America seems to be falling for Apple Music — MBLM
When it comes to how we feel about it, Apple Music is the number one app/social platform in the U.S.A., claims Brand Intimacy 2018 Report.
Good vibrations?
The MBLM survey measures how people feel about brands and industry sectors (“brand intimacy”). It’s a regular survey that’s been conducted for years, and often provides a useful insight into how well brands and sectors are performing. This year’s survey reveals multiple insights that may be valuable to Apple:
- Apple Music is the number one app/social platform in terms of how people feel
- The apps and social platforms industry itself (which, let’s remember, includes every single app and every single app platform, including malware-friendly ones) is only the 12th most well thought of industry.
- Facebook (oddly, given CA) is the second most well thought of app/brand – followed by third-place Spotify.
The remaining brands in the Top 10 app & social platforms industry were:
- Pinterest,
- Pandora,
- Snapchat,
- Google Maps,
- Twitter,
- Uber
- Instagram.
What is brand intimacy?
“Brand Intimacy is defined as a new paradigm that leverages and strengthens the emotional bonds between a person and a brand. For the third year, the study revealed that top intimate brands in the U.S. surpassed the top brands in the Fortune 500 and S&P indices in revenue and profit over the past 10 years.”
The app & social platform industry had a Brand Intimacy Quotient of 18.0, well below the industry average of 27.1.
Apple Music insights
It looks like people are getting used to using Apple Music, once they sign up for it. It was top of the class as a top brand that is being “ingrained into daily actions”, the survey said.
Which (I think) means people who use Apple Music have become very relaxed and habitual in how they use it. It is becoming a part of daily life, which has to be good news for future HomePod sales…
Another interesting insight is how swiftly Apple Music has become such an intimate brand: with the weight of the popular U.S. AAPL corporation behind it, the service hit the charts at number six in 2017, but reached the number one slot this year.
Also of interest
“Apple Music also ranked number one for millennials and men, while women preferred Facebook,” the study claims, while people aged 18-24 prefer Spotify.
Google may finally be seeing its own period of critical consideration beginning as Google Maps joined Pinterest and Instagram in having lower Brand Intimacy Quotients than they did last year.
More data here.
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For me it I all about being able to carry what I already have in iTunes with me. That is a compelling feature. While Music Match had this feature, I didn’t adopt either until the limit was raised from 25k songs to 100k, and Apple Music offered a 3 month trial… Once I could add music I recorded to iTunes, and just have it appear on my iPhone like magic it was a no-brainer…
Yes right a default of sorts, however, being intimate with a brand goes farther. Though this category of brands performs poorly on average, Apple Music is 4 times more intimate than Instagram. The brand performs better with males and with older users. I believe being an app within the seamless Apple ecosystem tells a big part of the story and the other is I think people trust it.