EU Inquiry Finds No Evidence Apple Colluded With Record Labels to End Freemium Music

Nice try Spotify at spreading these false rumors

I will admit, the lack of a free tier is a bummer. I only use streaming services a few hours a week for discovery. Certainly not enough to pay $120 a year for. At least iTunes Radio is still free.

Spotify have been lobbying hard, hoping a repeat of the ebook case. The thing is, no amount of government involvement will be able to stop the growth Apple Music will gain at their expense. Although spotify won't say which platform most of their paying users are on, it's easy for anyone to tell. You simply have to compare the two main platforms when it comes to paid apps. iOS holds a 70/30 split for paid apps vs android for paid apps. With that in mind, one can more or less conclude most of spotify paying customers are for the most part, Apple customers.

If that is the case, then spotify is in a much different position then I though just a few months ago. If we learned anything from the Apple maps fiasco is that, as bad as that launch was, it was bad. Some 2+ years later, over 75% of iOS users are using Apple maps over the much better Google provided maps apps. This is happening for one simple reason, "power of the default." If this can happen to a much better product (Google maps), I can confidently say Apple will be able to convert a lot of spotify paying users on their platform.

With competition like this from Apple and all the bad music label contracts, I don't see how spotify can ever hope to be profitable. Unless of course a facebook or someone else with deep pocket come to the rescue.

Google map is in fact, not that much better; that's why default and tight inegration is important. If you're close enough, people are lazy and won't go the extra mile to find slightly better on some aspects while having worse overall integration with the rest of the platform. Google can't offer tight integration and convenience, so they lose.

If Apple is able to put enough resource into spotlight that it becomes in fact the search engine for IOS, then Google will be in deep trouble.

In the case of Apple, after IOS 9.0 comes out and street level mapping comes out, Apple map and Google will be essentially on par with Google having a slight advantage in POI because of their search integration. That's far from enough to get most IOS user to use Google Map.

I will admit, the lack of a free tier is a bummer. I only use streaming services a few hours a week for discovery. Certainly not enough to pay $120 a year for. At least iTunes Radio is still free.

I don't listen to enough music to justify paying for a subscription service either (much less than a few hours a week). I have plenty of music on my phone and that does it for me.

Spotify have been lobbying hard, hoping a repeat of the ebook case. The thing is, no amount of government involvement will be able to stop the growth Apple Music will gain at their expense. Although spotify won't say which platform most of their paying users are on, it's easy for anyone to tell. You simply have to compare the two main platforms when it comes to paid apps. iOS holds a 70/30 split for paid apps vs android for paid apps. With that in mind, one can more or less conclude most of spotify paying customers are for the most part, Apple customers.

If that is the case, then spotify is in a much different position then I though just a few months ago. If we learned anything from the Apple maps fiasco is that, as bad as that launch was, it was bad. Some 2+ years later, over 75% of iOS users are using Apple maps over the much better Google provided maps apps. This is happening for one simple reason, "power of the default." If this can happen to a much better product (Google maps), I can confidently say Apple will be able to convert a lot of spotify paying users on their platform.

With competition like this from Apple and all the bad music label contracts, I don't see how spotify can ever hope to be profitable. Unless of course a facebook or someone else with deep pocket come to the rescue.

Spotify have been lobbying hard, hoping a repeat of the ebook case. The thing is, no amount of government involvement will be able to stop the growth Apple Music will gain at their expense. Although spotify won't say which platform most of their paying users are on, it's easy for anyone to tell. You simply have to compare the two main platforms when it comes to paid apps. iOS holds a 70/30 split for paid apps vs android for paid apps. With that in mind, one can more or less conclude most of spotify paying customers are for the most part, Apple customers.

If that is the case, then spotify is in a much different position then I though just a few months ago. If we learned anything from the Apple maps fiasco is that, as bad as that launch was, it was bad. Some 2+ years later, over 75% of iOS users are using Apple maps over the much better Google provided maps apps. This is happening for one simple reason, "power of the default." If this can happen to a much better product (Google maps), I can confidently say Apple will be able to convert a lot of spotify paying users on their platform.

With competition like this from Apple and all the bad music label contracts, I don't see how spotify can ever hope to be profitable. Unless of course a facebook or someone else with deep pocket come to the rescue.

I dont know whether Apple maps issue is as simple as you say. Apple maps from my view is a much better program, smoother, easier to use, better looking. However in my country its core mapping (basically place names and points of interest) is not as good as Google, and there is no public transport data in Apple (in Japan, that's a huge issue as almost everyone uses trains to get around). If the core mapping was good enough in Apple, I would abandon google maps instantly as Apple maps is a better program. So I'm sure the people using Apple maps aren't just doing it because of the power of default. Maybe it works for them.

Daniel Ek never intended Spotify to become profitable. His business model was always to grab as many users as possible to justify a massive IPO in Wall Street, then take the money and run. But his chance at an IPO seems more and more unlikely now...

yup. 100%

I think Spotify would like to sell up (being that a strong IPO is now unlikely). The problem is they've taken so much VC money that it kind of makes them too costly for even companies like Facebook and Google. At the end of the day the big boys are into buying customers not profitable companies (hence instagram and whatsapp). Customers have information and they can use that to pitch to advertisers. 300m regular users is more interesting than 70m free loaders. No one really cares about the listening habits of those 70m. You can't sell that info to an ad company.

The whole Spotify thing has been a race against time. How quickly could they create an environment where you need to stream to actually make money out of music? I think they were nearly there (Warners claimed that over 50% of their revenue came from streaming last year) but Apple came from nowhere and bought Beats. Game over.

Apple did it sure up their music business against the threat of streaming from Spotify. I think Spotify must have thought it would be too hard for apple to negotiate streaming contracts and build up a decent music player in under a couple of years. But Apple just solved the problem by paying $3b for a company that already had those deals in place. Now I think that (sadly, because i like spotify and its interface is better) Spotify are kind of left with a dying product.

The lesson really is that content is expensive. I think it's true to say that in 2015 its impossible to earn profits distributing content you do not own. Period. Unless you have some other motive (selling devices, harvesting customer data for ad's etc...) it just can't be done.

"Apple's App Store policies are also currently being looked at by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission ('https://www.macrumors.com/2015/07/11/ftc-app-store-rules/'), due to the 30 percent fee the company collects on app and subscription revenue. The FTC is concerned that Apple's fee and its policies, such as a ban on links to outside stores, are illegal under antitrust law."

Once again Apple gets singled out. Amazon, and others, have policies that are definitely close to being anticompetitive. The FTC & EU gets a hardon anytime there's a hint of a complaint about Apple.

After the iBook case, I don't think  would want to collude again, especially when all eyes are on them

I sense that the EU likes to randomly boss around U.S. corporations. Remember this BS ('https://www.macrumors.com/2013/01/31/apple-to-halt-mac-pro-sales-in-europe-effective-march-1-over-regulatory-requirements/')?

No, it's their duty to investigate. It has nothing to do with the origin of the company. And afaik Apple's HQ for europe is in Ireland.