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

[boltjames]

Please find me a free streaming radio service that allows me to play whatever songs I like on demand, as opposed to playing songs at random. The most you can tell a service like Pandora or iTunes Radio is to play songs from an artist and similar artists. I can't go to those services and have it play the exact song I want when I want.

I'm not arguing that it's either Pandora or it's iTunes; I'm saying that the combination of Pandora (artist discovery) and iTunes (purchased tracks) that is superior to Apple Radio (discovery and rented tracks).

If there is a song that you like so much that you want to play it when you want it, you pay the $0.99 cents and download it permanently. And don't tell me that's not a better solution than paying for it in perpetuity on a 20 year rental model. It's more convenient and it guarantees you'll never have it deleted by a record company with a bigger profit motive. And, hello, it's $0.99 cents. It's about the price of half a pack of gum.

Again, the biggest misses in this argument are:

1. Rented music can be pulled at any time by the record companies.
2. The back catalog of music is woefully incomplete (Beatles, Eagles, many others).
3. The data fees from the cellular carriers are a cost that must be accounted for.
4. The lack of strong LTE coverage has your music stop mid-song quite often.

And the biggest one:

6. There simply isn't enough good music out there to justify a fixed commitment of the equivalent of buying 120 songs in years where there aren't 120 songs you would have wanted to download.

BJ

 

[boltjames]

What if your house was flooded or burnt down, you've lost that entire physical collection. See, there's outlandish doomsday scenarios for everything....

No. It's all in the cloud. Every song I've purchased from iTunes since 2003 is mine to re-download if that ever occurred.

BJ

 

[johngordon]

6. There simply isn't enough good music out there for you to justify a fixed commitment of the equivalent of buying 120 songs in years where there aren't 120 songs you would have wanted to download.

Bold, my emphasis.

Maybe not for you.

But for many people, there will absolutely be at least 10-12 new albums a year worth listening to. Easily.

That you don't think so does not make Apple Music, or any other streaming, might make it a poor value proposition for you. But it certainly doesn't make it a poor value proposition per se.

 

[boltjames]

The reality is that Apple didn't build Apple Music because it was wholly unique. Obviously it isn't. They built Apple Music because they want to remain relevant in the music business, and in just a few years, let alone a decade from now, streaming will be the predominant method of consuming music by orders of magnitude, and Apple couldn't afford to be left out.

I disagree. In fact, I think Apple Music and other streaming services are hastening the demise of the music industry as we know it.

Too much new music and too much choice and too much discovery leads to another situation- it turns music into radio again. It's too inconvenient to know what you're listening to, you don't fall in love with an artist, you fall in love with a genre. Just turn on a station, never get an attachment to a band, don't look forward to their next release, don't see them live. Just turn on The Alternative Channel and everything sounds like Son Of Radiohead and it doesn't matter who the artists are and it doesn't matter that one song jumped out, you just listen to the station, that's enough.

This will be genius for record companies because they really don't need to try anymore. It's bad for fans because music becomes a utility, there's no emotional attachment to a gallon of milk. And at any moment the record companies can say "thank you for 10 years of $120 payments, we're going back to a download model now, good luck". Remember, most people aged 45+ own 5 copies of Sargent Pepper. Vinyl > 8 Track > Cassette > CD > Digital. Record companies aren't going to walk away from re-formatting. Right now, Streaming is the 'next big thing' but it's the first new format that doesn't let people own the music permanently. You shouldn't embrace that.

BJ

 

[johngordon]

Which is precisely why Beats 1 in conjunction with the streaming element makes complete sense.

From experience I can listen to Zane's show fairly regularly and often hear new bands that I grow to love, and go and see live.

I'm sure I can't be the only one.

 

[zhenya]

I'm not arguing that it's either Pandora or it's iTunes; I'm saying that the combination of Pandora (artist discovery) and iTunes (purchased tracks) that is superior to Apple Radio (discovery and rented tracks).

Pandora is actually pretty miserable at artist discovery. IMO that's why their service is never really becoming all that profitable. Trying to get a station to introduce me to something new usually just results in a pile of stuff that a computer thought should be related but really isn't.

6. There simply isn't enough good music out there to justify a fixed commitment of the equivalent of buying 120 songs in years where there aren't 120 songs you would have wanted to download.

Bollocks. I've heard people say this my entire life. What it really means is that their interest in music has plunged and they are fixated on what they know and what is comfortable. Exactly as you have described yourself in this thread. There is ALWAYS quality new music being produced. It generally takes work to find it though.

