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Spotify, Rdio, & Pandora offer mixed reactions to Apple Music announcement

Apple Music was introduced yesterday at WWDC and has since prompted reactions from many other streaming music companies. When Apple enters a new market, it always shakes things up enough to warrant some concerns from its competitors and Apple Music is no different. Rdio, Spotify, and Pandora have each responded to the Apple Music announcement in their own way:

Spotify has yet to address Apple Music as a company, but CEO Daniel Ek posted a cryptic tweet while Tim Cook and Jimmy Iovine were on stage introducing the streaming music platform. Since deleted, Ek tweeted “Oh ok,” seemingly in response to Apple Music and some of the claims Apple made regarding its competitors. Ek deleted the tweet quickly after posting it. Spotify has not yet commented on the announcement of Apple Music, but Ek has been dismissive of the threat of Apple’s competition in the past.

Rdio has also responded to Apple Music, but in a more formal manner than Spotify. The company tweeted an image welcoming Apple to the streaming music industry. The image is strikingly similar to the same one that Apple shared when IBM entered the personal computer market back in 1981. Here’s what Rdio had to say regarding Apple’s entry into the streaming music space:

Welcome, Apple. Seriously.

Welcome to the most exciting and important frontier since the digital music revolution began 16 years ago.

We look forward to responsible competition in the massive effort to make music available legally for anyone to enjoy anytime, anywhere.

Because what we are doing is increasing the value of music by enhancing each individual’s experience with music they love.

Welcome to the task.

Finally, Pandora Radio also commented on Apple Music. The company’s CFO Mike Herring gave an interview with CNBC in which he noted that he still feels confident in Pandora’s role as a market leader because of its competitive drive and monetization. Herring noted that Apple Music shows the strong and growing market for streaming music and that he still expects Pandora to continue to grow and thrive. He also pointed out that the “lean back” radio service that Pandora offers is hard to replicate and that Pandora has been perfecting its algorithms for more than 15 years.

Apple Music is slated to launch on June 30th as part of iOS 8.4. While all three of these music competitors seem confident in their abilities to withstand Apple Music, the effects remain to be seen.

Rhapsody also addressed Apple Music, noting that it looks “strikingly familiar” to what’s already available. Ethan Rudin, Rhapsody CFO:

“It’s flattering to watch new competitors bring a product virtually identical to the one we’ve had in market for years. We know better than to underestimate Apple, but what we saw today looks strikingly familiar. Rhapsody built the first subscription music service in 2002 and we have continued to innovate since. Apple will help raise awareness of streaming music, but we are confident music lovers will value the simplicity of our music-first platform.”

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Comments

  1. PMZanetti - 9 years ago

    Neither of these 3 will be solvent businesses in 12 months if Apple can figure how to market this product. You have to get into the brain of the completely oblivious consumer that thinks Pandora = music.

  2. Well having tried all 3 of these extensively I settled on RDIO as its the best of both (pandora and Spotify) worlds. I highly doubt Apple music will win me over but I’ll give it a try.

  3. James Alexander - 9 years ago

    I gave up on Pandora and all other services since iTunes radio. I cannot wait for the new service to come online.

  4. TfT_02 - 9 years ago

    What a bunch of idiots. Never underestimate Apple, history should’ve taught you that – multiple times.
    I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple will quickly grow with it’s music service and become the industry leader.

    • baronvonrhett - 9 years ago

      Oh you mean like when Apple almost died back in the 90’s and had to ask Microsoft to save it?

      • rnc - 9 years ago

        Microsoft was sued by Apple, and was going to lose, because MS copied QuickTime.

      • babywrinkels - 9 years ago

        Huh, actually I think @TfT_02 (and I) were thinking of iTunes coming along and revolutionizing the music industry (fact, not opinion). And later the iPod revolutionizing the digital music player marketplace (again fact, not opinion). And then revolutionizing the cell phone with the iPhone. And the Tablet with the iPad.

