A classic Silicon Valley tactic — losing money to crush rivals — comes in for scrutiny

When Apple launches new subscription products, such as Apple Music and Apple TV Plus, often with free or deeply discounted introductory offers, the company sometimes publicly acknowledges that its goal isn’t to make money on them, at least in the short term. Even so, the company benefits by enmeshing its software ecosystem ever more tightly with customers’ daily lives, so that they’ll keep buying iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches. Apple can afford to lose money on streaming music indefinitely; rival Spotify, whose primary business is streaming music, cannot.