Lots of spare time being burnt here 
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Uwe I think the big difference here is that Apple has unlimited cash to burn unlike anyone else.
I know of several friends who have moved to Apple music because it was free (while accepting they did not particularly like it), so I think Apple will finish first or second over the longer timeframe. They can afford to lose more money than everyone else, and everyone is losing money in this market and trying to make it up in volume.
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With iTunes and iPod, you were in a favorable starting position and played the market almost monopolistically. The major music companies and artists have broken this position of power and will never again allow Apple to just burn money. I also don’t believe that the smart Apple strategist thinks this way. A close look at the figures and balance sheets shows positive operating results (cash flow) even for Spotify, which are only diluted by the high non-cash write-downs of the expensive acquisitions. Investors in this sector are now looking for artist catalogs and find so many technically suitable platforms with Spotify, Amazon, Google, Deezer, Soundcloud, Tidal, Qobuz & Co, Apple is becoming interchangeable, as the Soundiiz picture impressively shows.
The artists are the ones losing money. Streaming an LP from 1969 doesn’t cut it either, got to re-release and keep the hype up.
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Mike all the Streaming services also lose money on Streaming business, and those that pay more to the artists at this point just lose money. The race to the bottom needs to end sooner rather than later. Apple can afford to do this as part of it’s lockin as a service business model, but Spotify et al cannot sustain their business while still paying for advertising and a large team of people.
While I have Tidal, Spotify and Youtube Premium I still buy 90% of what I like on Bandcamp or Quobuz/HDTracks etc, as my way of trying to support artists as directly as possible.
Not everyone can or will do that, in which case they need to start to pay more for their streaming.
And as someone that has re-purchased 3 Pink Floyd albums this week and I will go back to the well again after payday I understand the re-release hype train and Special Edition after the first Special Edition 
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Uwe I don’t disagree agree with that, its just that Apple can afford to suck up the losses as they generate so much other revenue as part of their subscription services.
Have you ever tried to use and iPhone or iPad and not pay Apple for a monthly file storage? I have both and refuse to pay the tax as I already have huge storage vaults with Google and Microsoft so I don’t want to pay for another one, but I am constantly nagged so sign up.
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If there is a deal in it, Apple will also like to have it, but why do the first awakened start to use Linux, Owncloud… too?
I do not need storage offers from Google, Microsoft and Apple and even for free I hardly used you, only my music is in the future in the cloud and there I do not care whether Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple is the hoster for Qobuz, Tidal, Deezer…is. In the end, the music industry will only file once on the net and use the best technology for transport. Spotify, by the way, has decided to use Google as a service provider. This partnership with Android, Chrome makes Apple a big belly ache according to the paragraph image (above). Incidentally, the largest Apple source of revenue for services is Google as a search engine, if there is a dispute, I see only one winner. Everyone can develop their own thoughts, but only the best technology will prevail, and this is where the brilliant Steve Jobs is now missing.
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Uwe it’s great that you are technically savvy (and post some great feedback here), but I use mine for multiple off site backups for me and my less technically savvy family who otherwise they would never back up anything.
As it is I have my music library in 3 places in the house and on two cloud services, because you never know 
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I guess I’m still a learning child here too, but the forum is full of experts, some very helpful others very enterprising. I’m retired and no longer have to sell anything to anyone, but like to buy and rent where there is high competence and of course Apple also gets his try with me every now and then to see if it has already improved.
To give the artists more, I also go the strategy of renting multiple music services. Roon has done a lot for the artists in this regard, because you bring together several music services, the private collection and thus many new streams and purchases in one application. I still wish I didn’t have to rely only on the Internet line. That would work much better with Owncloud than with Spotify, Qobuz, Tidal and Roon. I pay this price of dependence because I have also created alternatives. But I no longer put in a CD or LP, unless it is not available on music services, but I also go through collectors’ markets or flea markets. This is active environmental protection and does not harm the artists, because everyone gets his stream. If he wants, not from my hard drive, but for a fee over the net. Who is only interested in the business and not in the art, has bad cards with me.
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2 more years Uwe and I hope to be joining the large group of retirees on this forum
Looking at the payment structure maybe we should all be streaming all our music, but I find it hard to do that when I know I have a local copy. Interesting to think about that.
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If you’re loosing money on sales shifting higher volumes just makes things worse
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Lucky you finances won’t allow me to retire until I’m 67. 15 years to go sigh!.
Ha ha very true, hence the snark…
That’s why I sadly think Apple will turn it into a two horse race (through continued discounting).
Though to be fair to Google they are at least making a good show of it. Though I think it is more to do with YouTube than the merits of YouTube music based on my usage experience (though that could well be me). The smaller players are going to be priced out of the markets.
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Sadly who said I can afford it
But I can at least give up the high stress 24/7 job I have now and leave the company in a good place. Thankfully I live in a relatively low cost part of the country and have paid my mortgage off.
One of the luckiest meetings in my life was to meet a very good financial adviser within a couple of weeks of starting work after University. If I hadn’t had that meeting I would have probably p1ss3d all my earnings away for the first 15 - 20 years instead of putting a decent chunk into my pension.
Most of us work this out too late to make this back out.
I try to advise the younger guys that work for/with me now and almost none of them are interested in overpaying into their pensions to take the longer term benefits and salary sacrifice improvements of no tax paid.
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Lol, I didn’t have the luck, but it’s been fun… as long as I can afford music and beer, life is good 
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You r lucky I never had the income to piss it all away when I was young let alone save for a pension. So for me its the long haul and even then will likely have to downsize to free up equity so is life.
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No chance of anything this year. Most likely would have already been discovered and discussed in the beta by now.
Next year I am hopeful. As I wrote a few months ago I’m guessing a hi-res lossless Airplay will probably need new hardware, call it Airplay 3 or whatever.
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I agree with you here. It will need to be a new thing if they want to pursue it as it brings far more complexity than the locked down Airplay 1 and 2 and will require a whole new certification.
I’m not talking hi res just 16/44 play. It’s my understanding that for some reason Airplay 1 and Shareport will play 16/44 but Airplay 2 reverts to a lossy AAC file when streaming Apple Music.
I’m hoping that gets fixed. That sounds like a bug to me .
Nope by design I would say to allow multiroom stability. If your multirooming airplay 2 lossless then the device your using is sending it out to all other devices, that’s quite a strain for a phone and a lot of users WiFi. Homepods not so as they have direct access it doesn’t go via Airplay