Inside Spotify's Plan to Take on Apple Music | Hacker News Reader

Inside Spotify's Plan to Take on Apple Music

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32 pointsdanso50 comments

I've been pleasantly surprised at my Discover Weekly picks, the existence of which was pointed out to me by my 12 yr old daughter. Now I'll have to look at the Fresh Finds playlist to see if I can find new bands that tickle my fancy. The continual stream of new playlists is one of the main reasons why I have no plans to switch from Spotify to a competitor.

For instance, Feelin' Good [1] has been my commute playlist this week. It's gems like these that make Spotify so useful for me and well worth the $20/mo for a Family plan.

[1] https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/1B9o7mER9kfxb...

Completely agree. I think Spotify's biggest value-add is curated playlists -- I love that I have the ability to listen like Pandora radio if I want to be passive, but otherwise I can have fully-granular control over which songs I want to listen to without having to skip through a playlist.

I've also been impressed with the Discover Weekly playlist and am happy when I get to tell another Spotify user about it.

One thing that has surprised me recently is how many of my friends share accounts. I know at least one couple who shares an account and another pair of friends who do. My wife and I have our own accounts as I'm constantly using mine and sharing is simply not an option. Features like Discover Weekly make sharing less attractive and that's gotta be good for them.

Can Spotify plan on making local file synching not suck anymore? Over the course of a year they removed every common sense feature that made adding local files convenient, from drag-and-drop to simple filtering. Given that I discover most music through Plug.dj, and that most of those tracks are remixes unlisted on Spotify, the only thing going for them is the audio defaults to a louder volume. Once I can find a decent script to transfer my playlists, I'm not looking back.

Agreed. This year they even removed the ability to search among local files (!). Previously, you could at least go to the "Local Files" view and hit cmd-F (Filter). Filter now only works for playlists. The app search field doesn't match local files, of course.

It's an incredible oversight in an app which, by definition, has only a subset of the world's music; they are practically asking people to use iTunes to supplement their streaming selection.

iTunes has both local files and streaming, they really need to compete on that level. Fortunately for Spotify, Apple has made the Music UI as bad as the rest of iTunes; if Music had as good a UI as Spotify I would switch, easily.

I'm surprised that the text "Beats 1" doesn't appear once in the article or in here. I think that Beats 1 (and the inevitable Beats 2, etc.) is, by far, the crown jewel of Apple Music, and should be what Spotify is focusing on. This morning, for instance, I got to hear Zane Lowe interviewing Dr Dre about his first album in 16 years. Fresh Finds, even if it had the new Dre album, still wouldn't offer up what Beats 1 gives me.

Were I in charge of Spotify, I would've taken the $100mm spent on Echo Nest and bought Pitchfork instead, along with hiring every music critic I could find. Forget Fresh Finds; give me Robert Christgau's top picks of the week and a 24/7 radio station anchored by Pitchfork's podcast people.

Beats 1 is outstanding IMHO and actually the main reason I cancelled my Spotify subscription.

Dre/Iovine's connections are certainly helping here (some very impressive interviews and guest DJs) and the fact you have London, LA and New York perspectives means you have can keep in touch with the latest music trends from the places most of them start. As well as save songs from their playlists directly into your own.

If they expand it to places like Berlin, Seoul, Melbourne, Ibiza etc. it's going to be damn compelling.

Honestly the only thing Spotify (or any other music streaming service) has to do to compete is just be slightly cheaper. Each major streaming service is pretty much the same and doesn't foster a lot of loyalty. If Apple Music is $9.00 tomorrow, I'm switching.

Features like "Fresh Finds" are pretty shallow and will neither entice new users or keep existing ones around. Too much emphasis has been placed on generating playlists which are never that interesting.

None of the major streaming services get social right, a feature that would greatly enhance the music streaming experience and get users to stick around. The only one that comes close is Soundcloud, and while yes it's not a subscription streamer like Spotify, it has a good community around music.

I feel like it’s going to be hard for a company like Spotify to compete on price. Their margins are already thin from what I hear, and they don’t have a hugely profitable hardware business to subsidize their service.

Is it really worth even 5 minutes of your time for $1-$5 a month?

$12-$60 a year, every year, is worth 5 minutes yes.

Spotify is bundled with mobile phone contracts in the UK - my wife won't even try the Apple Music free trial because it's another UI she has to learn and Spotify is free with her contract. I think that sentence summarises my view of Apple's chances in the market: so long as they (Spotify and others) are slightly cheaper than Apple Music and are friendly with people like the big telcos, I don't see Apple Music adding much more than better branding and higher prices.

Apple Music has a few things going for it.

1. It is integrated with the Music app. So you can have your existing and Apple Music in the same place. And of course it can be accessed via Siri, Apple Watch etc.

