Need your own Apple Spotify?

Need your own Apple Spotify?

On Friday appeared in the media this recurring rumor says that Apple will launch a music service a la carte subscription . This rumor also comes topped with an even more striking: the launch of an official app to purchase music from the iTunes Store from an Android device.

The rumor has been years Regularly appearing on the gossip. And, pregutamos us from here, if Apple really needs a service like this . Reflect.

Does it make sense for Apple?

If there is a market that Apple helped change and which is the undisputed leader is the purchase of digital music . Contextualize and provide some figures, in 2012 it won 64% of digital music sales and 29% of music sales in general . Although 2013 was a slightly bitter year for this market, with declines of about 11% for digital music (according to Nielsen SoundScan). speak even in Spain 15%, according to Promusicae.

However, despite everything, our spending on music has remained constant , and this is thanks to streaming music services on a subscription basis . The data provided by this article published a few days ago Re / Code left it clear.

Apple historically has had a good piece of digital music pie . That pie is getting smaller sales, but growing subscription as made ??famous by Spotify. A Apple of course and from a purely business perspective, we should be in that market. And it has plenty of resources to do so.

Apple, in prime position to do :-

If there is something that Apple can boast, right now, is catalog. It has acuedos with major (and not so major) record labels that give your shop, as they themselves say more than 37 million songs . Everything is already gone that route and “only” renegotiate agreements would need to start offering all that catalog via streaming on demand.

In addition, agreements already likely to serve it, and are those on iTunes Radio. Not the same offer on-demand streaming stations on demand radio, but it is no longer an obstacle that would have to save. And add one detail: in the United States more than we used iTunes Spotify Radio .

If Apple, at a stroke, transform your model and began offering its entire catalog with a similar Spotify model, two things stand out: its potential user base and its catalog, which is the largest market (above the Spotify and Deezer, and certainly superior to the Music of Microsoft Xbox). Would it succeed? Probably not. But it would be a very important player.

The big question: will they need?

The real question, regardless of whether it makes sense or not and whether they have the resources and capacity to develop a service well or not is if Apple really needs to be present in this market . From my perspective, the answer is not as obvious as it might seem.

On one hand, mobile competitors include streaming music service integrated into the device, or at least offer one (Google Play Music All Access Music and Xbox). Moreover, iOS users already use such services, even if another company that develops it.

A streaming music service “Apple brand” would attract a handful of iOS users, faithful to the services of his favorite company, but users of other platforms need some additional incentive to use (assuming Apple released applications other platforms). If am ever the entire catalog available to listen, perhaps the best argument would be to make the switch .