Apple bought Beats Music to improve its standing in the streaming music marketplace, but the Cupertino company has its work cut out if it wants to compete with high-profile rivals Spotify and Pandora. According to App Annie metrics cited by CNET, Beats Music continues to trail its rivals in two important App Store metrics -- downloads and revenue.

app-annie-music
In the App Annie download rankings, Beats Music places ninth behind other music apps such as Shazam, GarageBand, SoundCloud and iHeartRadio. This lower ranking is undoubtedly affected by service pricing, as Beats Music requires a subscription while both Pandora and Spotify offer free, ad-supported options in their mobile apps.

By revenue, Apple's Beats Music benefits from its subscription model, ranking third behind market leaders Pandora Radio, which grabs the number one spot, and number two Spotify. The revenues measured in these metrics compromise only App Store payments to download the app and in-app purchases which include monthly subscription fees. It does not account for additional sources of revenue, such as advertising which is used extensively by Spotify and Pandora. Still, Beats is showing some improvement according to App Annie's statistics, moving up three spots on the revenue chart.

Apple purchased Beats Music as part of a larger $3 billion acquisition that also included Beats' popular line of audio products. Apple reportedly is planning to overhaul the Beats Music service with a refresh slated to debut early next year. The company allegedly also is in negotiations with music industry executives about slashing the monthly subscription cost, perhaps as much as in half to $5 per month.

Top Rated Comments

bushido Avatar
131 months ago
Can't stand the Beats app. Looks like an android app. They need to integrate in into iTunes

I LOVE spotify though
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
BillyMatt87 Avatar
131 months ago
Apple needs to improve their own default music app before they can even think about improving somebody else's.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Mak47 Avatar
131 months ago
Music is at a crossroads of sorts..

Without a clear and reasonable revenue model, where will we see new creative musical voices coming from?

iTunes has kept things going longer than many anticipated, by giving users a realistic alternative to illegal downloading/sharing.

I'm not sure anyone knows what to do next?
Which may mean the decline of music creation, which was already difficult enough to avoid poverty and obscurity.

The talent and creativity is still out there, but is it valued in the way it once was?

It's definitely not valued like it once was, but there are reasons for that. Labels blame piracy, I blame the labels.

First, they stopped investing in real artists long ago. Since the 80's, major labels have only been interested in momentary one hitters. They can sign them cheap, make a bunch of money and then move on to the next one.

Second, they're so scared of piracy that they've retooled their entire business model to try and lure pirates into paying for music. It's incredibly stupid, totally naive, and doomed from the start. The entire streaming thing is a monster of their own creation and now they're realizing that it's going to eat them.

I say good. Let them be eaten, let the major labels die. Streaming works for small artists. They can refer people to these services to hear their music for free, and then as they build a fan base, can sell them records and other merchandise and attract them to shows. These artists are largely independent and don't care if they make money from streaming, whatever comes in is a bonus.

That's the model, it works, it's been working and it's been growing. There's no room in it for Miley Cyrus, Kesha or the other autotuned flavors of the week--who's fans aren't interested in investing in a physical product like a record--but there's plenty of room for lots of others.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
phairphan Avatar
131 months ago
Ever since I bought a semi-decent pair of headphones* I'm amazed at how horrible the quality is on Pandora. I'll try out Beats at some point but Spotify or iTunes Radio seem like the only viable options for myself right now (outside of purchasing).

*They're not Beats.

If you are looking for high-quality streaming, you may want to check out qobuz.com and tidalhifi.com. Both services offer CD-quality streaming (lossless encoding at 44.1 kHz, 16 bits). I don't know where you live, but Qobuz is not yet available in the US.

Unrelated to any particular service, your new cans may be revealing not only inadequacies in the quality of the stream, but also the dynamic compression employed so rampantly in today's mastering. Regrettably, there is no workaround for this problem. Although, quartering offending mastering engineers might be a good place to start.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
iDuel Avatar
131 months ago
Not too crazy about the Beats Music UI. Plus, it seems that it is targeted at the hip-hop and rap genres which I don't listen to.

I'll stick with Spotify until Apple integrates Beats into iTunes.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TsMkLg068426 Avatar
131 months ago
Looks like Apple bought the wrong company.



You think? Beats is hipster crap Steve Job would never let this ever happen.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

election results 2024 live activities

Track 2024 U.S. Election Results Live on Your iPhone Lock Screen

Tuesday November 5, 2024 5:02 am PST by
Apple News is providing Live Activities support for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, allowing iPhone and iPad users to track electoral results in real time directly from their Lock Screen. The feature is rolling out for U.S. users over the course of Election Day, November 5, providing continuous updates of the electoral count. So if you're interested, you don't need to repeatedly check...
ios 18 2 chatgpt plus

iOS 18.2 Beta 2 Shows Siri ChatGPT Limit, Offers 'Plus' Upgrade Option

Monday November 4, 2024 10:54 am PST by
With the second beta of iOS 18.2 that's available for developers today, Apple has further fleshed out the ChatGPT integration that's available with Siri. In the Settings app, there's now a section that shows the ChatGPT daily limit, and offers an option to upgrade to the paid ChatGPT Plus plan. The beta includes an Advanced Capabilities section with a "Daily Limit" reading that shows up as...
New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18

10 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18.2

Thursday October 31, 2024 9:42 am PDT by
Apple is set to release iOS 18.2 in December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. There are a handful of new non-AI related feature controls incoming as well. ...
Generic iOS 18

Everything New in iOS 18.2 Beta 2

Monday November 4, 2024 12:34 pm PST by
Apple today seeded the second betas of upcoming iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 updates to developers, and Apple is continuing to refine the Apple Intelligence capabilities. There are also a handful of smaller features that are worth knowing about. Find My Find My has a new option to Share Item Location with an "airline or trusted person" that can help you locate something that you've misplaced....
best early black friday deals

The Best Early Black Friday Apple Deals

Friday November 1, 2024 8:21 am PDT by
We're officially in the month of Black Friday, which will take place on Friday, November 29 in 2024. As always, this will be the best time of the year to shop for great deals, including popular Apple products like AirPods, iPad, Apple Watch, and more. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment,...
M4 M4 Pro vs M4 Max Feature

When to Expect New M4 MacBook Air, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro Models

Monday November 4, 2024 2:36 am PST by
Apple's fall 2024 Mac announcements have included new iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro models, all of which debuted with variants of Apple's M4 chip. Apple intends to update the rest of its Mac lineup with M4 series processors over the next 12 months, which will make it the first time that Apple has used the same chip generation across all of its Macs. This means we can expect new M4...
M4 Pro on Blue

M4 Pro Chip Benchmark Results Reveal an Extremely Impressive Performance Feat

Thursday October 31, 2024 7:06 pm PDT by
The first Geekbench 6 benchmark results for the M4 Pro chip surfaced today. Impressively, the results that are available so far show that the highest-end M4 Pro chip is faster than the highest-end M2 Ultra chip in terms of peak multi-core CPU performance. Here is a comparison of the results: Mac mini with M4 Pro (14-core CPU): 22,094 multi-core score (average of 11 results) Mac Studio...