2. The UI is excellent compared to Spotify which is still dreadful after all this time.

3. Beats 1 definitely brings something new. Especially since they are so well connected in the music scene. And of course with Dr Dre being on board you are routinely seeing exclusives not just from him but other people or Iovine know e.g. Compton the Soundtrack.

>2. The UI is excellent compared to Spotify which is still dreadful after all this time.

This was the case in ios a couple years ago but not any longer. I'd argue the UI/UX is much better. It's so easy to queue something up I just swipe the song to the left and if I want to save the song, do left swipe. The only thing with Spotify is you can get buried in menus and have to keep clicking back.

Spotify need to work on an easier way to create and edit playlists - better search within the playlist and an easier UI would be a massive improvement.

Interesting that you mention the Music app in point (1). I understand the argument that having it all in one place and integrated throughout the OS is a benefit. But, I actually think the Music app is way too complicated for the average user. It took me a while to work out what was going on. I also disagree with your point (2) as I think Spotify is pretty simple to understand and use.

Well I am not so arrogant as to speak for users around the world. But they have signed up 11 million in a few weeks so clearly it isn't too much of an impediment.

Spotify is an easy app to use but it has inconsistencies all over the place. Especially when you are saving offline content and the interplay between starred, playlists, and songs/albums.

11 million free trials pushed through the first page of the App Store and Apple website. Time will tell.

Funny as I have the same problems with Apple music - it randomly deletes my songs and portions of playlists.

Apple really need to focus their apps (and they should start with iTunes first).

I love Spotify, but I am constantly hopping between them and Pandora whenever I want to use radio. Spotify's radio is terrible. It is about as good as a traditional radio where they repeat the same 10 songs every hour. Hopefully they can leverage some of this tech into improving the radio as well.

Completely agree about Spotify radio. It sucks enough (repeats primarily) that I haven't used it in a long time. Fixing it to work more like Pandora would be awesome.

I'm in such a huge bubble with Spotify. Everytime I use radio I get the same bands and songs. I feel like I can't get it to ever play anything new.

Yeah it's impossible. There's a band that consistently comes on one of my stations even though I have given it a thumbs down at least a dozen times. Pandora definitely wins as far as radio goes, but when I want to hear a specific song Spotify is awesome. However I also noticed that quite a few albums have migrated to Apple Music from bands that I frequently listen to which is a bummer. Then again that's what youtube is for :)

I've been using Apple Music since it launched here in the UK. I recall cancelling my Spotify subscription the same day and promptly signed up for my 3 month free trial to Apple Music.

Whilst there is nothing I particularly dislike about Spotify, I found it's 'Offline Mode' particularly clunky.

When I play a song on Apple Music that I have in a playlist or album, I can replay tracks without the need for a persistent 3G/4G/WiFi connection. Whilst you can do this in Spotify, I understand you have to manually click a button to enable offline playback.

Furthermore, Apple Music will shows me which tracks are cached for offline playback, since those which are not are greyed out and un-clickable, whereas I don't recall seeing anything like it in Spotify. This feature is particularly useful on the tube (London Underground for people in the USA/Europe/Rest of World) where you have intermittent WiFi at stations (in fact, by the time your phone has connected to the access point on the platform the train is already pulling out of the station - so you've got to be fast!).

However, I feel like Apple could have done better with the Apple Music experience on iPhone and iPad. For example, what is the 'For You' tab all about? Just some bouncing spheres with labels of different genres? I quite like the 'New' tab since I can quickly find popular music, but it feels too much like the iTunes Store, where you click-to-buy.

Yet, I really like the artwork they've set up for artists, and I think the player is excellent. I can't say I use 'Connect' that much, but it is an incredibly convenient way to follow artists you like and, if you're lucky, hear some B-sides that didn't make it onto the album.

I haven't yet decided whether I'm going to continue my trial with Apple Music or go back to Spotify. I just want a solid music streaming service that will 1. let me listen to the artists I love and 2. help me find other artists who I will love. I feel like neither of the two fully satisfy those requirements just yet.

Edit: I forgot to talk about Beats 1. I'm really enjoying listening to Zane Low on Beats 1 radio after his move from Radio 1.

The "For You" tab is one that took a while to understand but actually one of their best features.

It's actually human curated playlists based on the artists you have already listened to or liked. It's definitely a point of difference between Apple Music and the other streaming services.

I would say the same about Spotify's Browse tab, and the Genre&Mood sections and the Discover sections.

All human curated and constantly updated playlists, nothing in other services compares, although I cannot use Apple Music since it is walled-garden only.

I think you misunderstand. "For You" is human curated but personalised for you. It will for example show an artist retrospective if I like a similar artist or a playlist that overlaps two genres I listen to frequently. I like Spotify's playlists but these are a step above.

And Apple Music is coming to Android/Windows so it won't be a walled garden for too much longer.

I must be admit I've never got past the start screen with the floating circles of genres: '80s', 'Indie', 'Rap', etc. I had no idea these led to human curated playlists.

