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Apple Music works far more easily on HomePod than other music streamers. That both incentivizes people to buy HomePod and, maybe more importantly, gives consumers who have HomePod reason to sign up for the service.(AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

Apple is turning up the volume on Apple Music, the streaming subscription that comes loaded on its devices, including the new HomePod smart speaker.

Apple is making easy to use(get roped into) all of their services, nothing wrong with that, good marketing really. Everything is still available in the Appstore, Apple hasn't banned Spotify yet. The smart user will use what they use, Let the buyer beware. I completely understand the '30% in app purchase burn' felt by the sellers in the Appstore. The Vivofit 3 is a band-style activity tracker that features an impressive one-year battery life – no charging required – and syncs automatically with the Garmin Connect companion app to. Spotify is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs. Spotify is calling the show Traffic Jams. And while it has a lot in common with Apple Music’s Carpool Karaoke, Spotify hopes some key difference will set its show apart. Apple Music may finally have the muscle to knock off Spotify. Updated Jan 30, 2019; Posted Feb 12, 2018 (Apple) Facebook Share. ICloud and the App store - composed just 10. Does Apple Music finally have the muscle to knock off Spotify? Steven Zeitchik The Washington Post. ICloud and the App store - composed just 10 percent of overall revenue of $88.3 billion in.

But that could mute the potential of Spotify, the independent music subscription service that aims to go public this year.

'We are at an inflection point in digital music,' said Lloyd Greif, who runs Greif & Co., a Los Angeles-based investment company specialized in entertainment and media. 'If Spotify doesn't make a move, Apple could be dominating within 12 months. Apple is coming for them and they can't stand still.'

Since it launched nearly three years ago, Apple Music has tried hard to make inroads against Spotify. The Swedish company, founded in 2008, entered the U.S. market in 2011 and quickly began accumulating subscribers with its tantalizing offer of millions of songs at the swipe of a finger. (It also offers an ad-supported service that generates far less revenue.)

As of late 2017, Spotify had 18.2 million subscribers in the U.S. compared to Apple Music's 15 million, according to Billboard. Both charge $9.99 monthly for their primary service. (Globally, Spotify has a significant advantage-140 million active users, according to the company, nearly twice Apple's tally.)

But Apple is gaining on Spotify. According to a Wall Street Journal story, Apple currently has a 5 percent monthly growth rate in paid U.S. subscribers compared to 2 percent for its chief competitor. If that holds, Apple will surpass the Swedish firm by summer -- especially salient given Spotify's plans for a U.S. IPO in the coming months.

Apple and Spotify declined to comment.

Apple's amping up of its music streaming business is the latest example of a tech giant tacking a side venture onto its existing platform -- in this case, products such as the iPhone, Apple Watch and HomePod -- but in the process greatly impairing a smaller competitor.

Facebook did this when it introduced a feature on several of its sites, including Instagram, that directly mimicked one of the most popular uses of rival Snapchat. The Instagram feature, known as Stories, last year surpassed 250 million daily users compared to 166 million people who used any part of Snapchat at least once a day for the same time period.

And when Amazon got in to meal kits last year, the announcement sent the stock of Blue Apron down more than 10 percent in one day.

Apple is bidding for a music-streaming edge by locking users into its universe of products. Apple Music works far more easily on HomePod, which debuted Friday, than other music streamers. That both incentivizes people to buy HomePod and, maybe more importantly, gives consumers who have HomePod reason to sign up for the service.

'Let's be candid-a lot of people are compelled to go to Apple because they're in the Apple ecosystem; without those restrictions they wouldn't choose to go there,' said Peter Fader, a Wharton School of Business professor who has studied consumer behavior and the music industry.

Apple Music makes up a very small silver of the company's overall business. The division of which it's a part -- which also includes such services as Apple Pay, iCloud and the App store -- composed just 10 percent of overall revenue of $88.3 billion in the first quarter of 2018.

Still, the division's importance is growing-the year prior it composed about 8.5 percent of the company's overall revenue for the quarter -- as growth for products like the iPhone and Mac have slowed.

'Apple has a strategic reason to have a robust streaming-music business,' said Larry Miller, a professor of music business at New York University's Steinhardt School, alluding to the sector's health relative to Apple's hardware business. 'And they have some very powerful strategic assets -- like cash -- to deploy and win the streaming-music arms race.'

That money, he said, could be used to increase the marketing of -- and technological bells and whistles on -- the service, which would then attract and retain more subscribers.

Such a move could have deep implications for the music business. A powerful Apple Music would allow the tech giant to hold more sway over record labels or even raise prices to customers who've become hooked on the service.

Streaming now accounts for 62 percent of music revenues in the U.S., according to the Recording Industry Association of America, thanks to Apple Music and Spotify, as well as less popular services from Pandora, Amazon and YouTube. (Amazon's chief executive, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.)

