Apple has had a close and successful affiliation with the music industry since it released the iPod in 2001, so you would think it's entry into the streaming market would have the competition on edge.
But surprisingly, this doesn't seem to be the case. In the eyes of Pandora CEO Brian McAndrews at least, Apple Music hasn't had any discernible impact on the music streaming market since its launch a month ago.
At Pandora's recent earnings conference call, McAndrews said "Going forward, we feel really good about our trajectory and competitive position… there could be some listeners who experiment with the [Apple Music] service and there could be some short-term impact, but … we aren't seeing any meaningful listener impact at this time and we don't expect any long-term meaningful impact either."
Internet radio streaming?
All the reports of Apple Music's bugs, ranging from annoying interface glitches to complete music library losses, suggest that the service's teething process will be anything but straight forward, but there are still some magical elements in there and McAndrews wasn't writing off Apple Music because of its technical limitations.
Pandora and Spotify have both seen success in the music streaming market because, although they both offer paid and free tiers of subscription music streaming, the actual function that each perform is fundamentally different.
Part of the reason there is some credence to McAndrews perspective is because Apple Music is more closely aligned with Spotify than it is to Pandora's algorithmic playlist radio service.
The US financial services firm Morgan Stanley backed up McAndrews perspective when it estimated that any impact Apple Music may have on Pandora's total listening hours would be fully recovered by the fourth quarter of this financial year.
- Check out how Apple thinks its Music service is going in the Apple Q3
