Well, That Was Quick - Bored Already, Not Going To Keep Apple Music

[boltjames]

It was a relevant response to your post. Using a mobile device whilst driving, even just to select music, is reckless endangerment. It's another illegal activity you've demonstrated in this thread. Between that and your rampant egomania, along with repeated using inaccurate or made up facts, that make your arguments and this thread, pointless and a waste of space.

You obviously cannot accept any rational counter arguments, as you just ignore any points that prove you wrong. It's the equivalent to a child putting their fingers in their ears and going 'la la la la la I'm not listening'

We discuss subject matter here, not other posters. If you have an issue with myself or someone else of a personal nature use PM like everyone else.

Otherwise, jump back into the Apple Music discussion and make a valid argument worthy of discussion.

BJ

 

[Dub1ous]

It is what it is - a music subscription streaming service - I'm just getting more and more offended by your insinuation that I am moron suckered in by Apple scamming me just because it doesn't happen to offer you a good enough value proposition.

Bingo. That's what gets people defensive, and then accused of being Apple apologists.

It's a streaming service and either it's right for you or it's not. If it's not, that doesn't make everyone else who buys it an idiot.

 

[Uofmtiger]

The $12 average spend is actually very high.

It relates only to iTunes customers, who are more likely to purchase music. The average annual spend for the world is $3.

Whatever the number is, it is irrelevant. There are many other avenues to buy/stream music. Apple Music is competing in all of those markets.

 

[boltjames]

I was never a big fan of the Stones, but got their Grrr album before seeing them at Glastonbury just a couple of years ago.

I listen to maybe 5 Stones song a year on a playlist of oldies that I put on Apple TV and Bluetooth speakers throughout my estate when my father-in-law and his family come over for a barbeque. I ripped them from a CD I purchased in 1995 for $12. I am very happy that I don't get a bill from Tower Records for $12 a year for the privilege of occasionally hearing a few bars of "Brown Sugar" as I flip a burger and sip merlot.

It is what it is - a music subscription streaming service - I'm just getting more and more offended by your insinuation that I am moron suckered in by Apple scamming me just because it doesn't happen to offer you a good enough value proposition.

You should not be offended. You are not who I am talking about. Like anything in life there are the 1%'ers, the outliers. If you customarily download 120+ songs per year and find the current FM/XM/iTunes radio offerings substandard and didn't download to your hearts content in the Napster era, God bless you, Apple Radio is perfect for you. Just perfect.

I am talking about the average person downloading the average 12 tracks a year and spending the average $12 annually. You shouldn't be offended because I'm actually not talking about you. I'm talking about my 11 year old daughter, my 75 year old mother, the bathroom attendant, the waiter, the car valet, etc.

Did you ever answer my question about how to properly discover new music, seeing as hearing new music on the radio, or a curated playlist doesn't count because it has just been spoon fed?

Yes. Several times. The answer is: There is no better way to discover new music than that which has already been established and is free. iTunes previews, iTunes Radio, Pandora, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Later with Jools Holland, friends at a party. There simply isn't enough great music out there that you haven't found already through these sources or can't find in the future. In the history of recorded music, there has been no Rosetta Stone, no Dead Sea Scrolls, no smoking gun great band whose work from 1988-1993 was so tremendous, so astounding, that the entire world missed the next Beatles, the next Police, the next U2.

BJ

 

[johngordon]

It's not hogwash. It's an average. An average spend of all people who have iTunes. It's $12.

You don't need to get stuck in the math, most of this is common sense. People are used to the established business models. iTunes Radio is free, it's very diverse, it's customizable, lots of discovery there. iTunes Movies is fantastic, they have a hugely deep catalog and we can rent a single movie for $3 with no other strings attached. iTunes is the best thing ever, they have every song ever made and all labels/artists onboard for $1 a song with no other strings attached.

But why are you factoring in probably tens of millions of people who don't buy any music?

We have an Indian restaurant where we live - when setting their prices, should they base it on the average spend of everyone who lives in the town, including lots of people who never eat there?

