My opinion but I feel Apple could have knocked this out of the park if they had done one thing: allowed for a student discount. This puts Spotify over the top for people in college. Why pay 2x more for similar quality music?
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Apple Music student discount
- Thread starter Dekema2
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Just because you're a student you're entitled to a discount? That's not how real life works.
Also, no one is forcing you to use Apple Music as well, if Spotify is cheaper for you, go for it.
Also, no one is forcing you to use Apple Music as well, if Spotify is cheaper for you, go for it.
It sort of is how real life works. Students do get discounts at a variety of places, including from the Apple Store.
I agree that offering a student discount would help pull more subscribers from Spotify, which is all the OP was suggesting. I'm excited to try Apple Music and Spotify costs the same for me anyways, but if I could get it for half price I don't think it'd make much sense to switch.
I agree that offering a student discount would help pull more subscribers from Spotify, which is all the OP was suggesting. I'm excited to try Apple Music and Spotify costs the same for me anyways, but if I could get it for half price I don't think it'd make much sense to switch.
Apparently that's not how "real life works" in this instance.
I was just agreeing with the OP that Apple could pull more subscribers from Spotify if they matched their pricing for college students, which I think was his point. I couldn't care less if they actually offered a student discount.
I do think the family plan they are offering is competitive. Does anyone who has Spotify know if they offer something similar?
I apologize for the snarky response. Honestly, I don't see how Spotify (or anyone for that matter) can make money at $5 a month. Remember all those articles that said Apple was shooting for a price point of $7.99? Assuming that was true, they apparently couldn't find a way to make it happen.
My guess is Spotify's $5 student plan is a desperate attempt to increase market share - something Apple doesn't really need to worry about since their service will come pre-installed on all devices, new and old, running iOS9.
My guess is Spotify's $5 student plan is a desperate attempt to increase market share - something Apple doesn't really need to worry about since their service will come pre-installed on all devices, new and old, running iOS9.
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I think they depend on a lot of users signing up at the lowest subscription tier and not using the service (but being too lazy or forgetting to cancel it). The discount gym model.
For an extra £5/$5 a month you can have an extra family member, and you can have up to 3 extra members. It is $/£5 a month extra per person, as opposed to Apples $5 extra for up to 6 people, and it also cancels out any discount you have, e.g. If you added a family account, and you have a student discount, that discount would be canceled out, so you would pay full price for your account.
My only issue with Spotify is many of the playlists I have created have lost tracks I guess because of licensing issues. And you don't know it unless you look at the list for grayed out tracks. Its why I left Spotify (along with their lousy iOS app).
This is my biggest fear with streaming only. Similar to what we're seeing with "TV." They're all going to start scrambling for exclusive content (there's some sign of that already) and you'll have to subscribe to several different services to get everything you want.
Like artist A? Apple Music exclusive. Like artist B? Spotify exclusive. Like both? Screwed.
I was hoping Apple had this figured out. $10 a month for everything. Period.
Well, I mean, you can only get the discount for, what, four years max? And that's only while you're actually IN college, correct? I understand that a five dollar savings is a decent amount, but I don't see why it's a deal breaker...
And it's even worse if you travel internationally. Heinously annoying.
As for the student discount? Look, services like Spotify and Apple Music are already screwing artists. If you can't afford to pony up $10 a month for nearly all the music in the world, well I don't know what to say.
I mean, srsly, ikr? $120/yr wut? I used to spend that a month in the CD era. And I had to go to the store in the snow!
A lot of people don't have time for jobs in college, and may also be tied up with loans or scholarships they don't want to spend on streaming music. And the family plan... Well families have other entertainment bills to pay and they want to charge more.
That's why college students turned to Limewire back in the days and now just do mass torrenting.
I wouldn't resort to that, I think $4.99 is a competitive price but Apple could give a rats backside about that because their profit margins need to be just right. It's okay, it'll just be one (and likely many others) less MUSIC user.
I get what you're saying. But there's probably too much money involved in being on multiple platforms. Hell, Apple is making Music available for Android. What you'll probably see is things like the Beyonce album or HBO Now where it's Apple exclusive for a few months.
I agree with the frustration of all of these exclusive series. I'd like to watch Shameless but am not subscribing to Showtime just for that. HBO has built up enough of a catalog to get me to pay $15 per month.
I wouldn't call it desperate. As other people have said, very many places offer student discounts. As for Spotify, I think it's a good opportunity getting students interested in Spotify who will then continue to subscribe after their student discount expires. I know I'm planning to! It's the same reason you can get high discounts on subscriptions like the economist and financial times.
But that's every single month, not just a one off. I don't think you realise how little money many students have; and I'm not sure about the US, but in the UK the student loans system is flawed. People who are also paying rent for accommodation end up being unable to cover the full cost from just their student loan. Also, in the UK you can get Spotify student discount from one of two ways, with one being by using an NUS card, and it might be possible to purchase a 3 year NUS card towards the end of your course, and then have student discount for over two years after graduating.
Apple is definitely missing out by not offering any student discount (for Apple Music) imo.
