The real reason is the deals they have with the record labels. There's only 4 record labels, plus a block of indies that make a 5th, and they don't have any int

The real reason is the deals they have with the record labels. There's only 4 record labels, plus a block of indies that make a 5th, and they don't have any interest in picking a winner between the services, so everyone basically pays the same price. The actual deals are quite complex, but under the pricing model that is most advantageous to the streaming service it basically comes down to the labels get about $6.50 a month per subscriber, and then a cut above that. So that's a hard floor, and with the cut and other costs it's hard to make a business on anything less than $10/month. And obviously you can't go above $10. This is also why everyone charges more for Apple customers, if they gave 30% to Apple, there would be no revenue at all.