 

[zhenya]

I disagree. In fact, I think Apple Music and other streaming services are hastening the demise of the music industry as we know it.

Too much new music and too much choice and too much discovery leads to another situation- it turns music into radio again. It's too inconvenient to know what you're listening to, you don't fall in love with an artist, you fall in love with a genre. Just turn on a station, never get an attachment to a band, don't look forward to their next release, don't see them live. Just turn on The Alternative Channel and everything sounds like Son Of Radiohead and it doesn't matter who the artists are and it doesn't matter that one song jumped out, you just listen to the station, that's enough.

This will be genius for record companies because they really don't need to try anymore. It's bad for fans because music becomes a utility, there's no emotional attachment to a gallon of milk. And at any moment the record companies can say "thank you for 10 years of $120 payments, we're going back to a download model now, good luck". Remember, most people aged 45+ own 5 copies of Sargent Pepper. Vinyl > 8 Track > Cassette > CD > Digital. Record companies aren't going to walk away from re-formatting. Right now, Streaming is the 'next big thing' but it's the first new format that doesn't let people own the music permanently. You shouldn't embrace that.

BJ

I don't think you even really understand what Apple Music is. Apple Music isn't Pandora (although they have a radio service that is similar - but see my points above as to why that service doesn't work for either Pandora or Apple). If you take the time to customize your likes in Apple Music, as in Beats before it, you will continually be introduced to new albums and new artists that will often be on target, and often be excellent. In my first year with Beats, I was introduced to easily a dozen albums of all genres, from decades old to brand new, that I fell in love with. Having a music service actually curated by people who recognize good music, rather than a computer, is a huge benefit to the service.

 

[boltjames]

That's not a flaw in Apple Music.

That's just Apple Music not being for you.

For others, who do still like to hear new music, it seems pretty great.

And yes, I know its not the first streaming services, but all streaming services working on that principal are pretty great.

I have been going through my library and filling in loads of blanks, and adding a load of recent albums that I hadn't bought, and love the way they seamlessly sit in with my existing library.

When I was a teenager I had a walkman, and could maybe take 10 tapes with me when I went on a journey. If I just went out I would probably just choose a couple.

Here we are in 2015 and we can have a device smaller than a walkman and can listen to pretty much anything at will.

We can add stuff to our library for easy access.

If we like a song, we can tap a button and it will play other similar stuff, that we might not have heard before and might like.

We can create infinite playlists and mix up that music any which way.

And still some people aren't happy.

Which is fine - it just means you don't see yourself wanting to listen to a dozen new albums a year.

It just doesn't mean Apple Music is flawed.

Sure it does. The big flaw is that at any moment all the fun you're having today can be taken away. Snap your fingers. Poof, it's gone.

Show me the contractual obligation for Apple Music to ensure that 10 years of $150 payments for my family is going to keep my Radiohead collection and my daughter's Taylor Swift collection intact and I might agree with you. You are paying for a delivery service not content. Paying the same thing to rent something instead of owning something isn't a smart idea. This isn't like leasing a car; a car degrades over time. A song you bought 30 years ago is the same song today.

BJ

 

[boltjames]

These are basically my exact thoughts.

Its like when you go and see a movie. After you leave the theatre, you're not down $20 because you don't own the movie. For your $20 you got to see, and hopefully enjoy, the movie.

And with this, it doesn't really matter if in 10 years I don't own every album I had ever listened to in the last 10 years. Most I would likely never have bought anyway, but will have had 10 years of hearing a load of new stuff - far more than I would have if I was limited to music I would have bought.

Not a good analogy because you saw a preview and had the freedom to choose and invest in the one movie you wished to see that month.

Apple Music is like paying Paramount Pictures $150 a year to see their movies even in years when they only release 1 film, even in years when they only release Meryl Streep films, even in years when they only release Portuguese documentaries. Sounds familiar, right? Sounds like cable TV, right? Sounds like HBO, right? Pay $200 a month for 300 channels and you're lucky if there's something better to watch than what was free on local terrestrial networks.

BJ

 

[boltjames]

Bollocks. I've heard people say this my entire life. What it really means is that their interest in music has plunged and they are fixated on what they know and what is comfortable. Exactly as you have described yourself in this thread. There is ALWAYS quality new music being produced. It generally takes work to find it though.

Listen, I'm a big music fan. Huge. Today's music is just awful, and it's awful because it's all corporate and homogenized. It's safe, it's redundant, it's boring.

And you're right- developing a new artist and breaking them takes a lot of work, but it's work and investment that should be paid by the labels, not the listeners. Giving a portion of your $120 a year to Interscope Records doesn't incentivize them to develop a great new artist; in fact, it does the exact opposite. I want a business model where I get paid even if my product is average. I want to make a bonus for mediocrity. Sign me up.

