I&#x27;ve been told by people in the position to know that the 2010-era streaming services (Rdio, Spotify, Mog) were all effectively the same company: owned mostly by the music studios (in exchange for licenses) with a minority stake for each&#x27;s particular founders&#x2F;investors.  As Dalton Caldwell cautioned in 2011, licensing costs make music startups are nigh impossible [1].<p>For people who are willing to pay for a music service, it seems pretty hard to beat Google Music&#x27;s value proposition.  Because it&#x27;s a Google service, it can afford to compete as much as it needs to on price, and it also includes ad-free access to all of YouTube.  I certainly wouldn&#x27;t want to be a startup vying for that same $10 per month against one of the most popular content plays in the history of the Internet.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=wTOlrN5-UGU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=wTOlrN5-UGU</a>