Let’s review a few facts about the largest music platforms:
Apple Music is owned by Apple. Right now, Apple is
spinning its narrative to be a services company that cares about privacy. Apple is also a company that routinely gives no fucks about abusive labor practices for its products, so I take either push with little credence. However, because Apple is seeing that it can’t replicate the iPhone’s success more than a decade out, it’s simply forcing its consumers to pay
more money for basic things like storage space, access to news, or whatever else falls under the “services” umbrella. Apple Music, likely a current loss leader, isn’t going to exist perpetually as something that can allow the company to lose money.
Spotify isn’t owned by a single company but rather a hodgepodge of venture capital and other firms. However, back in 2017, Spotify
performed a stock swap with Tencent, the Chinese company that also owns a number of Chinese music services such as Riot Games (
League of Legends), Epic Games (
Fortnite), and minority stakes in nearly every major video game publisher. Last year, Spotify
announced a cross-product partnership with Samsung; on
Monday, AT&T announced that Spotify will be included in their most expensive entertainment bundle and that the company will be offering a six month free trial for other subscribers. In case anyone is wondering why Spotify doesn’t need to hint at profitability, here are three companies ready to absorb the company into its already well-integrated ecosystems.
Pandora, which in 2015 wasn’t a healthy company but wasn’t
losing listeners quarter-over-quarter like they are now, were bought by SiriusXM last year.
Tidal, which in 2015 was a plucky artist-run start-up, saw
Sprint buying one-third of the company in 2017. Last but not least,
Amazon Music, which is owned by…Amazon. I’d guess that Amazon Music is an entirely money-losing venture for the logistics/web services company, but at least they’ve got a nice Taylor Swift concert!