Which type is Spotify? They lost over $500M in 2016 (http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7833686/spotify-2...).

The old Zune Pass was a pretty good deal. Unlimited streaming plus 10 drm-free mp3s a month. MS has actually been in the streaming music business longer than Spotify, when their myriad product lines are taken into account.

That said, they didn't execute well. Zune Music was too dependent on the Zune. Groove had no selling points outside the ms ecosystem.

> MS has actually been in the <X> business longer than <current dominant player>, when their myriad product lines are taken into account.

> That said, they didn't execute well.

Generalizable to most things Microsoft is involved in.

Their business model is largely a shotgun approach: Go for a plethora of services and products then see what sticks.

Their main problem is that conceive the service as value added for the platform, which is basically non existent now except for Xbox.

If they instead spun off a group of engineers and allowed them to create a great streaming service with no restrictions or handcuffs because windows or office or IE or whatever is being pushed this month, and then use the platform as a value added for the service you would get much better result IMHO.

That would mean develop for every mobile OS + windows and osx as a minimum from the start, not as an afterthought. No windows live or whatever it is called now ( linkable if you want), etc. Things Microsoft would never approve.

> MS has actually been in the X business longer than Y, when their myriad product lines are taken into account.

> That said, they didn't execute well.

This has been the story of any number of MS product lines, unfortunately. Handhelds/smart devices, social media, streaming services, etc.

Microsoft is actually really good at recruiting research talent that spots the next trends emerging before they happen and coming up with compelling ideas/prototypes. They then proceed to trip over themselves during execution and while being first to market, being outcompeted by the second wave and coming in with a mediocre offering by the 3rd or 4th wave.

We have this great tech. Now shackle it to windows, IE, windows live accounts or any other myriad of things that nobody uses.

Rhapsody had the same model (not sure if they still do), and their catalog is as good or even larger than the rest. I'm still not sure why it's not considered the top competitor to Spotify.

is Apple Music successful despite this flaw (I assume it is from what I've read so far)?

For me, Apple Music is better because a) the song limit is dramatically higher than Spotify (10k vs 100k) and b) I am free to add my own music (not available via streaming) to the library which is then available on all my devices.

Not sure why you’re being downvoted. The ability to upload your own songs to the cloud is something I so wish Spotify had, it really is great.

It's one of the reasons why I was using Groove. I'm going to keep the app to be able to play these songs.

The song limit is really better in Apple, but you are able to add your own music in Spotify. To listen to it in other devices I had to download it in them.

From what I remember having spotify, the only way to add your own music is to add it to a playlist from your computer, and then sync that playlist locally, so it basically just uses Spotify as a relay for your music on your computer. I'm assuming Apple is like Google Play Music, which lets you add albums and songs to your library that appear the same way as the streaming ones (within your albums/artists/etc) and don't need to be synced locally.

By "locally", you mean "in the same network"; I don't believe you have to connect your device physically to the computer.

That download process is outside of Spotify, right?

With Apple Music, I believe, it's available across all your Apple music supported devices.

It is inside the app. It is the same process that you do to make playlists available offline. I only did that from my laptop to an android phone, I don't know if it works in all clients.

Spotify kind of lets you add your own music, but only to playlists, not to Your Music. I don't get it.

There's no free plan (beyond the trial phase) on Apple Music, so I bet they're making much more money than Spotify.