Per Sjofors :
Full disclosure: My company is America's must trusted advisor to set prices right. Here is a link to a project we did about a month ago on what people are willing to pay for various music streaming services. And yes, I too was very underwhelmed with their presentation.
As you can see if you download the PDF presentation Apple underprice themselves. They had the chance to be a "good citizen" and give more money back to the industry. But decided to launch a me-too service. Sad. Maybe the first true nail in the Apple coffin.
In the meantime I continue to use Tidal as they are the only service I know that stream full quality (lossless compression) FLAC files.
So, you raise a few interesting problems. Yes, Apple may not be built to give artists as much money as Tidal claims to do, but this is why I supplement my streaming service usage with actual purchases of concert tickets, physical media, merch and BandCamp files. Tidal may be intent to hand the artist more money than Spotify, but streaming alone won't be enough for artists to survive if you ask me.
I don't think Apple's service is a me-too entry for one giant and important reason: root level integration with the system on Macs. There are so many customers who haven't even tried Spotify, but will be willing to give Apple Music a shot because of brand trust/loyalty.
In terms of audio quality? I don't have the ears or sound system to truly believe I can discern FLAC quality, and as I said above, I buy records, for when I want to enjoy the audio quality the most, since I prefer that output. Unfortunately, going by the headphones that sell the best, I don't think audio quality is a feature that a service needs to focus on in order to thrive. If it were Pono would have been a big thing and not just a big interview.
/www.dropbox.com/s/ya0b...
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