Spotify vs Apple Music: The Battle for Streaming Music Dominance

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Spotify vs Apple Music

We all know that Spotify is the most popular audio streaming service in the world.

In fact, even during the pandemic, Spotify’s stock price increased by 70 percent. On the surface, Apple Music has only 72 million users, according to the stats. Spotify has over 345 million users, far outnumbering the rest of the competitors. Furthermore, its recommendations and playlist have been so fantastic that you’ll agree that it has consistently provided you with an excellent experience. But, fellas, you know what? Fortunately or unfortunately, Spotify is in serious danger in 2021. On the one hand, the company’s losses have been fast increasing. On the other hand, with the arrival of the behemoths in the streaming industry, Spotify has officially entered a business war, and we are watching one of the most fascinating Internet business fights in history. You’ll be able to discover some fantastic business principles that you can apply to your startup if you pay close attention. Most essential, whether you’re investing in US equities as an investor.

Spotify vs Apple Music battle origins:

Spotify vs apple music - person using a smartphone
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This streaming fight will be extremely important. The question is, what is this business conflict, and, more significantly, what business lessons can you take from this landmark case study as an entrepreneur?

People, the worldwide music streaming revolution started in the 1990s. CDs were the ultimate instrument of the music industry back then, from 1984 to 1999. Every year, the music CD distribution channels brought in billions of dollars for record companies and singers.

However, in the 1990s, the Internet and computer revolutions accelerated, leading in widespread use of computers and the internet in American households. People, if you perceive this as a fine completion of technology and connectivity, and if you pay close attention every time this golden combination occurs, you will notice that a new generation of companies emerges.

It was the company called Napster, which was founded in 1999 by **Shawn Fanning** and **Sean Parker** in the music industry. Simply put, Napster was a music torrent where instead of paying $20 for a CD, you could download an MP3 file for free and share it with your pals. And guess what? Because what came next was the first wave of music streaming, this invention was a disruption in the making.

This wave not only transformed the way people listen to music, but it also changed the music industry as a whole. Napster had 4 million song downloads in a few months and 20 million users in less than a year.

People initially assumed it wasn’t a huge deal. However, Napster’s popularity grew over time, reaching 60 million users by 2001. And it was at this point that record labels began to notice that their stores were losing money, and when they did the math, they discovered that they were losing more than $100 million as a result of Napster, a nd that’s when everything started going downhill for Napster.

They were hit with a slew of litigation, resulting in the landmark case that forced Napster to pay millions of dollars to artists, creators, and record label firms, eventually forcing them to shut down their operations.

While most people believed that piracy would be eradicated and CDs would be reintroduced, this is no longer the case.
As it turned out, Napster exited the market, but society’s behavioural design had been so profoundly disrupted that individuals simply did not return to CDs.  CD retailers were still shutting, and other piracy websites had taken Napster’s place.

People simply wouldn’t pay $20 for an album, and companies were still losing millions of dollars.  And it was at this point that record companies desperately sought an alternative to get their distribution channels back on track.

As all of this was going on, one man saw it and decided to take advantage of the situation.So this man was none other than the iconic Steve Jobs, whose idea was to provide people with ultra-cheap music while also providing record labels with a non-piratable distribution route for their music. T d the iPod, of course, was the solution, and the rest is history.

HOWEVER Over here, there were two significant issues.  For starters, not everyone had an iPod or a Macbook, and not everyone could afford to pay for each music, but everyone had computers and access to the Internet.

So, what’s this? This convergence of technology and connectivity spawned a new generation of businesses, the most successful of which turned out to be none other than Spotify, which began operations in 2006.

Spotify took note of its customers’ complaints and decided to create a music streaming platform that anyone could use for free. This is where Spotify deploys its freemium model with a subscription option, but it wasn’t easy because they knew what happened to Napster and the subscription model was far more complicated than iTunes’ discrete model.

Because when it comes to CDs or iTunes, if you buy a $1 album from iTunes, it’s quite straightforward. 80% of that goes to record labels, 20% to mediator fees, and that’s all there is to it.


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