[ardit33]

Former Spotify engineer here.

The reason you see Spotify excelling in streaming performance is that Spotify has both some very smart people working both in Europe and NYC to make that happen and Spotify made mobile streaming performance (to feel like a local file playback) a number one priority.

Also apple's offering is a reaction to Spotify's success and it suffers the "sequel effect" where the me too product is not that good. Their previous model was track downloads.

Also it is not a Big Corp vs Startup, but more of a team in a Big Corp vs well funded Startup that is dedicated to that mission.

(I'd say Spotify is way past the startup stage so it is more of Big Corp doing many things vs Big Corp doing only one thing).