Ping was a complete failure but apart from that, what else? iTunes was their only other attempt in the "war" and it absolutely dominated.

Regarding reach, inventory and ecosystem - I think Spotify should be very worried by Apple. The iTunes library is one of the biggest and it seems that most of it is available for streaming. Apple Music will be coming preinstalled on all iOS devices (with three months of the service for free) and, to top it all off, it'll be available on Android too. I'd be very concerned if I were Spotify.

What's more, iOS users tend to be some of the more valuable customers, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a higher portion of Spotify Premium subscribers on iOS than other platforms. I suspect that Spotify Premium memberships will take a big hit after it launches. I know I'll be leaving for it.

To me, Spotify is a perfect example of the power of a good UI (or rather, how damaging a poor UI can be). I have subscribed to Spotify since pretty much the beginning - for years and years - and yet I am completely disloyal to them. I can't think of any other company, besides utility companies and such, where I haven't become somewhat fond of them having been a customer for so long. I can't stand Spotify. Whilst the service is great, the UI is awful and the apps are slow, don't feel native and are annoying to use. That's why, having only seen screenshots of Apple Music, I know I'll be switching to it from day one. A good user interface is king.

(In case anyone brings it up, I've tried many competitors to Spotify, including Rdio, and haven't been able to find anything better. Rdio looked promising but their Mac app is actually even worse.)

MOG was actually pretty fantastic until Beats made them totally re-engineer and add their idiotic "I am riding a Moose at a Roller derby and feeling childish" mad libd garbage. Now that Apple's gonna run that shop and probably toss out 90% of the ultra goofy garbage (playlists and favored artists were heavily de-emphasized), maybe I'll switch back.

Hadn't heard of MOG, although I had heard of Beats Music, but unfortunately neither were available in the UK.

I see a lot of hate for the Spotify UI and on desktop & web I think it's kinda justified just because they've flip & flopped so much and remove/added/changed features constantly.

The Iphone & Ipad client I actually think is pretty well designed and I'm not sure where the hate is coming from, would be interesting if you could go into more detail

Best example I have is the whole navigation structure (this is on iPhone). Let's say you were listening to a playlist and then you went into an artist, maybe a related artist from there and played a song (basically, you've gone pretty deep). You now decide to search for a song and play that. In order to do that, you need to hit the back button repeatedly until the hamburger icon appears. Then, you can search and listen to the track you wanted. If you want to return to where you were previously, you need to hit the back button repeatedly until you get the hamburger, then redo every step you took to get there.

How is this fixable? Really easily! It's built-in! There's a UITabBarController that is used in many apps, such as iTunes, for this exact purpose. You can switch between sections of an app without losing your place in each section.

Ah that's a good point, thanks! Consistent navigation is the crux of many apps. Though with the phone version i find 99% of my use is either listening to my playlists or searching & placing specific song, so I seldom hit all those use cases that I do on the desktop version. I can imagine it being quite poor at those edge cases however.

Try making a playlist on the iPhone app with 15 songs. Maybe you mistakenly added two songs — try deleting those.

Just try it. You'll understand.

I don't know on iOS, but in the Android app is fairly evident and easy

> iTunes was their only other attempt in the "war" and it absolutely dominated.

iTunes appeared when there was nothing, there was no "war" in that time