Is the world really so bad that people cannot fork over $10 per month for 30 million songs? Seriously, these artists do need to get paid for their work. I'm amazed that $10/month lets them eat meat. Unless it's a big name.
I'm in the news biz and we went the way of HAVE IT ALL FOR FREE! Well everybody did but never decided to purposefully click on a single ad. The only way people make money off "news" online is "You totally won't believe what Tim Cook did" headlines on BuzzFeed, "OMG Caitlyn Jenner!" Stuff on HuffPost, two sentences about a rumor you read about on a rumor site that came from a story read on a rumor site, sheer top-notch quality with a tall paywall (NYT, WSJ), or eating cat food (the rest of us).
These recording companies have a bazillion artists and must love an easy "have this, pay us per play" deluge of songs. But even your best group will only have maybe 100, and the people at the top like Taylor Swift and Jay-Z who get most of the ears aren't in trouble. It's that tier below it. You know, the band SNL calls when Florida Georgia Line has to bail 24 hours before a show.
I have never seen so many complaints about extremely fair prices on services outside of here. People thought $14.99 for HBO was expensive despite it costing close to $20 from a TV provider. $10 is too expensive for Apple Music despite being the industry standard and including a lot of other features that benefit longtime iTunes buyers.
So I think my point was students should pay the $10 or get on a family plan. Hell, set up a family plan amongst five other friends at school. Then it's cheaper than a student plan.
No, they aren't. And this has nothing to do with Apple.
People who want to steal will still find a way to steal. Napster, Hotline, Limewire, BitTorrent, dark nets, dimly and not so dimly lit street corners on pretty much every city of the world.
I know you mentioned the state of students in the UK. Well I can assure you that the state of students in the U.S. is every bit as dire, if not more so considering the cost of non-subsidized higher ed here.
Again: I went to university in the 80s and 90s. I was a rabid music fan. I bought thousands of CDs and vinyl. The joy, in fact was in the hunt, something completely lost in today's music landscape. Digital discovery just isnt the same.
I know you think you are deserving of a cut rate but I will tell you this: you have the worlds music library at your disposal. For $10 a month. Drink one less real ale each month. Done.
If you don't think the music you are listening to is worth a measly $10/mo, then blame the content creators or license holders, then go out and make some music for us for free.
I have become amazed at the level that some people devalue about everything. I'm not trying to pick on the OP, this is just huge groups of people in general. I still recall numerous times people complaining about very useful apps that cost 99 cents and also had ads. Now for any sort of game you get relegated to free apps with ads or freemium apps constantly wanting you to buy fake currency. Super Monkey Ball was one of the first games out and hella worth $10. But the FarmVille ripoffs killed most decent games.
I did the a pasted thing in college. I was dumb and didn't know better. But once I saw how awesome iTunes was, I had no trouble paying for what I wanted. Now that I'm in the local news biz, I just wish people would understand similar principles. We will go away without subscriptions or turning into cheaply staffed clickbait sites. For app that money saved not printing copies, there's a bunch of expensive software used for content management, ads and other services. Same thing with Apple's media requiring huge investments in datacenters.
That's a little cryptic, I wonder why such a concept wasn't tossed around at WWDC?
I'm not saying whether or not the music is worth £10/month.. I'm just referring to the affordability of this when it comes to students. You seem to hold a very stereotypical view of students anyway - not everyone goes out spending their money drinking! Also, £10/month is hardly 'measly' - maybe you have loads of money at your disposal, but not everyone has that luxury.
I wonder how I managed to buy albums as a student, in a time before streaming, before torrents. How could I afford them? Strangely, nobody gave me a student discount for CDs then. I really have no idea how I managed to survive while still having money for music...
Oh... wait... now I know: I didn't have a Macbook Pro then. I had the cheapest possible PC (and I actually studied computer science), because I knew that I had to have some money left for food, rent... and music. Back then, music had a high value for people of my generation. We loved music. So we paid for it. A lot. Nowadays, music has a value somewhere between "Well, $5 a month is a bit steep, but ok!" and "Why should I pay for music at all?"
Yea, it's a sign that I have become old and out-of-touch that I whine about how terrible today's young people are. But while I "get" a lot of changes and why they are good and inevitable, the idea that music has near-to-no value for people now is something I will never understand.
Oh... wait... now I know: I didn't have a Macbook Pro then. I had the cheapest possible PC (and I actually studied computer science), because I knew that I had to have some money left for food, rent... and music. Back then, music had a high value for people of my generation. We loved music. So we paid for it. A lot. Nowadays, music has a value somewhere between "Well, $5 a month is a bit steep, but ok!" and "Why should I pay for music at all?"
Yea, it's a sign that I have become old and out-of-touch that I whine about how terrible today's young people are. But while I "get" a lot of changes and why they are good and inevitable, the idea that music has near-to-no value for people now is something I will never understand.
We shouldn't be encouraging college kids to be unethical.
That is how we wind up with the mess in Wall Street and elsewhere in business.
It is kind of amazing when you realize that a CD in 1985 cost about $30 in today's dollars.