If Apple seizes this business, it would mark a kind of back-to-the-future moment. The Cupertino, Calif., company once had a chokehold on digital music via iTunes, back when paid downloads reigned. It often used its leverage to extract higher royalties -- until the market cratered due to streaming.

'Apple didn't ultimately win then but they see this as a chance to win now,' Greif said. 'This goes deep in the company's DNA.'

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Record companies don't wish for that dominance -- and not just because it's Apple. Executives at the Big Three of Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony Music, speaking anonymously to not jeopardize their relationships with streamers, said multiple streaming players are in their interest. Such diversity increases innovation among the streaming platforms and prevents any one company from gaining too much leverage over them.

'We think a competitive marketplace is important to the health of the streaming business,' one executive told The Post. 'A single player is very unhealthy.'

To stay competitive, Spotify needs capital of its own, which is where the IPO comes in. The company is likely to issue the offering this spring and plans on an unconventional Wall Street approach.

But Spotify may already hold an advantage, say some experts: superior personalization and user interfaces. Wharton's Fader notes that, despite Apple's ability to lock users into its ecosystem, Spotify knows its users better and can cater to them in both their design and their technology. 'Apple has a home-field advantage but Spotify has the better team,' he said.

Unlike video, where streaming giants such as Netflix and Amazon can boast very different content, music offerings are largely similar. Apple has an extremely large library of about 45 million songs, but Spotify still has 30 million songs, sufficient for most users.

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So the companies have tried to distinguish themselves in other ways, like the customer experience. Because of its ease-of-use with playlists, Spotify tends to be more popular among those who prefer curating choices from diverse sources compared to Apple's more artist- and album-driven clientele. With its global bent, Spotify at times is more diverse in the music it promotes, veering from pop and hip-hop more often than Apple.

Amazon, meanwhile, has sought to sell its service in part on the ease of use with its Echo speaker.

With the number of streaming subscribers in the U.S. currently estimated at lower than 50 million, many new customers are still up for grabs. Data from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners show that comparatively few Americans now pay for streaming services-no more than 13 percent of iPhone users subscribe to any single service. For Amazon customers the ratio is even lower, at 10 percent.

That means Apple still is far from winning. But it also means there's an opportunity for Spotify to fall further behind.

'We're in the late innings of early adoption,' said NYU's Miller. 'There's a lot of room for these companies to grow-or fail.'

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Knock Off Spotify Apps

Spend enough time on the internet and you’re bound to come across a horror story or two of some unfortunate soul duped into spending hundreds of dollars on a counterfeit or fake phone. It may look like a brand new Samsung Galaxy S9 from the outside, but it’s not even close on the inside, with a cheap camera, outdated processor, and other cheaper components instead of the real thing.

Counterfeiting Samsung’s high-end products is big business in China. According to AnTuTu’s 2017 knock-off smartphone report, Samsung smartphones accounted for over 36 percent of the counterfeit market last year, significantly outpacing the iPhone’s 7.7 percent and Huawei’s meager 3.4 percent. The European Galaxy S7 Edge was by far the most faked phone on the list. The company’s 2017 report found 2.64 percent of the 17,424,726 verified phones that ran its benchmarks were knock-offs. That’s 460,000 confirmed fakes out there just based on this single sample. Given there are more than a billion smartphones on the market, that extrapolates to many millions of knockoffs.

Antutu

Buying a new phone from a reputable retailer is your safest bet, but that’s not always possible. The growing market for second hand, refurbished, and cheaper import phones is a hotbed of potential shady products and knock-offs. If you want to avoid wasting your cash on a fake phone, here’s our easy guide to help check that your new phone is authentic.

Symptoms to watch for: Shoddy exterior

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The most obvious place to detect a fake phone is the exterior design; buttons in the wrong place, bezels that don’t look quite right, or a camera housing that isn’t flush when it should be. Unfortunately, well-executed dodgy devices aren’t so easy to detect from the outside, they only become obvious once you start using them.

If you’re dealing with a private seller, the first port of call is to make sure the device actually turns on. Even if you’re not there in person, the seller should be able to provide images with the screen on, and probably even send you a short video or GIF of them flicking through the UI. Never be afraid to ask for a closer look at the screen, even if it’s just for cracks and scratches.

Knockoff software is usually a dead give away, particularly if the UI or app icons don’t match the official device theme. You can get to know a new device just by watching some YouTube videos of reviews. Keep an eye out for strange looking launchers and icons, missing features or menus, or non-standard pre-installed apps.

To the untrained eye, it's not easy to spot this fake Galaxy S9 at a casual glance. It's the one on the right by the way.
Redskull To the untrained eye, it’s not easy to spot this fake Galaxy S9 at a casual glance. It’s the one on the right by the way.

Performance is equally important here, and it’s the main point that victims notice after purchase. Counterfeit handsets often include cheaper processors, which stutter and lag their way through daily use. Some apps and toggles probably won’t even run because the operating system is only skin deep, so be sure to have a good dig through the OS and a few apps to make sure everything works correctly. If you can’t do so in person, you can always ask for video evidence. This is generally good advice for buying used or refurbished phones anyway — it’s helpful for detecting if aging handsets have any battery or processor problems.

