It took Apple Music a full year to have its entire library to play on Google Nest smart speakers in India. The deal, which was announced globally last December, allows all Google Nest speakers such as the Nest Audio, Nest Hub Max and Nest Mini to have full access to Apple Music.
Apple has provided its entire music catalogue now to Google Nest users in India and four other countries, viz., Australia, Canada, South Korea and Mexico. The service had rolled out last year in the United States, the UK, France, Germany and Japan. With this update, Apple Music offered Google Nest owners over 70 million songs in its catalog, making it about twice as large as Spotify in terms of song count.
“With Apple Music now available on Nest devices such as Nest Mini, Nest Audio, Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max, Apple Music subscribers now have more choices when it comes to where they can utilize their Apple Music service," the search engine giant said in a statement.
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What took them so long?
And what took the two tech giants so long after their initial agreement to roll out the feature across more geographies? There is no official word on the delay from either of the two players. There is speculation though that the low sales volume of Google Nest devices in India could be a factor.
On its part, Apple itself had delayed its entry into music streaming for several years. In fact, it was only when a Swedish developer and team had accumulated 22 million subscribers on Spotify that the tech giant woke up. Its first act was to acquire Beats Electronics for $3 billion, following which Apple Music was launched in June 2015.
The company hit the ground running with 11 million subscribers but it was not until an interface revamp a year later that numbers began growing. Apple Music revenues were around $4.1 billion in 2020, accounting for nearly 8% of Apple's receivables from the services side.
The company probably views India as a potential high growth market, given that its rival Spotify had over 2 million paid subscribers in the country last year. There is also the report around Spotify offering budding talent a short-video making option that could rival TikTok. Now, this is another area that Apple obviously missed out, given that Google acquired YouTube and is ruling the music video world.
How to set up Apple Music on Google Nest
- On your iPhone, iPad, or Android device, open the Google Home app. Tap Settings
- The next step is to Tap on the Music icon
- Under More music services, tap Link icon next to Apple Music. Then tap link account.
- Sign in with the Apple ID that you use with Apple Music, and follow the onscreen steps to complete setup.
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