Apple agreed to spend $3 billion earlier this year on Beats Electronics, at least in part for its streaming music platform (which is mainly on-demand, but has also been described as a Spotify-Pandora hybrid). Google recently bought Songza, a human curation service for music that some believe could threaten Pandora. Google’s YouTube—which you might not think of as a music service, but is easily the biggest site for on-demand streaming of music videos—is also reportedly on the brink of launching a new subscription-based, audio-focused product. Finally, Amazon also recently launched its own streaming product, Amazon Prime Music,to lukewarm reviews. Like its streaming video service, Prime Music is free to anyone who subscribes to Amazon’s premium home delivery service.
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These companies might not have the music-first culture that Spotify and Pandora have—although Apple now has Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine, the ultimate music industry insider, on its books. But they do have some have tremendous advantages: namely, very deep pockets and very little pressure from investors to make money out of music.