        Virtually every time Apple has pushed something this big in the past 15 years, it’s had a tremendous impact on the industry it enters. Yes, they’ve had a few missteps, but I’m having a hard time remembering a flop – when they’ve entered a new market altogether, not individual products inside a market they’re already in.

      • WaveMedia (@WaveMedia) - 9 years ago

        If you think $150million saved a company spending 4 times that a month on overheads you’re extremely delusional. They just spent $400million buying NeXT and had well over a billion in cash. They weren’t in great shape, but they were certainly not saved by a measly $150million.

        Microsoft were in major shit at the time too. They were just about to get dragged through the courts for their anti-competitive practices. They were also found to be infringing on a number of Apple’s patents and had copied lines of verbatim from QuickTime into their media player software (which resulted in a much better performing media player for Windows. Until they had to remove it then it went back to sucking again).

        Apple could have had Microsoft split into two companies very easily. They had more than enough dirt on them to destroy their business as it was. They instead decided to act like adults and help each other. Apple agreed to a cross licensing patent deal and Microsoft agreed to invest $150million in Apple stock to show public confidence in the company and develop Office for the Mac for the next 5 years.

        By the way, those shares would have been worth over $25billion now if they help onto them. They sold them all off in 2005 though I believe.

      • Saved by M$? Really? You’re supposed to wait until everyone is dead before re-writing history. You know, like people did with Abraham Lincoln, turning a racist mass murdering authoritarian into a civil libertarian hero.

      • Using M$ to signify Microsoft is so 1990’s AND slightly ironic, considering that you are using it in a derogatory way on a site dedicated to a company who’s pursuit of the almighty dollar far exceeds anything Microsoft has ever done.

      • Robert Nixon - 9 years ago

        No, the Apple who could absorb the kind of losses that Spotify posted last year for a thousand years on just their cash reserves.

      • airmanchairman - 9 years ago

        Microsoft offered to help, not the other way round. Microsoft had deep anti-trust concerns threatening it, and companies like Sun Microsystems and Novell were citing Apple in court as an example of companies adversely affected by Microsoft’s predatory practices. The US DoJ were considering ordering the breakup of M$.

        So you see it was in Microsoft’s interests that Apple survived. And as part of the deal, Internet Explorer became the default Internet browser on the Mac, which finally killed off Netscape as a company, and Navigator as a browser.

        Google “We want you to kill the baby” for other demands Microsoft made (but Apple refused) which would have ensured that the future Apple cash cow that was the iPod would have never made it to the market.

        Halcyon days :-)

    • Marc Fogel (@fogelnet) - 9 years ago

      Ping me when this happens.

  5. aaronblackblog - 9 years ago

    I haven’t seen Amazon mentioned as a competitor in any article on Apple Music yet. Personally, the Amazon Prime streaming service is my favorite. I have an old-school taste for listening to whole albums rather than diverse singles. Apple Prime’s music streaming service allows for just that. And it includes a video streaming service, eBook lending library, and free shipping all for less than most stand-alone streaming music services.

  6. telecastle - 9 years ago

    That Herring is Red.

  7. Let me guess: “I like our strategy, I like it a lot”

  8. dda26f7e - 9 years ago

    For “streaming” none of these four services make me jump for joy. I use Google Play Music with my own purchases. Spotify is alright if I want to check out a new album before buying it, but only on the computer or iPad as on the phone it is a random mess. Pandora is good for Christmas music for me, and Rdio wants money upfront last I tried it, so no go. Like I said, I like to purchase the songs/albums I want and have them on my hard drive and in GPM. Free is a hard price to compete with, yes I know Google is aggregating my info, but they have almost all of it anyway with Gmail.

  9. Jamar Champion - 9 years ago

    I’ve tried all 3 services and Spotify is definitely one of if not the best right now. iTunes match was a complete rip off and why did it take apple this long to get into this game? Because they’d rather sell you a iPhone/iPod with a bigger hard drive to store music you’ve brought from their store? Then when streaming came along no one was buying iPods any more especially since their iPhone’s were technically iPods anyway. Apple prides itself on not worrying about being the first but that pride is looking more and more like Ego. anyone can sit back watch what someone else does then improve on it. Where’s the innovation?