Ah, but now they're trying to change that Music model that we love so much and worked so well. And while the simplistic view sounds interesting ($10 a month for every song ever made just like iTunes!) you dig just a hair under the hood and it's very discouraging ($120 a year for the rest of your life, fragmented services, fragmented artists, incomplete catalog, Beats 1 a gimmick, For You just iTunes Radio repurposed).

They are not trying to change it at all - it is simply another model in addition to the existing one.

Stop using terms like "fragmented" just because it doesn't literally include every_single_thing.

Beats 1 is not a gimmick - its an actual radio station, and from what I have heard a pretty good one.

Good post, but two things:

1. Early in the thread I proposed a hybrid streaming model that includes the ability to permanently keep a portion of the tracks each year and from a personal standpoint that would be what it would take to get me over the top. And we're not talking about milk here. The "product" of Apple Music is a tiny song file living on a server.

2. On pricing, $12 is the average of all users. If Apple got $24 from those same users it's a huge win obviously, and then think of the conversion on everyone else- that important group who has an iPhone or an iPad and doesn't buy any music at all. Get only 20% of those people, it's a massive win. The assumptions aren't faulty; the average is the average. Take any corporations revenue and increase the average annual intake by 20% and it's happy days for investors.

BJ

That model is just ridiculous though - if it currently costs $24 for two albums, then its utterly absurd to think that that same $24 could get you those two albums, plus everything you get as part of the streaming subscription.

That model basically places a value of $0.00 on everything you get as part of the streaming subscription, which is obviously nonsensical.

 

[boltjames]

But please - for the love of God - stop with this nonsense about how it is objectively poor, and anyone who disagrees is an idiot who has somehow been fooled by Apple propaganda.

I can assure you I am in full control of my faculties, understand exactly what the proposition is, and really do consider it, for me, an excellent value proposition.

Its this simple - if I wanted to buy all the music I ever thought I would like to hear it would likely cost me at least $500 a year. With Apple Music it will cost me $120 a year.

Please explain how that isn't a great value proposition for someone in my position, who - gasp! - still thinks there's a lot of great music being released?

See my post above about how you're a 1%'er, an outlier.

Regarding the value proposition, you're forgetting that you can't just subscribe to Apple Music to get what you want. You're going to have to subscribe to Spotify and Tidal and any other streaming service to get everything that's out there. Want Taylor Swift? Get Apple Music. Want Prince? Get Tidal. What's that going to cost? $500 a year when all is said and done?

And you know where this is headed, right? It's Cable TV. The Sopranos are only on HBO so you need to subscribe to HBO. The Beatles are only on Sony/ATV so you need to subscribe to Sony/ATV.

Good luck keeping up with that.

BJ

 

[johngordon]

I listen to maybe 5 Stones song a year on a playlist of oldies that I put on Apple TV and Bluetooth speakers throughout my estate when my father-in-law and his family come over for a barbeque. I ripped them from a CD I purchased in 1995 for $12. I am very happy that I don't get a bill from Tower Records for $12 a year for the privilege of occasionally hearing a few bars of "Brown Sugar" as I flip a burger and sip merlot.

Firstly, you are missing the point, which was that even though I downloaded quite a bit form Napster or Limewire back in the day, I do not have 100% of everything I would ever want.

Secondly, I am not paying for that over and over, I am paying for a service which is continually providing me with new music to listen to, easily more than I could buy for the same amount of money.

You should not be offended. You are not who I am talking about. Like anything in life there are the 1%'ers, the outliers. If you customarily download 120+ songs per year and find the current FM/XM/iTunes radio offerings substandard and didn't download to your hearts content in the Napster era, God bless you, Apple Radio is perfect for you. Just perfect.

I am talking about the average person downloading the average 12 tracks a year and spending the average $12 annually. You shouldn't be offended because I'm actually not talking about you. I'm talking about my 11 year old daughter, my 75 year old mother, the bathroom attendant, the waiter, the car valet, etc.

But you have been arguing that Apple Music is a sham and a con. So surely I must be an idiot to fall for it?

So what about the average person downloading the average 12 tracks a year?

