Apple Music Now Available For Android, But Will Anyone Care?

Apple is finally letting the other half of the world in on Apple Music. A few days ago the company announced that the streaming service is now available to Android smartphone users. This now puts the service within reach of about 52 percent of the market  (that's about 1.2 billion users, according to Google) that couldn’t previously experience the streaming music app when it was relegated only to the iOS platform. The real question is, how many of those Android users are really interested in trying Apple Music?

Actually Apple Music Android can still be considered in beta, with two of its features, the family membership plan and Apple Connect videos, currently not available. Other than that, the app is same as what’s found in the iOS version. It’s currently available in over 100 countries, except for China, where the largest group of Android users happen to live.

A Look Inside The Numbers
On the surface, this looks to be a good move for increasing user numbers for the streaming service. Apple Music currently has 6.5 million paying subscribers a little more than 4 months after its launch. That’s good enough for second place behind Spotify’s 20 million paying customers, and that’s with being available to less than half of the available audience.

That said, the 6.5 million number may be deceiving, since many of those may have forgotten to turn off their subscriptions at the end of the three month trial period. This means that we won’t know the true number of iOS subscribers for some time yet.

The user number still may not get a huge bounce even with the release of the Android version though, since the new version won’t have the marketing momentum of the original launch. This may result in far fewer opt-ins to the 90 day trial period than might have otherwise been possible with a day and date launch on both platforms. Read more on Forbes.

---

Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this blog at no cost to you (just click here).

Could This App Be The Instagram Of Music?

Three undergrads from Tufts University have launched a new app that's catching on like wildfire. It's called Cymbal, and many have called it the "Instagram of Music" because of its less-is-more user interface.

Cymbal describes itself as "music powered by friends, not algorithms." That's because users are allowed to share just one song at a time along with album art.

The whole idea is that the user gets to post that one song that's most important in their life at that moment.

Like Instagram, Cymbal uses a home feed, personal profile, followers, likes, comments, hashtags and tags.

You can share tracks from Soundcloud or Spotify, and since it was created from the ground up as an iOS app (an Android version is coming), it's perfectly at home where more and more do their listening - via the phone.

There's less than a million users at the moment, but the app seems to be coming on strong, so look out for more about Cymbal in the future.

---

Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this blog at no cost to you (just click here).

When Kickstarter Doesn't Work

Crowdfunding campaigns are sometimes considered an almost can't-miss way to raise money for a project, but that's often far from the case. Even though slightly over 50% of music projects do get fully funded, there have been some high profile failures (think Public Enemy) recently.

The latest is Bjork's Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund the development of a new version of her Biophilia album app, this time for Android and Windows 8. The campaign was cancelled just 10 days in when it reached just 4% of it's goal of 375,000 pounds (about $580,000US).

The original Biophilia iPad app offered interactive modules for each song on Bjork's Biophilia album, which included games, animation and the ability to remix songs. Porting it to both Windows and Android platforms was a way to get it into more low income households in the interest of music education, according to the site.

When it comes to crowdfunding campaigns, there are 3 main impediments to funding:

1. Is the project sexy? Porting an app from iOS to Windows and Android just doesn't grab the imagination somehow. iOS owns the market (at least for now), and a great number of potential donators are Apple fanboys, so the basic premise was never going to work.

2. The reward tiers. There just wasn't anything sexy with the Biophilia app award tiers either. Art prints of the app graphics from a B list artist won't cut it, no matter how cool they might be (and they are very cool).

3. The monetary goal. Let's face it, the lower the amount of money you're trying to raise, the more likely you'll achieve it. While I don't for a second think that the amount Bjork was trying to raise was out of line with its needs, it was just too big a chunk to bite off. Bjork isn't successful enough as an artist to pull a campaign like this off.

For those of you who intend to create a crowdfunding campaign in the future, use this as a template of what not to do.

Here's the promo video for the project.

----------------------------------

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Interested in the Music 3.0 archives? Buy The Music 3.0 Guide To Social Media. The best of over 800 posts.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Google Music Not Cutting It So Far

When Google introduced it's music cloud service November, the general consensus was that it was a can't miss project. After all, there were already 200 million activated Android phone and tablet users, and if it only converted 10 percent of their captured market, that would mean 20 million users.

Now word is beginning to leak out of every corner of the music business world that everyone is concerned about Google Music's very slow adoption rate. With Google being one of the 800 pound gorillas in the cloud music room, that's the last thing that anyone expected.

What's more, while Google does have licenses with 3 of the major labels, it has yet to obtain a license from Warner Bros to be able to offer their catalog, and it's unlikely that they will if things continue to go as it is now.

But don't count Google Music out just yet. Two weeks ago The Wall Street Journal reported that Google is building a wireless home entertainment system that will stream music throughout the home. Even if this were a big hit, and I can't see it making a huge difference for Google Music, but it may be just enough to turn the tide from one that's perceived as failing to one that's a borderline success.

-----------------------------------

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.