As business was winding up in Europe yesterday evening, Apple was kicking off its 26th annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco with a key-note speech from CEO Tim Cook - and music streaming was the main issue on the agenda.
One interested observer was Daniel Ek, founder and CEO of Spotify, the company that has become the early frontrunner in the music streaming game in Europe and North America - he was quick to fire off his initial reaction to Apple's product.
He has since decided to delete the tweet - but left a couple of retweets criticising other aspects of the Apple launch on his page.
The day before the event an interview with the Spotify boss was published on musically.com - when asked about Apple's imminent entry into music streaming, he seemed to be ready for the challenge:
"Almost all internet companies are competing against both Apple and Google in some vertical. That’s pretty normal. Yes, they have a lot of money, but what’s interesting about the world of the internet is that money doesn’t really translate into a very natural success. People tend to attribute a lot more value to that than it actually has."
He continues: "Dropbox is still doing very well despite Apple’s iCloud or Google Drive or Microsoft’s SkyDrive. Evernote is doing very well despite Notes existing on every iPhone. And our success is that this is our business: we don’t really do anything else other than selling music, so we’re the most aligned with the music industry."
It is worth pointing out that even with 15 million paying subscribers and revenues of over €1bn - Spotify is leaking more money than it's taking in - it finished 2014 with an operating loss of €165.1m.
These numbers can be explained by the fact that Spotify is still in 'start-up' mode and focusing on growing its user base, rather than maximising profits.
What is perhaps more worrying is the company's recent pre-Apple Music launch event launching new features within the app like short videos and music with BPMs matched to joggers' heart-rates - watching it try to hype-up these unexciting add-ons didn't inspire too much confidence in the future of the brand.
With Apple controlling hardware, having a bank of 800 million users' credit card data enabling a one-touch sign-up, and a big marketing budget - Spotify now has a battle on its hands.
While it is currently the most successful streaming company, there are only a max of 40 million people paying streaming subscription at the moment - so there is a big audience still to be fought for, and the competition just got a lot stiffer.
