From outward appearances Apple Music may look very much similar to the existing music streaming offerings. However, it has an edge over competition such as Spotify, YouTube and others.
Most importantly Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has a massive reservoir of billions of dollars in cash to carry out an effective, powerful and pervasive marketing campaign. Its competitors cannot match its financial muscle or the strong global brand of Apple.
According to some analysts, Apple’s music service is derived from the best aspects of its rivals. As a late entrant, it has learned from the mistakes of the pioneers. As opposed to its competitors Apple is solely responsible for developing the software running the iPhone handing it an advantage in the promotion of its products and services. Hundreds of millions of Apple aficionados are already existing customers of the iTunes store. Apple Music’s Connect feature lets users be updated with their favorite artists and doubles up as a two-way communication channel.
Industry experts are of the view that Apple has figured out the pitfalls in the contemporary music streaming models and will be able to offer solutions that could circumvent those problems. One area where Apple could score over its competitors is persuading customers to pay for music streaming by offering expert curated content. Another standout Apple Music feature is Siri integration leveraging which users can simply give voice commands to search for or to play specific songs.
There already exist a huge number of Apple device owners who have an advantage in switching to Apple Music with their credit card data already present on their gadgets. There are a staggering 800 million iTune accounts ready. If even a minor percentage signs up for Apple’s paid service it would be serious competition to the current leader Spotify with a portfolio of 15 million paying subscribers.
It is quite obvious that Apple is strategically positioning Apple Music to overtake Spotify and other competitors on its way up to the music streaming industry’s numero uno status.
Sources: Forbes.com, techtimes.com
