With the recent launch of Apple Music, streaming music services like Tidal and Spotify are adjusting their packages and pricing to compete for customers, reports The Verge. In fact, yesterday Tidal announced that it will now offer a family plan. Like the other services, the first household user will pay full price and each additional member gets a 50% discount.Comparing costs, that still puts Tidal well above Apple Music’s price for a 6-user household. For six people, Apple family plan users will pay $14.99 a month, while Tidal premium members will pay $34.94/month.Currently, Spotify and Rdio offer the same pricing for their family plans, but The Verge reported last month that Spotify plans to match Apple Music’s flat rate family plan.

Insider Take:Based on price alone, Rdio and Pandora offer the most affordable plans, and for consumers like students who are driven by price, this is important. We believe the real competitive advantage exists in the features of each streaming music service. They each offer something a little different. Spotify, for example, allows users to listen offline, play music and videos on-demand, build playlists, and share music with friends. You can’t, however, listen to Taylor Swift on Spotify.Originally started in 2009, famous artists like Jay Z, Beyoncé, Kanye West and Rihanna bought Tidal to “restore the value of music in the eyes (and ears) of listeners.”

In an article in The Guardian, Jay Z explains, “People are not respecting the music, and [are] devaluing it and devaluing it and what it really means. People really feel like music is free, but will pay $6 for water.”This devotion to music is perhaps why Tidal offers a HiFi version for high fidelity music and videos that no one else can offer. We think Tidal’s competitive advantage will be quality, but also exclusive content that its owners can offer subscribers.Apple Music launched last week. So far, it has differentiated itself by combining its new streaming music service with Beats and Apple Music Radio to provide 24-7 broadcasting. It is also offering curated playlists, playlists created by Siri® and it will include purchased music from iTunes and CDs uploaded to iTunes. So far, however, it is only available to Apple users, but Apple promises it is coming to Android users this fall.It will be interesting to see how the streaming music services will evolve over time in terms of customer base, pricing and packages. We expect there to be some price wars, but we think it will boil down to each company defining its niche and really focusing on its target markets. The services can’t be all things to all people, nor should they be. They should focus on their strengths and making their subscribers happy, ensuring long-term loyalty and a steady stream of subscription revenue.It’s anyone’s game. We don’t see anyone dropping the mic anytime soon.