A new report answers some of the questions raised by Apple’s recent acquisition of Beats. Apple, apparently, has been panicking over on-demand streaming services such as Pandora and Spotify, both of which are seeing much bigger traction than iTunes Radio.
Apple’s recent purchase of Beats has raised many questions. Most people are wondering what, if any, is the company’s real interest in the music streaming service and hardware that Beats has created. Neither seems particularly impressive and deserving of a $3 billion price tag.
But now a report from Buzzfeed claims Apple is desperately trying to catch up to its rivals. It’s own streaming service, iTunes Radio, is seen as a failure due to incompetent executives, and disinterested engineers.
Citing two Apple sources, this story notes that iTunes Radio never actually got what people liked about Spotify or Pandora. The whole service was designed to try and push more song sales on iTunes instead of curating an experience for the user.
So, do any of you guys use Spotify?
Apple engineers involved with the development of iTunes Radio and the now defunct music social network Ping, were supposedly using Spotify and Pandora in their own lives, staying well away from Apple’s products that they actually worked on. “Everyone’s excuse was it’s because we work on iTunes, running and closing the app after every code change,” one source said. “But it’s really because Spotify has all the free music with a real social platform.”
Apple’s employees also confirmed in this report that management actively ignored competitors. Managers refused to open or use Spotify and referred to Pandora as a nonthreatening “dead company” citing its lack of a revenue stream. Obviously, this led to them having no idea what the competition was doing or why people enjoyed their services. A former employee added:
Pandora is an awesome radio that blows iTunes Radio out of the water. Seriously, iTunes Radio sucks and it sucks because of Apple’s arrogance. I was floored by the decision-making skills by management over and over again.
Apparently the company is now looking to fix some of these wrongs with its massive purchase of Beats. Their music streaming service boasted to have 250.000 users just four months after launch, but the real value is the acquisition of talent and industry know-how in the form of Dr. Dre and especially Jimmy Iovine.
We’ll have to wait and see if this move plays out in Apple’s favor and if the new purchase manages to revitalize its music streaming service. But because it was willing to pay such a huge sum of money, it’s safe to say Apple wants to win this.
Source: Buzzfeed | Images via Apple