Spotify Raises Half a Billion Dollars To Go To War Against Apple

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Nov 26, 2006
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Hi Guys

Who here is a fan of Spotify? Personally, I love it, and don't see myself changing service anytime soon. However, at their World Wide Developer Conference on Monday, Apple announced their Apple Music streaming service. Fortunately, Spotify has just closed a $526 million funding round, so it has the means to compete, see:

Spotify raises half a billion dollars to go to war with Apple - Business Insider

Any predictions on who's going to win the streaming war?
 


It really depends on how well Apple implement it. They have a MASSIVE userbase compared to Spotify.
 
Tucky said:
It really depends on how well Apple implement it. They have a MASSIVE userbase compared to Spotify.
Click to expand...

And Spotify offers a ton of features to their customers, yet they cannot expand their cutomer base to the size of Apple's customer pool. That is why 500 million dollars cannot quarantee anything - 500 million people would have been much better.
 
A quote from the article:

"As of February, Apple had cash reserves of $178 billion."

A formidable competitor for anyone. That said, Spotify is totally focused on this space. However, Apple does have lots of wealthy users that are very keen on its products.
 
Congrats to Spotify, they've almost raised enough money to match Apples lunch budget for a month.
 
I love Spotify, but if I had to guess, Spotify will lose, and hard. Apple has a huge customer base, with credit cards already on file (this is super important). As long as Apple's product isn't significantly worse, it's just hard to imagine them not pulling in the sheer volume. Is Spotify going to go to a 3 month free trial as well? Can Spotify compete vs the Apple family plan?
 
WebRef.eu said:
Hi Guys

Who here is a fan of Spotify? Personally, I love it, and don't see myself changing service anytime soon. However, at their World Wide Developer Conference on Monday, Apple announced their Apple Music streaming service. Fortunately, Spotify has just closed a $526 million funding round, so it has the means to compete, see:

Spotify raises half a billion dollars to go to war with Apple - Business Insider

Any predictions on who's going to win the streaming war?
Click to expand...

Both are trying to charge for what you can get online for free. Apple will probably come out ahead due to better customer base and trust. Personally I get all my needed jazz music free, so why should I pay anyone.
 
Or maybe apple just buys out spotify if their streaming service doesn't work out so well. Could be something similar to Microsoft buying Skype with untaxed money that they don't want to bring into the usa and get taxed on. Spotify is based out of stockholm and has london offices?
 
I love Spotify, but Apple is going to have one big advantage and that is that they are going to push their app to every iPhone out there.
 
drave said:
does using spotify burn much data?
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Depends on a lot of things. It can use not much because you can sync songs to your mobile for offline listening. So it really comes down to how much you listen over your cell connection, and the quality of the dowloaded song. The higher quality downloads are of course more data heavy. I generally am listening over wifi, sync a lot of songs for offline, but still use it when driving and what not. Maybe use a few hundred MB a month. But your milage will very.
 
I didn't catch much detail about Apple's conference on Monday, but I'll probably switch to their streaming over Spotify, since I have 4 people in the house that want to use Spotify and nobody can be on the same account at the same time. To start adding new accounts for everyone makes the cost more prohibitive for monthly music streaming IMO.

Apple lets me use all my apps across all the devices in the house, so I would guess this will be the same, meaning I would have 4 people all able to stream different stuff at the same time and that's definitely a big win for me. Either way, looking forward to seeing how the new service looks.

Plus Apple got Taylor Swift, so there's that.
 
Yeah There were reports that the company was raising funds, most likely at a valuation of more than $8 billion, but the final total is higher than anticipated. The new money also probably delays an expected Spotify initial public offering the company just doesn't need the money anymore.
The round was reportedly closed Tuesday, a day after Apple revealed Apple Music, and takes the total invested in Spotify to more than $1 billion. The streaming service now has 23 investors, including Fidelity, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs Group, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers.​
 
There's going to be room for more than one service. It's different to something like Facebook where you have network effects, etc.

Apple users will end up using the Apple service, and ironically their marketing could actually help Spotify, in the sense that it'll make more people aware of the benefits of streaming music.

The users Apple converts will mostly be users that would probably not use Spotify in the first place. iTunes users that never saw a need to stream. Spotify just need to stick to their guns, keep building out a great product, keep getting great music, and focus on non-apple devices.

How much money Apple has isn't the only important thing. For confirmation see Google+, and most of Microsoft's consumer-facing internet services.
 
mituozo said:
How much money Apple has isn't the only important thing. For confirmation see Google+, and most of Microsoft's consumer-facing internet services.
Click to expand...

Yes, I agree with that. Just because you have the cash doesn't mean you are going to come up with a better product and become market leader. Spotify also has the advantage that it is focused just on music streaming.
 
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