BJ

 

[Phil A.]

Today's music is just awful

I remember my dad saying that to me when I was a teenager

I'm 2 years older than you and while I agree a lot of current music isn't necessarily to my taste, I do like a fair bit of recent music and wouldn't fall into the trap of dismissing stuff I don't like out of hand (I don't want to become my dad )

£15 a month (family plan) is a trivially small amount of money for the enjoyment it brings to my family and I personally feel it represents far better value than the license fee we in the UK are forced to pay to subsidise the BBC!

I have already discovered dozens of new albums to add to my collection and I'll enjoy listening to them.

I regularly spend £100 to take my daughter to a game of football that lasts 90 minutes - 50p a day to listen to all the music we want and discover new artists we would never have otherwise is well worth it to me. I don't care if it all disappears in 10 years, I'll have had the value and enjoyment during the years it was available: As a value proposition, I'm happy that I get enough value each month and don't see the need to accumulate the cost month-on-month to see if it represents value for money


I can understand that you don't see value in it, but why can't you understand that others do?

 

[johngordon]

Sure it does. The big flaw is that at any moment all the fun you're having today can be taken away. Snap your fingers. Poof, it's gone.

Show me the contractual obligation for Apple Music to ensure that 10 years of $150 payments for my family is going to keep my Radiohead collection and my daughter's Taylor Swift collection intact and I might agree with you. You are paying for a delivery service not content. Paying the same thing to rent something instead of owning something isn't a smart idea. This isn't like leasing a car; a car degrades over time. A song you bought 30 years ago is the same song today.

BJ

No, it really doesn't.

You can't argue that a service is objectively flawed because it does not subjectively interest you.

You're not paying to own the music, you're paying for access to stream the music.

If that's not for you, fine. But it certainly doesn't mean its not for other people, for the reasons given.

 

[Rigby]

Sure it does. The big flaw is that at any moment all the fun you're having today can be taken away. Snap your fingers. Poof, it's gone.

You seem to be obsessed about this. Realistically, what do you think could happen? Apple Music goes bust? So what, just switch to Spotify, Tidal, Google All Access, Microsoft Groove or whatever and go on with your life. An artist withdraws an album? OK, if you really like it, just buy it. Or move on to something else.

Show me the contractual obligation for Apple Music to ensure that 10 years of $150 payments for my family is going to keep my Radiohead collection and my daughter's Taylor Swift collection intact and I might agree with you.

Subscription services are not about building collections. Most people don't build big music collections. They listen to music for a while, and then move on. And of course personal taste changes over time. Every once in a while something really good comes along that warrants a purchase.

Listen, I'm a big music fan. Huge. Today's music is just awful, and it's awful because it's all corporate and homogenized. It's safe, it's redundant, it's boring.

You're just not looking. There's plenty of great new music. There's also likely a large body of older music that you would love but just haven't discovered.

 

[johngordon]

Listen, I'm a big music fan. Huge. Today's music is just awful, and it's awful because it's all corporate and homogenized. It's safe, it's redundant, it's boring.

And you're right- developing a new artist and breaking them takes a lot of work, but it's work and investment that should be paid by the labels, not the listeners. Giving a portion of your $120 a year to Interscope Records doesn't incentivize them to develop a great new artist; in fact, it does the exact opposite. I want a business model where I get paid even if my product is average. I want to make a bonus for mediocrity. Sign me up.

BJ

You can't really claim to be a big music fan in one breath, and in the very next dismiss all music made today as awful, corporate and homogenised.

That's just absurd.

Fair enough if you don't like the Taylor Swifts and Katy Perrys of the world, but there is a whole ton of music beyond the charts.

With respect, all of this is just what grown ups have been saying since the 60s - "they just don't make music as good as when I was young".

 

[whsbuss]

You can't really claim to be a big music fan in one breath, and in the very next dismiss all music made today as awful, corporate and homogenised.

That's just absurd.

Fair enough if you don't like the Taylor Swifts and Katy Perrys of the world, but there is a whole ton of music beyond the charts.

With respect, all of this is just what grown ups have been saying since the 60s - "they just don't make music as good as when I was young".

Well I remember the '60s music and it was great. But I like all music..... in fact Beats 1 is really fun to listen to. I have thousands of songs in my library and listen to them all as my mood suggests. Jazz, R&B, soul, HipHop and Pop populate many of my playlists. I was never a rock kind of person but I still listen to that and even some classical.

