101 SPOTIFY VS APPLE MUSICTHERE’S A CLUB THAT’S OPEN STRICTLY
from 9pm until midnight. It’s called Out
Now. “At the front of the queue, you’ve
got Drake, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Calvin
Harris. The queue is getting bigger and
bigger – it’s snaking round the block,
and new artists are right at the back.”
Out Now is a hypothetical club, but
the point that Zane Lowe – DJ, creative
director of Apple’s radio station Beats 1,
and now global head of artist relations
for Apple Music – is making is that, in
the music industry, it’s difficult to stand
out enough to get through the door –
and “when you get inside, it’s full”.
Beats 1 went on air in 2015, and what
Lowe has done with the platform is to
give musicians their own “clubs”, in the
form of freeform shows. “Whenever
Nicki Minaj does a [Beats 1] Queen Radio
show,” says Oliver Schusser, the current
head of Apple Music, “she’s number one
trending on Twitter.”
One of Apple’s priorities is to merge
its streaming service and its Beats 1
shows. “I want to integrate what we
do into Apple Music more thoroughly,”
says Lowe. “I would guess there are
still subscribers who don’t realise Elton
John has done over 200 shows. These
are works of art in their own right.”
Apple isn’t the only player trying
to own the future of radio. Spotify
spearheaded its move into audio
beyond music with $375 million of
podcast acquisitions in the first half
of 2019, and is now experimenting with
podcast playlists grouped around
themes. “Podcast discovery is moving
in the direction of the discovery of new
music,” says Spotify’s UK managing
director Tom Connaughton. “You’ll see
more bitesize, 20-minute shows that
work for the commute; not everyone has
two and a half hours to spare.”
While Zane Lowe might have the
music industry’s hottest contacts
book, Spotify is still the go-to musicstreaming service in Europe, with 83.5
million monthly active users as of
June 2019. (Apple Music has 60 million
subscribers worldwide.) But what’s next
is moving away from streaming. Spotify
has already produced live music events
based around its top playlists, such as
the Who We Be festival-style concert
series. Apple put on gigs for emerging
musicians in 2019, and Schusser says
the company wants more in the next 12
months. “We never retired the iTunes
Festival,” he says. “We paused it.”
The search is now on for customers
outside Europe and the US. Spotify Lite,
for older, low-cost phones, launched
in July 2019 in 36 countries. In Africa
it will face competition from Chinese
streaming service Boomplay. Amazon
Music Unlimited – in third place globally
in terms of subscribers – may poach
Spotify users with its free, ad-supported
streaming over Alexa- enabled devices.
It’s a good time to be a music fan.
Soundcloud’s role as a launchpad for
less well-known acts remains safe, and
YouTube Music has found its niche in
live performances and music video
playlists. French service Qobuz claims
to have 32 million subscribers to its
high-resolution, 24-bit catalogue in theUS; its success could push Apple and
Spotify on high quality audio.
But what about musicians? Data
from music analytics firm BuzzAngle
shows the top 25 artists accounted for
11 per cent of total streams in the US in
2018, and acts still need hundreds of
thousands of plays a month to make
the equivalent of minimum wage.
Spotify points out that, since the end
of 2018, 60,000 artists have submitted
music via its playlist submission tool
to be featured on Discover Weekly and
editorially curated playlists, where they
can get a substantial boost to listening
figures: of that number 36,000 artists
have been playlisted for the first time.
Its editors also monitor “hyperlocal”
scenes, such as rap in Birmingham, and
offer real-world promotion for breakout
artists on posters and billboards. The
Spotify for Podcasters tool came
out of beta in 2019 to join Spotify for
Artists, which lets musicians track the
performance of their releases. Apple
Music for Artists has also come out
of beta, sharing data on iTunes, Apple
Music and Shazam activity.
The ongoing battle between the
self-proclaimed “artist-first” (Apple)
and “fan-first” (Spotify) philosophies
will continue to shape music streaming
as both platforms battle for a bigger
share of the market. Sophie ChararaAs platforms flourish, artists still need
hundreds of thousands of plays a month to
make the equivalent of minimum wage11-19-FTGoogleStadia.indd 101 13/09/2019 11:11