Two questions around Apple Music, the streaming service launching tomorrow, were answered over the weekend.
Apple svp Eddy Cue told his Twitter followers on Friday that iTunes Match, the company’s cloud music storage service, would quadruple the amount of music subscribers can store, to 100,000, from 25,000. Match scans a user’s local music library, making those songs available across their devices, and costs $24.99 per year. Given Apple Music’s offline listening feature, which Apple told Billboard last week was only limited by the storage on a user’s phone, and its large streaming library, iTunes Match users and those closely observing the streaming service’s launch have questioned the services’ functional overlaps.
Another lingering question about Apple’s new music service was its compatibility with Sonos, the wireless speaker company that was announced as the exclusive home to Apple Music rival Deezer’s Elite high-resolution audio streaming service. BuzzFeed editorJohn Paczkowski tweeted Apple’s confirmation to him that Sonos would be supported by the end of the year.
Spotify, Apple Music’s largest competitor, is keeping calm ahead of the Cupertino giant’s entry into a market Spotify helped to create. “But being big does not mean that you win,” Spotify executive Jason Forster told the Telegraph. The largest question around Apple’s streaming entry centers on whether its new service will grow the streaming market, leaving room for Spotify and others, or overtake it — whether it will be as Amazon was to books, or Hulu to online video, which has remained a competitive market despite many large companies’ involvement.
