There is one big difference: Apple Music will be available in my country.
Apple's ability to launch 100 countries (as stated in WWDC) within a year is probably their biggest strong point. Combine that with the three months free usage, I'm more than sure all my non-tech friends will at least be trying it out once it is available.
I have had accounts on at least a dozen different streaming/download services, but the place I go back to time and time again is YouTube. Not only does it have the "official" music but also live recordings and endless amateur stuff. I have offline media, but I only really use it when I have to suffer extended time without internet.
That's a bold claim. Are there any sources on this?
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/11/apple-maps...
"But a year on, a total of 35m iPhone owners in the US used Apple's maps during September 2013, according to ComScore, compared to a total of 58.7m Google Maps users across the iPhone and Android base.
Of those, about 6m used Google Maps on the iPhone, according to calculations by the Guardian based on figures from ComScore. That includes 2m iPhone users who have not or cannot upgrade to iOS 6, according to data from MixPanel."
Now, that's comScore data and since I've worked in that industry and I can tell you that the data is sampled and therefore could be off by a factor - but that, combined with what Apple said at WWDC makes it more likely that Apple's data is right.
It is the advantage of being the integrated application in the operating system.
There is no way to make Google Maps/or any other application the default one on iOS and any map link goes to Apple Maps
14.99/6 would be $2.5 per month for a single person.
Spotify has something similar up to four people, but it won't even come remotely close to the same pricing.
Pricing is not identical for groups.
Out of genuine curiosity, any source for that? Do you mean crushes Google Maps on Apple phones? Or overall?
1 + 3.5 = 4.5
1 / 4.5 = 22.2%
It's WWDC, its the keynote, its full with outrageous statistics like the many performance claims.
Anecdotal, I've heard no excitement from any of my normal Apple-obsessed friends about using the new service. I find streaming music apps to more sticky than I had anticipated - people have their playlists/history - and they don't want to lose this. My wife was a user of MOG (one of the few), then of Beats post-purchase. She hates the Beats interface/app, but she will not change to another service. Spotify has another important sticky factor - the desktop app - which allows you to play back both what is on your hard drive with the streaming music.
This is not to say Spotify isn't doomed long term - they have, in my opinion, a fairly unsustainable business model that continues to exist only because of VC funding. They need to create a more multi-stream business - just working with the labels will put them into the ground. My guess is that they continue to evolve into a more complete media platform, and that they sign artists directly to get to a real margin.
But to say that Apple will crush them reminds me of the whole Netflix/Blockbuster comparison. Now Blockbuster was no Apple - but everyone thought that they, as the incumbent, would crush Netflix. That didn't happen - because Netflix was there first and Blockbuster launched a very me-too competitor. Spotify is also focused on winning this - it's all they have - whereas Apple Music is a tiny part of Apple as a whole.
Now, this could also play out like Google Maps - I believe Apple Maps now crushes GM in terms of usage - so Spotify will likely have trouble going forward if Apple Music is installed by default on every handset.