightly cheaper than the competition, but that's up to him they don't want to allow publishers. However, even if Apple's new service costs the same per month as, say, Spotify, Apple will have a competitive advantage.
This lies in the policy that is set in the App Store for the subscription. When you subscribe to Spotify on the web, you pay $10 for a month of unlimited streaming. But if you would like to subscribe to the service directly in the application in iOS, you will encounter a price three dollars higher. The higher price is due to the fact that Apple also takes a flat fee of 30% from each subscription, so Spotify receives almost four dollars for each subscriber, while the Swedish company does not even get its $10 from the website. And the customer is worst off in the finale.
In this regard, Apple has taken care of everything in its App Store rules, even in such a way that Spotify cannot refer to an external mechanism for paying for a subscription in the application. Apple would reject such an application.
"They're controlling iOS and getting a price advantage," he said pros The Verge unnamed source from the music scene. Neither the publisher nor the artist will get that 30 percent, but Apple. This way, on the one hand, he profits from the competing service and on the other hand strengthens the position of his upcoming service, which will probably cost the most, just like Spotify, unless Apple manages to negotiate even more aggressive prices.
Spotify is no wonder. Even though the service currently has 60 million users and Apple is a long-delayed entry into the music streaming space, it's still a big enough player that the competition has to be on the lookout.
For Spotify, the free version of its service is reportedly not something it could not function without, and if the publishing houses, together with Apple, pressured it to cancel ad-laden streaming, for which the user does not pay anything, then it will only switch to a paid model. But at the moment in Sweden, they definitely don't want to give up, because the free version is the catalyst for the paid service.
The entire situation surrounding Apple's emerging service is also being monitored by the US Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission, who are investigating whether Apple is using its position to the detriment of the competition.
According to the latest reports, Apple has still not been able to sign contracts with all record companies, and it is possible that the same scenario as in 2013 before the launch of iTunes Radio will be repeated. Back then, Apple signed the last necessary contracts just a week before the service was introduced, and iTunes Radio finally reached users three months later. Now there is speculation that Apple will indeed show off the new music service in a month during WWDC, but the question is when it will reach the general public.
Well, it's a well-known fact that Apple tries to suppress any freedom of choice. This makes the business unsympathetic to me.