solidify when looking at the streaming industry as a whole and why, once again, spotify is an outlier. think of netflix, for example, which similarly must license shows and movies to be essentially rented by users for a monthly price. in comparing these two services, you have to recognize a fundamental difference in how the media is consumed. with shows and movies, you may watch a classic once or twice, but thats’s it. now compare this to spotify, where you have a remarkable back-catalogue of songs that you will listen to on repeat over and over again. when netflix was forced to raise prices, as a user you had a very simple decision to make: “are the few shows i watch every week worth the price increase?” if the answer is no, you would simply cancel the service and your opportunity cost is watching maybe one movie a week or one show a day. compare this to spotify now and the issue becomes clear. spotify does not have the one song or album that you would miss out on, it has every song you ever listened to or want to listen to. whereas netflix had an opportunity cost of maybe 10 shows a week, canceling a spotify subscription would mean you lose hundreds of listens a week. i have no knowledge of whether spotify will be forced to increase prices like netflix has, but i do know that spotify gets its content from the same exact place, the media industry, and that makes me weary of price increases. if the record labels negotiate a higher price for spotify, spotify will be forced to charge users a higher price in return. if enough users are unhappy with this dynamic, it paves the way for another company to take the lead. i look at apple music in this case. apple music is not apple’s primary source of revenue and that means if cogs for streaming music increases with higher rates charged by labels, apple music has the benefit of being able to sustain losses and not be in danger of bankrupting the company at large. at this point, it’s a war of attrition between the music streaming giants. a war of attrition that with 100% confidence i can tell you apple will win with its cash reserves larger than the gdp of some developed economies.