This might sound like a daft question, but you do realise they don't actually have to subscribe to Apple Music?

If we include everyone on the planet who doesn't buy any music, then I suppose listening to more than 12 albums a year would put me in a very small minority.

But if you only include people with even a modest interest in music, then I don't think one or two albums a month would be that small a minority.

Yes. Several times. The answer is: There is no better way to discover new music than that which has already been established and is free. iTunes previews, iTunes Radio, Pandora, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Later with Jools Holland, friends at a party. There simply isn't enough great music out there that you haven't found already through these sources or can't find in the future. In the history of recorded music, there has been no Rosetta Stone, no Dead Sea Scrolls, no smoking gun great band whose work from 1988-1993 was so tremendous, so astounding, that the entire world missed the next Beatles, the next Police, the next U2.

BJ

But you argued that discovering music on Apple Music wasn't any good because it was being pushed to the consumer.

Isn't music pushed to consumers in exactly the same way with all of those other services you mention?

Can you please stop telling me that there isn't enough great music out there that I haven't already found? With the greatest respect, I'll be the judge of that.

I don't know why you twist the discovery of music to the individual into the discovery of music that no-one has ever heard before.

And of course a streaming subscription is better, if I have access to playlists that are curated based on what I tell it I like. Sure, its never going to be perfect, and its going to include a lot of stuff I don't like, but its going to be better than rocking up at YouTube, which knows squat about what I like.

 

[boltjames]

Point is you can't make ridiculous sweeping comments like:

Apple Music costs 10x more than if you buy music.

It doesn't.

You might as well argue that it shouldn't cost $360 for 36 albums, because that's 36 x more expensive.

Give me another factual datapoint and we can use that if you like. Right now all we know is that the average iTunes user spends $12 a year downloading music and Apple Music costs $120.

We don't really need better metrics, do we? Again, it's common sense.

Apple Music is designed for the hardcore music buyer because no one else would be foolish enough to spend $120 a year when they're usually spending $0 or $6 or $12. And there are very few hardcore music buyers because there is so little decent music to download anyway.

And that's the crux of this whole thing; consumers paying labels a guaranteed amount of money in a given month when they have provided nothing of quality. It only encourages the exact opposite of what you really want- heaps of great new music. You're actually paying them to do just the opposite. No need to take a risk to break a new band when the old ones are pumping in a new revenue stream.

BJ

 

[navaira]

Want Taylor Swift? Get Apple Music. Want Prince? Get Tidal. What's that going to cost? $500 a year when all is said and done?

And you know where this is headed, right? It's Cable TV. The Sopranos are only on HBO so you need to subscribe to HBO. The Beatles are only on Sony/ATV so you need to subscribe to Sony/ATV.

This is why the idea of Apple creating content in house worries me. I would like to be able to pick ONE service and have access to everything. The chance of me subscribing simultaneously to Apple Music, Spotify, TIDAL, Deezer and whatever others there are is approximately 0,00%.

My solution will most probably be sticking with Spotify Premium (the interface isn't perfect but it beats AM by many, many miles) and buying stuff that I want to have on my phone for offline listening. But this doesn't solve the problem of music which is made exclusively available through one streaming service I do not want to pay for. So far the only thing that excited me on AM was the MIA video, but if this worrying tendency persists, I'm going to get stuck with hoping to find pirate copies.

 

[boltjames]

Present it as your own subjective opinion, particular to your circumstances, and not as some sort of objective fact which applies generally to everyone.

That's assumed in any discussion forum. I mean, really. You're a good poster, you put up quality arguments, don't stoop to this.

And since I'm the only one speaking on behalf of the common, average iTunes user, I think that my opinions generally do apply to all but the 1%'er outliers like yourself. The others putting up arguments appear to download 500+ songs a year. Apple's math says it's only 12. Huge discrepancy.

BJ

 

[boltjames]

Maybe if you let Apple and Spotify know that your kids would never buy as many as one album a month, and they might reconsider their pricing strategy.

They already know. They aren't significant players in the big picture of music finance. Little startups, trying a new business model that appeases record labels and ensures a more predictable revenue stream.

