In terms of customer satisfaction, at least, Apple Music is the top-rated streaming music service, J.D. Power said in its first Streaming Music Satisfaction Study, published on Wednesday.
35 percent of polled Apple Music subscribers were "strongly committed" to it, according to J.D. Power's research data. Spotify and Google Play Music tied for second at 30 percent each.
62 percent of Apple's listership cited compatibility with their devices as a reason for signing up. Apple Music is baked into iOS and macOS, and while it can also be used on Android and Windows, some features -- like Siri voice commands -- won't work away from Apple devices. Google Play Music is integrated into Android, but only 53 percent of its customers cited compatibility as a reason to join -- one percentage point higher than Spotify, which is platform-independent.
Despite Apple's emphasis on exclusives, that appears to be doing little to draw in new customers, as only 5 percent of subscribers mentioned "original content" as a motivation -- the same level as Google Play Music. In fact, Google and TuneIn Radio tied for the highest levels of actual listening to exclusive content at 20 percent, two points higher than Apple.
Across all services though, J.D. Power noted that people who listened to exclusive content were more likely be satisfied, and/or recommend their service to others.
At a little over a year old, Apple Music already has over 17 million subscribers. It's still well distant of Pandora and Spotify, which have over 80 and 100 million people respectively, even if many listeners are using free ad-based tiers. Spotify, though, has over 40 million paid customers alone.