- Spotify has had "offline" labels for many years. Strange that you do not see them, but they are green and very prominent for songs and playlists on both Android and Windows.

You have to trigger offline for Spotify normally, but the alternative is that all music you like is already cached. And, if you want that, in 2014 they did roll out that very feature.

I have FAR MORE music in spotify playlists than would fit on my 64GB android device comfortably, and I don't want more than a few gigs of space on my SSD dedicated to Spotify caching.

Really odd that you couldn't use these features, Spotify rolled them out years ago.

Spotify only lets you play music on ONE device at a time, even if you are on the same ip address. Lame.

I would try iTunes Music but, like a lot of people, I avoid Apple like the plague.

The Grooveshark playlist interface was far superior to Spotify!

Pretty cool idea. I wonder how effective it is at actually filtering which artists will breakout. Also I wonder how this will affect the music discovery process in a meta sense i.e. will 'breakout' playlists like this accelerate the discovery process by turning mainstream attention to under the radar music? Or will it ironically take the music too mainstream too quickly and kill the hype before it has a chance to really take off?

Spotify needs to fix their radio situation. I see their engineering posts about the machine learning algorithms they're using to intelligently recommend songs, yet all I ever hear is about a dozen songs on loop, no matter what the starting seed is for a station.

Apple Music's stations have been great so far, despite the rest of the UX of their app (and iTunes) being absolutely god awful, something Spotify does have a relative leg up on.

> despite the rest of the UX of their app (and iTunes) being absolutely god awful, something Spotify does have a relative leg up on

You are definitely in the minority here. Spotify's UX is regarded as one of the worst around. Slow, clunky and the web/native hybrid approach really doesn't work.

yeah, hence why I said relative leg up on. Spotify is slow on desktop and annoying on mobile and they just don't seem to care. But compared to the mess that is iTunes on desktop and Music on iOS, it's a lot better.

iTunes looks like it is developed by a bunch of isolated teams who aren't allowed to see the other sections of the app while working on their own.

The Grooveshark UI was soo much better!

I've been trying to use Apple Music but for some reason, even on my gig internet, it will take several minutes to start playing a song. By then I've switched back to Spotify and picked a song.. a few minutes after driving down the road Apple Music will kick in and interrupt Spotify with their song.

I'm certainly in the minority, but as much as I have enjoyed using the Apple Music trial, I doubt I'll stick around when it's over because unlike Spotify and Rdio, I still can't scrobble to Last.fm with Apple Music.

Spotify's strategy should involve bringing back third party apps.

Been with Spotify for about 3 years but the radio shows from Josh Homme and St Vincent are a HUGE reason I'll likely switch when the free trial expires.

I was reading the interview with Jimmy Iovine today and everything he said about curation rang true to me, but when I listen to Radio One, it's too much Top 40 and talking about the music. I love Spotify because it's just the music - just get to it, let me find whatever the curator saw in the music instead of explaining it to me. I get so mad listening to people in a studio talk about music they love or just filling time that could be another song with what is most likely an ad. It's my single biggest gripe with SiriusXM too, but at least I've been really happy with their curation.

Yep, that totally makes sense too - however, the two shows I mentioned are quite different from your typical radio show for the following reasons:

1. For the St Vincent Mixtape Delivery Service, Annie Clark takes one story from a collection sent in by listeners. Its real life stuff such as a roadtrip a persons planning or a major life event they're going through. The tracks suit it and theres a call between Clark and the person who sent in their story. Gah, thats a bad description but trust me when I say its very unique.

2. Josh Homme is Josh Homme - he's funny as fuck and makes great picks. Also had Alex Turner on interviewing too. Basically two of my heroes.

It's all about true music recommendation and discovery systems. These are systems that mimic how your friends my recommend or discover music for you.

The fact Apple Music has 1/3 of the paying customers that Spotify has already shows you the power of distribution. The ability for them to build it into their on boarding flow for all new iphone purchases gives them an amazing edge especially in upcoming markets like China.

I think you misspelled 'amazing edge' it's correctly spelled 'anti-trust case'

At least in the EU ;).

How is that possible? Are people volunteering to pay before the free trial is up?

Apple Music has literally no paying customers yet, as they are all on free trial. I'm sure they will see a considerable churn from current numbers once people start getting charged and canceling.

All of Apple's previously paying Beats customers are in the 3 month free trial. Once that trial ends I'll bet those customers continue paying. I know I will.

When Apple acquired Beats Music, it was "believed to count just 300,000 paying subscribers."[1] That's about 3% of the current total Apple Music subscribers.

[1] http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/12/apples-beats-music...

Yea, those were the reported numbers up to the end of December. I'll bet that their subscriber numbers started going up after that as users joined following Apple's acquisition, I know I did.

Why would Apple acquiring them incite an uptick in subscribers?

To be more precise, Apple Music has a bunch of people on the free trial. The more interesting metric will to see how many of those people convert to active, paying accounts after 3 months.

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