Music is about feeling good, reminiscing, or just passing time. Doesn't matter if its Spotify, Pandora, or Apple Music. So far I like how Apple has integrated their music in the app. Doesn't it need work, Absolutely!

 

[Dark Void]

Today's music is just awful

If there was ever a thought for everyone in this thread to agree on ...

 

[johngordon]

Not a good analogy because you saw a preview and had the freedom to choose and invest in the one movie you wished to see that month.

Apple Music is like paying Paramount Pictures $150 a year to see their movies even in years when they only release 1 film, even in years when they only release Meryl Streep films, even in years when they only release Portuguese documentaries. Sounds familiar, right? Sounds like cable TV, right? Sounds like HBO, right? Pay $200 a month for 300 channels and you're lucky if there's something better to watch than what was free on local terrestrial networks.

BJ

Its a perfectly good analogy.

You're moving the goalposts, originally it was about whether or not you owned something after you pay for it.

Now its about what you think is a reasonable choice to spend your money on.

I can choose to pay $20 to see a movie in the hope that I would enjoy it, but understand that I won't own the it.

And I can choose to pay $120 a year to stream practically any new music in the hope that I will enjoy a lot of it, but understand the I won't own it.

For $120 a year I can be almost certain I will hear at least a dozen new albums I will like.

Just recently I've been listening to stuff like:

Blur - The Magic Whip
Jamie XX - In Color
Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit
Florence + The Machine - How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
Wolf Alice - My Love is Cool

And checking out people like

Halsey (new track New Americana is great)
Amanda Palmer (who popped up on a Regina Spektor playlist, who I love)
Cat Power (have a couple of her albums, but heard a great track on Joshua Homme's show)
MS MR (might be a bit cheesy disco, but a new track on Zane's show was pretty catchy. But that's the beauty of streaming - I can listen to albums I would have passed up on if I had to buy them.)

And of course its subjective, and different people will like different things, or even nothing at all.

But is strikes me as extreme and ludicrous to dismiss literally all current music as awful.

 

[mike1726]

I thought it was ok, I currently use deezer as I used to get it free as an orange user. When they stopped providing it as a free gimmick when ee took over, I carried on paying £9.99 a month for 4 users & I could only use it on 1 device at a time but there are 4 of us in my family so quite often I lose my connection when someone else listens to music unless in offline mode. The advantage of the apple music family membership & it's only £5 extra a month & it also allows 6 people to use it at the same time, I believe. The only disadvantage I've seen is that some of the albums, I think possibly the compilations only allow you download certain tracks not the full cd.Im guessing that's because they'd do themselves out of business with the iTunes Store. I'm quite impressed with it now that it works properly.

 

[Benjamin Frost]

I remember my dad saying that to me when I was a teenager

I'm 2 years older than you and while I agree a lot of current music isn't necessarily to my taste, I do like a fair bit of recent music and wouldn't fall into the trap of dismissing stuff I don't like out of hand (I don't want to become my dad )

£15 a month (family plan) is a trivially small amount of money for the enjoyment it brings to my family and I personally feel it represents far better value than the license fee we in the UK are forced to pay to subsidise the BBC!

I have already discovered dozens of new albums to add to my collection and I'll enjoy listening to them.

I regularly spend £100 to take my daughter to a game of football that lasts 90 minutes - 50p a day to listen to all the music we want and discover new artists we would never have otherwise is well worth it to me. I don't care if it all disappears in 10 years, I'll have had the value and enjoyment during the years it was available: As a value proposition, I'm happy that I get enough value each month and don't see the need to accumulate the cost month-on-month to see if it represents value for money


I can understand that you don't see value in it, but why can't you understand that others do?

The problem is, Apple Music is not competing principally against iTunes. It's competing against free radio and free streaming.

Most people are happy with free radio. A small number take the effort to seek out more free music via free streaming. A smaller number still pay for music on iTunes/digital download or CD. A much smaller number pay to stream music.

 

[boltjames]

No, it really doesn't.

You can't argue that a service is objectively flawed because it does not subjectively interest you.

You're not paying to own the music, you're paying for access to stream the music.

If that's not for you, fine. But it certainly doesn't mean its not for other people, for the reasons given.

We are both at a restaurant. I order off the menu. You choose the all-you-can-eat buffet. The food is the same.

If you like to sample dozens of foods and in unlimited portions, I have no issue with that. If I like to be selective, you have no issue with that. But the difference is that if I pay for a meal, I know I am getting a meal. One day you may go to the buffet and find all the good dishes are mysteriously missing or may find that there's nothing there by empty chafing dishes.

