is that correct?
They do have pretty significant friend sharing options now, but it isn’t a focal point like it is with Spotify. I’m sure that the Ping disaster didn’t help them feel confident about that strategy. Apple Music has all of the features listed here, except for the QR code thing, which seems to be the least useful anyway.
But these are fairly new features and about 10 years too late. Honestly, I think they’re both fine and both have similar drawbacks (mainly using the UI to push trash I don’t have any interest in). Ultimately for me, it came down to saving $16 a month because I already pay for iCloud backup and family options and basically got Music for free.
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Not really. The whole leaderboard/listening history aspect in particular is super half baked and nothing close to what Spotify offers, and shared playlists are basically an afterthought. I’m an Apple Music subscriber and have been since day 1. I use its services daily and continue to use it because of the huge catalog that’s nealry 100% lossless. Those are the most important things to me by far. But damn if I don’t sometimes get jealous as some of the cool social features Spotify has.
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presumably, although we’ll never know for certain
While Apple did not incorporate until 1977, The Beatles’ record label began operating under the name Apple Corps in 1968.
As a Beatles fan, Steve Jobs would have known this. So did his Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who raised the issue as they batted around names for their new computer company. However, no link ever got acknowledged between the two company names.
…
Nonetheless, it didn’t take long after the launch of the Apple II for Apple Corps to file a lawsuit protecting its name. The two sides settled in 1981. Apple Computer paid Apple Corps $80,000 and agreed not to enter the music business.
Spotify users don’t care one bit about the artists or how much they make. They only want a free account and that’s the obvious difference between Apple music users and Spotify users. Spotify has millions of free open accounts. Apple will never do free accounts.
Neither platform cares about the artists, either. It is not the consumer that’s the core problem here. If they did, they’d ensure that the artists they streamed got a decent compensation for their streams. They do not, on either platform.
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Tidal and apple pay apx 1 cent per stream. Spotify is even worse @ .03 cents. As little as Apple pays 1/3 of that is even worse.
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Both are shitty pay, frankly. None of the streaming platforms owned by corporations care about compensating artists fairly. The MODEL is the problem. 
Blaming everything on the consumer, who also gets regularly screwed by these companies, doesn’t help. It distracts from what’s actually happening…
There is a whole chapter about this in Doctorow’s Chokepoint Capitalism, btw.
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I think it’s because Apple still sees its DNA in having services supporting hardware sales, meaning they only had to be good enough to set a baseline which third party developers would have to beat. The original iTunes Store was intended as a way to get music onto iPods, not really to sell music. And the original pricing being a simple $1 per song, $10 per album was something Apple actually fought hard to do.
I don’t think Apple really wants to beat Spotify. It only wants to make sure those who but Apple products have a good alternative so that Spotify keeps putting in effort to make a better app than Apple itself does.
Now, going back to the proposal: it deserves consideration, though the increased computation needed to pull this off may mean Apple keeps the ratio in place. The idea of linking artist to listener and divvying the listener’s monthly subscription fee does have merit. It does get trickier with us Apple One subscribers (yes, I also heavily use Apple Arcade and Apple TV+), since it’s not the same $10 that those subscribing only to Apple Music pay. But it’s doable, and would help repair the image Apple wants to maintain of being fair to artists. So yeah, I’m kinda for it.
I don’t have anything to add to the OT, but I will say this:
If you like listening to high quality live recordings, try a subscription to Nugs dot net. With that subscription, you’ll also have access often to free HD video live streams - there are also a ton of ones you can “pay per view” and also watch later. The catalogue is jam band heavy, but it’s expanded a LOT over the years. FWIW. See below for a comment from someone that plays in one of my favorite bands. The artists sell their music direct through them.
Also, Bandcamp is great because artists also sell direct through them. And you can stream as well.
I like being able to buy lossless files from both of the above sources.
Nothing beats being there in person, though - that gets the artists the most for their time. 
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I just bought an iPhone15 and moving from android. I have always used Spotify and tried Apple Music off and on with previous iPhones and android. I’m not moving to Apple Music . I think I discover more music with Spotify. Apple will start trying to gate keep artist like they did with a drake performance one time. I’m good with Spotify.
I’d much rather have several more major players and no one with more than 25% of the market. It bugs me that the the most valuable skill in the music industry is hiring people to negotiate licenses.
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Pretty sure the main reason artists don’t see any money is because they get shafted by the labels. This wouldn’t solve that.
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but now they get shafted by labels and streaming services
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I can’t imagine that the vast majority of consumers care enough about how their favorite artists get paid for this change to make any difference. Hell, if consumers cared about that, they might actually pay for the music directly instead of just streaming.
The weird thing to me about music streaming, versus video streaming, is that it really doesn’t matter which music service you subscribe to; whichever one you choose, you’re going to have access to basically whatever music you want. As opposed to video streaming, where the content libraries of Netflix are complete different from Amazon Prime and Hulu and all the others. If Apple wants to take over music, they’ll likely have to negotiate some exclusive streaming deals with key artists.
Whatever about Pitchfork people laid off from Bandcamp and Spotify would be good hires if Apple was serious. TBF I think the Spotify wrapped team are kept on and people seem to argue that is crucial for driving engagement (I think it’s largely minentum and the fact they had a much bigger catalogue than anyone else straight away). Oh, and because they are largely owned by record companies they push it more than Apple.
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Worse, they could force you to listen to U2. Many of us remember to this day.
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Exactly… the labels embraced the streaming model, because they were able to reap benefits from it, not because it was good for artists.
If royalty payout was all that mattered to consumers, Tidal would be dominating.
It seems like a better intentioned payout methodology than the current model, but I don’t see this moving the needle very far if at all.
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