With respect, did you actually just say that you're iTunes collection is all the back catalogue your kids need?

You actually said that?

I'm actually speechless!

I know my kids tastes reflect mine. And I know that in the Genres of Rock, Pop, and Alternative there isn't a single artist since 1965 that I missed the boat on that might interest them in my 25,000 song collection. And if I did, they'll pick up on it from their friends, radio, TV shows, movies, YouTube, iTunes Radio, Pandora, Twitter, Instragram, Facebook, and all the other free forms of media available to them.

And if one of my kids decides he adores Reggae, well, he'll use Google, he'll search on the Top 100 Reggae Songs Of All Time, and then he'll go into iTunes and pay $1 for each of those songs he likes, perhaps 30 of them. He'll build a Reggae playlist, and that's the end of the 'archive'. On the go-forward 'discovery' front, he'll create a free iTunes radio custom station around keywords like "Bob Marley" or "New Reggae" or "No Woman No Cry" and new tracks from new artists will emerge.

You seem to think that Apple Music has reinvented everything. It hasn't. It's just made it more expensive.

BJ

 

[johngordon]

I know my kids tastes reflect mine. And I know that in the Genres of Rock, Pop, and Alternative there isn't a single artist since 1965 that I missed the boat on that might interest them. And if I did, they'll pick up on it from their friends, radio, TV shows, movies, YouTube, iTunes Radio, Pandora, Twitter, Instragram, Facebook, and all the other free forms of media available to them.

And if one of my kids decides he adores Reggae, well, he'll use Google, he'll search on the Top 100 Reggae Songs Of All Time, and then he'll go into iTunes and pay $1 for each of those songs he likes, perhaps 30 of them. He'll build a Reggae playlist, and that's the end of the 'archive'. On the go-forward 'discovery' front, he'll create a free iTunes radio custom station around keywords like "Bob Marley" or "New Reggae" or "No Woman No Cry" and new tracks from new artists will emerge.

You seem to think that Apple Music has reinvented everything. It hasn't. It's just made it more expensive.

BJ

Sorry, but with the greatest of respect its difficult to image any children not discovering music beyond their parent's music collection.

No - I really don't think they have reinvented anything at all. I have been using Spotify for a while, and understand perfectly that Apple Music is essentially the same thing. It has a couple of advantages for me personally, that I'm sure would not be advantages for a lot of other people.

It hasn't made anything more expensive. Again, you don't actually have to subscribe.

Going back to your $24 a year for two albums plus the streaming service.

Just plug that in to the Indian restaurant analogy.

Supposing there is a town where everyone likes to eat out in restaurants, but the average spend in that Indian restaurant, taking everyone in the town into account, is $1. Enough for a poppadom.

Would you propose that they could charge people $2 for two poppadoms plus an all you can eat buffet?

Because that is essentially what you are proposing for Apple Music.

 

[johngordon]

That's assumed in any discussion forum. I mean, really. You're a good poster, you put up quality arguments, don't stoop to this.

And since I'm the only one speaking on behalf of the common, average iTunes user, I think that my opinions generally do apply to all but the 1%'er outliers like yourself. The others putting up arguments appear to download 500+ songs a year. Apple's math says it's only 12. Huge discrepancy.

BJ

The trouble is you are using this view as a basis for what you consider a more appropriate pricing structure for a streaming subscription service.

I fundamentally disagree that that is remotely viable.

And again, out of the demographic of "people who are interested in music" (rather than "people with an iTunes account") I really can't be in an extreme 1% just because I might want to listen to as few as two new albums a month.

 

[boltjames]

This whole argument is ridiculous.

You might as well argue that, because the average spend on music is $12, that anyone should be able to get 30 albums for $12, or 50 albums per year, or 100 albums a year. For $12. Because that's your average.

It doesn't, and cannot ever, work like that.

Sure it can. You just aren't looking at streaming the right way. From a content standpoint, you embrace the new model. But from a pricing standpoint, you are stuck with the old one. It's illogical.