Again, that's cool if you want to take that risk. Just don't ignore the fact that there's a risk. And don't ignore the fact that you are getting a bad financial deal; greed is driving this platform, not the good of the consumer.

BJ

 

[boltjames]

I can understand that you don't see value in it, but why can't you understand that others do?

I can understand why some can see the value in it. At first, I really enjoyed it. For me, personally, after the novelty of saying "play Sugar Hill Gang" to Siri wore off, I found that I already owned all the back catalog I wanted and the new recommendations weren't making an impression on me. I then did some quick napkin math on my family of 5 AT&T users and realized that the data usage was very significant.

What irks me, and that doesn't mean it irks you, is that I can see what's going on here and it's not good for the consumer. An all you can eat buffet looks like a great value but after awhile you realize the business model and understand you're being led to believe it's a fantastic spread but really you're just overpaying for baked ziti because you don't like the other stuff that's being served. And there's no incentive for the cook to improve the quality of the offering because it's all about making a buck, just bringing in new lemmings who don't know the deal.

BJ

 

[boltjames]

You seem to be obsessed about this. Realistically, what do you think could happen? Apple Music goes bust? So what, just switch to Spotify, Tidal, Google All Access, Microsoft Groove or whatever and go on with your life. An artist withdraws an album? OK, if you really like it, just buy it. Or move on to something else.

Not obsessed with this, but we can see it starting already. Spotify trying to lock up exclusive deals, Tidal being run by very popular hip-hop artists, Taylor Swift choosing who she will allow to distribute her tracks. Two years from now, what if half the music you made offline and built playlists around are withdrawn? You're really going to be thankful that your $250 was worthwhile instead of the 250 AAC files you could have downloaded instead?

iTunes Radio + iTunes Downloads is the same thing as Apple Music except you get to keep the media. Simple as that.

BJ

 

[johngordon]

We are both at a restaurant. I order off the menu. You choose the all-you-can-eat buffet. The food is the same.

If you like to sample dozens of foods and in unlimited portions, I have no issue with that. If I like to be selective, you have no issue with that. But the difference is that if I pay for a meal, I know I am getting a meal. One day you may go to the buffet and find all the good dishes are mysteriously missing or may find that there's nothing there by empty chafing dishes.

Again, that's cool if you want to take that risk. Just don't ignore the fact that there's a risk. And don't ignore the fact that you are getting a bad financial deal; greed is driving this platform, not the good of the consumer.

BJ

I don't think its really a risk though.

Based on experience the chances of not finding 10-12 decent new albums over a 12 month period are virtually zero.

With all respect, I don't think you are in a position to say that I am getting a bad financial deal.

If I get access to every album I would even consider buying for far less than the cost of actually buying them, then to me that is a fantastic deal.

I don't really care about not owning the music - I care about being able to listen to it.

And the chances are I will still buy a few CDs of albums I particularly like, so I'd be covered anyway.

 

[zhenya]

Today's music is just awful, and it's awful because it's all corporate and homogenized. It's safe, it's redundant, it's boring.

Patently false and utterly ridiculous.

Like I said, people have been saying that to me at various points for over 30 years since I first became interested in music of my own choosing. Every one of them has been wrong. Most of them have been stuck in one particular rut without the willingness to attempt to break out of it. It's a problem of their own making.

If anything, much of the best music of the past decade has been much less commercialized than in decades immediately prior. That you don't know this tells me where your tastes run.

 

[boltjames]

You can't really claim to be a big music fan in one breath, and in the very next dismiss all music made today as awful, corporate and homogenised.

That's just absurd.

Fair enough if you don't like the Taylor Swifts and Katy Perrys of the world, but there is a whole ton of music beyond the charts.

With respect, all of this is just what grown ups have been saying since the 60s - "they just don't make music as good as when I was young".

Stop with the 'my dad said that in 1965' stuff already. My dad did too. Rock music was only 10 years old at the time. The benchmark before that were Crooners and Doo-Wop for cripesakes. Today its 60 years later and all the genres have been unearthed, from Soul to Disco to Punk to Rap to New Wave to Alternative to House to Hip-Hop to World Music to Electronic, there is no new ground to break there. My dad in 1965 didn't have this perspective like we do now. It's now down to the quality of the bands themselves, not the music type, not the genre.

Remember that we're talking about art here. The very best performers and bands we love are truly artists. Van Gogh and Rembrandt wouldn't sign up for Apple Museum. And after awhile all the mediocre art would be mixed in with the masterpieces and it would just turn into an endless screensaver of mediocrity.

BJ