As always, be sure to follow general buying rules for used products too. Don’t agree to pay outside of official platforms where you won’t be protected, meet in mutually agreeable locations, and avoid requests to bring cash on a first meet. Pushy unofficial sellers who won’t answer detailed questions are, as always, a major warning sign too.

If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Testing the phone out

While it’s not always possible, we highly advise checking out second hand and refurbished phones in person before handing over big sums of money. This way you can not only double check the physical condition of the handset but also run a few simple tests to make sure it’s not a fake phone on the inside either.

Check that the hardware matches up

A fake phone will scrimp out on cheaper hardware alternatives to make a profit. The most common scams involve using poor quality cameras, omitting NFC or fingerprint components, and even running homebrew software on cheaper processors. Fortunately, it’s very easy to find official spec sheets from handset manufacturers online to double check against the phone in your hands.

Display resolution, UI themes, and processing hardware are the best ways to check for counterfeit hardware.

First, make sure all the hardware works. Toggle Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, NFC, and any other features on and off. Maybe even connect to another device or network. Checking the fingerprint scanner options are actually in the security settings menu isn’t a bad idea either, even if the seller isn’t keen on you locking the phone with your print before buying.

Don’t forget to test out the cameras either. Make sure both the front and back cameras work and have all the features promised with the device, like a wide angle lens or telephoto zoom. A fake camera app’s features and layout are always different from official software. Finally, take a picture and check the megapixel count. You can do this by pressing the info button in the default gallery app or Google Photos. A clearly inferior camera module will be pretty easy to spot based on the photos it takes, even as viewed on the phone.

Run CPU-Z

As we’ve mentioned, a counterfeit processor is a major red flag and will ruin your experience with your new phone, so it’s definitely worth comparing the chip in the phone against the official spec sheet.

You don’t need to take the phone apart to do this, you just need to quickly install CPU-Z from the Play Store. CPU-Z will give you a rundown of the key processing and low-level software components running inside the phone, which makes it virtually impossible to spoof.

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Once installed, you can check out details about the CPU and GPU hardware on the opening page. If you’re not really into that technical stuff, the Device tab will give you the name of the processor chip under Hardware, which you can simply check against the spec sheet. You’ll also find the amount of RAM and the phone’s display resolution listed on this page, which again will instantly flag up any knock-offs. You can also install AIDA64 to cross-reference some details.

Compare the IMEI number

All of the above will help you spot a cheap fake phone, but it won’t help against stolen or blacklisted products. To do this, you’ll want to check out the International Mobile Equipment Identification number (IMEI) against the claims made by your seller.

Each phone’s cellular modem is given a unique 15 digit IMEI number. It’s registered against the phone’s make and model number, used to register and lock devices to specific networks, and can also be blacklisted to block phones or SIMs if they’re stolen.

A phone's IMEI can tell you the model associated with it, network compatibility, and if the handset has been stolen.

You can find a phone’s IMEI number in the About Phone section of the Android Settings menu. Alternatively, simply type *#06# into the phone’s dialer and a box will pop up with the number. The IMEI is also included on the phone’s box, making it a cinch to double-check if your prospective purchase comes in its original packaging. Alternatively, popping the number into the imei.info website will give you a breakdown of the handset’s status.

The IMEI number is also very helpful for checking if the phone is locked to a specific network. If you’re promised an unlocked phone, you certainly won’t want to find out it’s locked when you pop your SIM in. Sometimes sellers simply don’t check this information, others use the allure of an unlocked phone to bring in unsuspecting customers.

Been scammed? What now?

It’s not always possible to check all this with online sellers, but if you end up with a dud handset it’s not the end of the road. Legal protections will vary depending on your country of residence and chasing up fraudulent sellers is often a lost cause, but your method of payment can offer a level of protection.

Cash is best avoided, both due to the lack of a paper trail and inability to recover payment, even if you did get a receipt. Credit cards are better than debit, cash cards, or bank transfers in this regard too, as your bank can usually dispute a transaction to obtain a chargeback. Always check your specific bank’s terms and conditions. When buying online, PayPal offers inclusive buyer protection specifically covering knock-off goods and used products. Be sure to obtain proof of purchase and a detailed description of the item from the seller to act as evidence, just in case. It’s also a good idea to familiarize yourself with the seller’s reputation online via reviews and forum posts before committing to a purchase. A quick Google ahead of time might save you lots of agony after the fact.

The best phones under 15,000 rupees in India

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Best budget phones with (near) bezel-less displays

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With all of the above in mind, you should be well prepared and protected against ending up with a fake phone. Chances of encountering one are slim, but it’s always best to be prepared. If you have any of your own tips or experiences to share, be sure to leave a comment below.