    • WaveMedia (@WaveMedia) - 9 years ago

      iTunes Match wasn’t and still isn’t a streaming service. As the name suggests it’s a MATCHING service. It lets you access the music you already own from your devices so long as you have an internet connection. It let’s you download an iTunes version of the track too if they have it and uploads the rest it doesn’t recognise or they don’t have.

      Entirely different service. Just like iCloud isn’t supposed to be Dropbox but everyone compares it to it. iDisk is what Dropbox became and what Apple should have done, but they had very different ideas of how to utilise the cloud. iCloud ties your services and data together. Dropbox is just a networked storage drive at the end of the day.

  10. Jude Santos - 9 years ago

    I’m switching to Apple Music come 6/30, but not because I’m dissatisfied with Spotify. The main reason I’m switching is because I love the Apple ecosystem – just the seamless experience between my macbook, ipad and iphone. It’s the same reason why I stopped using chrome as a browser in favor of safari, just the little things like being able to pull up what I was viewing on my iphone or ipad is integral

    • babywrinkels - 9 years ago

      Precisely. This is why the rumors of them shooting for 100,000,000 subscribers (when Pandora is only at 4.5 million) aren’t insane. $15 a month for my entire family to get legit (non-pirated) streaming music, especially after a 3 month free trial to get everyone hooked? Of course I’ll be doing that. They only need 25% of their active iTunes accounts to sign up for this and they’re there. If they nail this as well as I’m hoping they do, 100,000,000 accounts seems a little low.

      In perspective: that’s (assuming some family accounts at a higher cost, some regular accounts at the lower) approximately 1,200,000,000 a month in additional revenue. And with that many more people listening to music, Apple does a good job of returning the profits to the content creators (see: App store, where 30% overhead for all your hosting, bandwidth, and immediate exposure to 100,000,000+ people is an absolute steal). Potentially huge for artists actually getting a bigger cut, since it seems they’ll be able to go directly to Apple Music, instead of going through a label.

  11. michaelcpearson7 - 9 years ago

    What they are not talking about is the fact that for a family of 3 or more Apple Music wins hands down! My family of 5 cost $30 on Spotify. That is why I discontinued the subscription. At $15 bucks for 6 people with Apple Music… Yeah I can do that. My wife and two daughters consume music at an alarming rate and this would save me some money each month.

    Maybe I’m wrong… but who has a better family plan than Apple?

  12. Competitors, like Google’s own, Google Wallet was made available before Apple Pay, but yet more transactions are made with Apple Pay to date, than with Google Wallet has ever made. Apple Music will definitely grab an astounding size of the media streaming market. The Market knows that Apple thinks of the Customer first, and what it can do to make its customers lives easier. That’s why Apple Pay is the leading method of Contactless Payments in the United States. I’m truly intrigued by how Artists will interact with their fans, and how unsigned artists will create a fan base, and grow to become one of the biggest artists of today. Think of it, a kid sitting in his basement, with really great music, but has difficulty of getting it into the hands of millions, and with Apple Music, it can be done. Inspiring Many, Aspirations to Some.

  13. Spotify, Rhapsody, and MOG will see substantial revenue decrease, Tidal has basically been killed, but I think Rdio and Pandora will stay. Rdio has enough unique plans that they offer, from basic free radio, to a select cheap plan, to a full unlimited everything plan, while Pandora is a cheap alternative for people who don’t care about streaming everything and just want to have a better radio experience.

  14. Steve Schwinghammer - 9 years ago

    Re: Rhapsody

    To which the world responded with, “Rhapsody’s still a thing? Do you need to download RealPlayer?”

Author

Avatar for Chance Miller Chance Miller

Chance is an editor for the entire 9to5 network and covers the latest Apple news for 9to5Mac.

Tips, questions, typos to chance@9to5mac.com