Heretofore music has been offered like ice cream. As a product. It's Tuesday, you want Chocolate Chip, you buy a cone, it's yours.

With streaming, music is now offered like gardening. As a service. It's Tuesday, the grass needs mowing, your lawn service comes, grass gets cut.

It costs $40 to get your lawn mowed. Someone could release a new technology that did a better job of cutting the grass, did it faster, did it more effectively, doesn't matter. People spend $40, not a penny more, and that's that.

If the world is used to spending $12 a year on adding new music to their library, offering them the whole catalog for $120 doesn't matter to them. They view new music as worth $12. Transitioning it from a product to a service makes no difference.

BJ

 

[navaira]

Apple Music is designed for the hardcore music buyer because no one else would be foolish enough to spend $120 a year when they're usually spending $0 or $6 or $12. And there are very few hardcore music buyers because there is so little decent music to download anyway.

Obviously I am not the average music consumer with my 33k songs library and broad tastes. My mother NEVER listens to music other than when TV happens to have some sort of schlager singer contest. Her spending is €0 per year and Apple Music is unlikely to change that because she has no computer and only uses my old iPhone 4S to FaceTime with me. An Apple Music subscription for her would be a sign of early dementia onset.

But I know a lot of people who used to download music from various MP3 sites. They now moved to Spotify, either ad-tier or Premium, because it's easier. I don't know if they will move to Apple Music. The longer the software continues to be buggy, the recommendations ridiculous and the iCloud upload removes songs, puts DRM on them or changes artwork, the less people are likely to even stick with the three month trial.

It only encourages the exact opposite of what you really want- heaps of great new music. You're actually paying them to do just the opposite. No need to take a risk to break a new band when the old ones are pumping in a new revenue stream.

But the current model is killing new artists other than winners of The Voice and Disney princesses. Records do not sell. Live gigs do, but when you are not Madonna or Britney Spears you hardly make any money off gigs (and sometimes new artists have to pay to perform because "it gives them exposure"). Of course popular artists make more money off streaming. But they also make more money off CDs and LPs. And off gigs. Basically popular artists are popular. ABBA Gold spent 713 weeks in the UK albums chart. I'm sure there are people listening to ABBA Gold on AM right now. My favourite discovery of last year was Asgeir, an Icelandic singer. I streamed the hell out of his album, then I bought it on vinyl after a gig, and then bought the triple CD with extra tracks, yet still stream it from Spotify because the computer that's connected to speakers all around the house doesn't have my library on it. But then there's Shamir, whose album I quite like, but not enough to go to a gig and buy a vinyl or CD. I like it just enough to stream it, and I found out it existed because a pop music I frequent mentioned the name and I went to Spotify and there it was. My boyfriend goes to New Releases section and plays whatever is there to find out if we like it or not. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't but there is no way in hell we would buy all those CDs just to try and see if we like them.

As for radio, Beats One just reminded me about why I don't listen to the radio since 1999 or so. Obnoxious DJs talking all the time. Rare song I like lost among 20 I don't. At least Beats One doesn't seem to do what Radio One is and repeat the same 10 songs every two hours. But that's still not enough reason for me to listen to it.

 

[whsbuss]

I can't decide who the troll is now

Nice thread bump, BTW.

No trolling here..... this thread keeps coming up as unread in the forum. Time to close it.

 

[johngordon]

Sure it can. You just aren't looking at streaming the right way. From a content standpoint, you embrace the new model. But from a pricing standpoint, you are stuck with the old one. It's illogical.

Heretofore music has been offered like ice cream. As a product. It's Tuesday, you want Chocolate Chip, you buy a cone, it's yours.

With streaming, music is now offered like gardening. As a service. It's Tuesday, the grass needs mowing, your lawn service comes, grass gets cut.

It costs $40 to get your lawn mowed. Someone could release a new technology that did a better job of cutting the grass, did it faster, did it more effectively, doesn't matter. People spend $40, not a penny more, and that's that.

If the world is used to spending $12 a year on adding new music to their library, offering them the whole catalog for $120 doesn't matter to them. They view new music as worth $12. Transitioning it from a product to a service makes no difference.

BJ

But the fundamental flaw in this argument is that your figure of $12 is based on everyone, rather than those who (regularly) buy music.

In your example with the gardening service, is the price of that service based on the average amount spent on gardeners by:

a. people who have a gardener

or

b. people who have a garden

or

c. people who have a house


Also going back to your $24 for two albums plus the streaming service, arguing that this would double the revenue for the industry.

But for that to work everyone who currently buys no music would have to subscribe.

But why would they do that?

 

[boltjames]

Well, yes.

Or are you telling me that all the music I thought I had discovered from year's of listening to John Peel, it turns out that I didn't really discovered it all, because it was "pushed" over the radio?

Or are there wires crossed here - obviously I wouldn't be claiming to have literally discovered music that no-one had ever heard before. I just mean discovered music which was new to me.

Does that not count in the context of "discovering music"?

The only way that an individual can "discover" new music is by hunting and pecking for it.

Think of a record store circa 1980. If you blow past all the Styx and Sugar Hill Gang being marketed in the front windows you'd have to go through the entire A-Z alphabetical archive to find a 12" square piece of vinyl with a name that you've never heard of. Rack after rack, row after row, looking for something that looked interesting just based on its sleeve art. With Apple Music, same thing. The only way to discover something new is by using keywords and using the Search box. Start with "A", work your way to "Z" so you don't miss anything.

All other methods are curated by someone or some corporation, no different than Rolling Stone magazine reviews in 1980. Some editor in San Francisco deciding which albums are good or bad and, more germainely, deciding which ones were even worthy of reviewing to begin with. Today's Beats 1, For You, custom playlists, somewhere in Cupertino there is a guy who decides what makes the cut as a 'push' for the month of August and who gets ignored, someone is deciding the track list for the Apple Alternative Radio station.

"Discovery" is a myth. It's cumbersome and unrealistic. And it's the only thing justifying Apple Music as a value of any sort. Hence the issue.

BJ

 

[johngordon]

The only way that an individual can "discover" new music is by hunting and pecking for it.

Think of a record store circa 1980. If you blow past all the Styx and Sugar Hill Gang being marketed in the front windows you'd have to go through the entire A-Z alphabetical archive to find a 12" square piece of vinyl with a name that you've never heard of. Rack after rack, row after row, looking for something that looked interesting just based on its sleeve art. With Apple Music, same thing. The only way to discover something new is by using keywords and using the Search box. Start with "A", work your way to "Z" so you don't miss anything.

All other methods are curated by someone or some corporation, no different than Rolling Stone magazine reviews in 1980. Some editor in San Francisco deciding which albums are good or bad and, more germainely, deciding which ones were even worthy of reviewing to begin with. Today's Beats 1, For You, custom playlists, somewhere in Cupertino there is a guy who decides what makes the cut as a 'push' for the month of August and who gets ignored, someone is deciding the track list for the Apple Alternative Radio station.

"Discovery" is a myth. It's cumbersome and unrealistic. And it's the only thing justifying Apple Music as a value of any sort. Hence the issue.

BJ

I think you're over analysing it to be honest.

In the context of "discovering new music" all I care about is have I, through whatever means or channel, got music to listen to today that I like, that I didn't have yesterday.

If the answer is "yes", then to any practical intent, I have "discovered" music which is new to me, and I am happy.

There is nothing mythical about that just because it might not have the romance of browsing through vinyl in a record store. Even then, I don't think I bought much stuff I hadn't heard based on the album art.

I don't really care that the music is being curated on something like Beats 1, especially when I know that, for example, from years of experience, that Zane Lowe will play a huge range of stuff, a lot of it I haven't heard before, and a fair amount of that that I like.

What practical alternative is there? Just going through iTunes and randomly listening to previews? No thanks.

 

[navaira]

All other methods are curated by someone or some corporation, no different than Rolling Stone magazine reviews in 1980. Some editor in San Francisco deciding which albums are good or bad and, more germainely, deciding which ones were even worthy of reviewing to begin with. Today's Beats 1, For You, custom playlists, somewhere in Cupertino there is a guy who decides what makes the cut as a 'push' for the month of August and who gets ignored, someone is deciding the track list for the Apple Alternative Radio station.

True. There are artists who fly under the radar of magazines, radio stations and Apple curators. (Like myself.) You are unlikely to "discover" them unless you expressly search for their music. But you won't search for it, because you don't know they exist. But...

"Discovery" is a myth. It's cumbersome and unrealistic. And it's the only thing justifying Apple Music as a value of any sort. Hence the issue.

...I do keep on discovering new artists that I like or love. Of course I am missing out on a lot of music -- what good does it do to me that AM had 30 million tracks if 29 million will never get on any curated playlist, get mentioned on a website I read or recommended to me by a friend. But I feel I get enough bang for my buck anyway. I just pressed play on a new Laura Marling album. I didn't know she had one out. Nobody made me aware of that until I went to Spotify's New Releases section. We could dispute how many albums are released every week and what percentage makes it to the New Releases or AM's New. But discovery is not a myth. It just requires a tiny bit of work and as someone who at the ripe old age of 37 still likes new things I am happy to do that bit of work.

 

[shandyman]

It's not hogwash. It's an average. An average spend of all people who have iTunes. It's $12.

Which is a flawed idea. Not all accounts are actively used. A lot of people have multiple accounts, for different countries. I know a few canadians who have 3, as they have US, UK accounts as well as Canadian.

 

[shandyman]

We discuss subject matter here, not other posters. If you have an issue with myself or someone else of a personal nature use PM like everyone else.

Otherwise, jump back into the Apple Music discussion and make a valid argument worthy of discussion.

BJ

Your post was part of the subject matter. You brought in about trying to use Apple Music whilst driving. Now you cannot handle that you got called out on being illegal.

It's funny that you only pick on the comments I've made about this and ignored anything else I've said, because it proves all your posts are self centred bias being projected as a universal fact......

 

[johngordon]

See my post above about how you're a 1%'er, an outlier.

Regarding the value proposition, you're forgetting that you can't just subscribe to Apple Music to get what you want. You're going to have to subscribe to Spotify and Tidal and any other streaming service to get everything that's out there. Want Taylor Swift? Get Apple Music. Want Prince? Get Tidal. What's that going to cost? $500 a year when all is said and done?

And you know where this is headed, right? It's Cable TV. The Sopranos are only on HBO so you need to subscribe to HBO. The Beatles are only on Sony/ATV so you need to subscribe to Sony/ATV.

Good luck keeping up with that.

BJ

No - we've covered this already.

I am pretty happy to pick one knowing that I'll have access to more than enough than I would ever need.

If there is a rare circumstance where there is an album I like that isn't on the service I'm subscribing to, I'll just buy it.

I certainly don't have to subscribe to the other services, with a 99% overlap in content just for the 1% of the 1% that I might happen to want.

And buying more than one album a month can't possibly put me into the top 1% of people who buy music.

I mean, you can include people like my Mum who is 78 and hasn't bought any music since that Perry Como album in 1975, but does have an iTunes account for her iPad for Words with Friends if you like, but I'm just not sure why you would do that.

 

[shandyman]

That's assumed in any discussion forum. I mean, really. You're a good poster, you put up quality arguments, don't stoop to this.

And since I'm the only one speaking on behalf of the common, average iTunes user, I think that my opinions generally do apply to all but the 1%'er outliers like yourself. The others putting up arguments appear to download 500+ songs a year. Apple's math says it's only 12. Huge discrepancy.

BJ

Nothing you've said qualifies you as an 'average iTunes user'. You're a 1%, 2%er at best.

 

[shandyman]

They already know. They aren't significant players in the big picture of music finance. Little startups, trying a new business model that appeases record labels and ensures a more predictable revenue stream.

You seem to think that Apple Music has reinvented everything. It hasn't. It's just made it more expensive.

Spotify charge the same as Apple Music and has for 9 years.

Also, Spotify have 75 million users, that's not a startup company....