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

[johngordon]

I don't think that's quite the same.

It makes sense for HBO to offer their shows on their service, or Showtime to offer their shows on theirs.

But in the case of music, the providers are Apple Music, Spotify etc not the labels directly.

And in that case it must make most sense to make them available on all.

A record company / artist doesn't benefit from only being on Spotify or vice versa.

There might be the odd big name exclusive, but in those rare cases if I really liked the album or artist, I would probably just buy it.

I wouldn't subscribe to x3 streaming services just for those rare cases.

 

[johngordon]

It's all about revenue. It's not about free or not. It's about how much people spend now and how much more you can get.

The typical household spends $12 a year through iTunes. So if Apple can figure out a way to get $120 from those households they'll do it in a second because it takes an investment and an infrastructure and a platform they already have and makes it scale very quickly.

BJ

If you take a figure like $60-80 a year. Someone might not want to buy a few more albums a year, but $120 a year as a proposition to get a lot more than they would by buying music may well be a great proposition.

All of which is still ignoring that it clearly is a great value proposition for a lot of people, regardless of any possible future worst case scenario you care to dream up.

 

[shandyman]

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

Unless it's been pulled by the record companies.....

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.

Your taste does not equal fact for everyone...

There's been a lot of good new music noisy because you do not like it, does not mean it's not good...

Stop presenting your opinion as fact. Your argument is flawed due to that basis.

 

[boltjames]

Well, if you are saying that "all music made today is awful", and I have said that I like a lot of new music, then you're saying that all the new music I listen to is awful, so you kind of are criticising my taste.

Apologies if you took it that way. I do have a very hot wife though.

Going by those figures, that's only about what - 15 decent songs a year?

....bingo. That's a fact, not conjecture by the way:

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articl...matters-average-itunes-account-generates-just

The average- and that includes the hardcore downloaders- is $12 in spend on music a year through iTunes. It's an indictment on the quality of content coming from that industry, its very weak and its very redundant.

But you are still projecting that view onto everyone else.

I can't imagine in a million years hearing that few good albums / tracks over a 12 month period.

Using myself and my wife and my kids aged 17 to 11, we're pulling down 2-3 albums in a typical year and a handful of singles that we like and that's it. Somewhere around 2005 all the creativity got sucked out of this format and it has no indication of returning. Once upon a time it was orphaned college-dropout John Lennon struggling and fighting to hone his craft and be heard, using a $15 guitar he stole from a mate at a talent show in the dirty streets of Liverpool. Today it's a rich kid in a bedroom sampling on a $1500 MacBook with an agenda to get internet fame and fortune through Twitter followers. Apple Music is perfect for him.

BJ

 

[boltjames]

Unless it's been pulled by the record companies.....

iTunes TOS prevents this. Purchased tracks are owned by their buyers.

Your taste does not equal fact for everyone...

I never said it did. What I said was that as a money making endeavor, with only $12 spend per average household, iTunes is not that much more important in a financial sense than a company that makes masking tape, mustard, windshield washer fluid, or anything else that costs only $12 a year. I spend more than $12 a year on chewing gum. If the music industry were that incredible, it would generate more revenue in a typical home. Apple Music and streaming in general is a tricky way to fleece the public to pay 10x more for the same crappy product.

Stop presenting your opinion as fact. Your argument is flawed due to that basis.

Stop reading my opinion as fact and you won't have a problem.

BJ

 

[boltjames]

If you take a figure like $60-80 a year. Someone might not want to buy a few more albums a year, but $120 a year as a proposition to get a lot more than they would by buying music may well be a great proposition.

All of which is still ignoring that it clearly is a great value proposition for a lot of people, regardless of any possible future worst case scenario you care to dream up.

I am not saying that some people, people who routinely spend $80 to $200 a year for example, won't find Apple Music a fantastic product.

I am saying that if you look at the numbers it tells you that a) there are very few power buyers like that and b) Apple is looking for a 10x multiple spend from the average household and it's not going to happen.

Apple Music is here, it's not going away, I'm merely stating that it was exciting for a few days and then broke down for me. YMMV.

BJ

 

[Rigby]

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?

Why would it? None of your examples involved withdrawing music from a subscription service after it had previously been available. There are just a few isolated examples where this has happened (e.g. Prince). Usually there are contracts in place that prevent things like this. This will remain rare because the subscription services know that they'd shoot themselves in the foot.

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

No. iTunes Radio gives you little choice. On something like Apple Music or Spotify, you can not only get recommendations computed by the service, but freely choose what you want to listen to.

 

[johngordon]

Apologies if you took it that way. I do have a very hot wife though.

....bingo. That's a fact, not conjecture by the way:

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articl...matters-average-itunes-account-generates-just

The average- and that includes the hardcore downloaders- is $12 in spend on music a year through iTunes. It's an indictment on the quality of content coming from that industry, its very weak and its very redundant.

I think a big part of it is a generation that has grown up expecting everything to be free on the internet, rather than a major decline in good new music.

It may well be an absolute, objective fact that the average spend on iTunes is $12.

But that doesn't also make it an absolute, objective fact that all new music since 2005 is awful. That's just your subjective opinion, and one which many people would disagree with.

You just sound like most people who hit their late 20s / early 30s and just aren't as interested in new music as when they were in their teens and early 20s, and generally think that things aren't as good as when they were younger.

It is rarely about creativity drying up in a particular year, and almost always about the age of the individual.

For you it might be 2005. For someone 10 years older than you, it might be 1995.

Using myself and my wife and my kids aged 17 to 11, we're pulling down 2-3 albums in a typical year and a handful of singles that we like and that's it. Somewhere around 2005 all the creativity got sucked out of this format and it has no indication of returning. Once upon a time it was orphaned college-dropout John Lennon struggling and fighting to hone his craft and be heard, using a $15 guitar he stole from a mate at a talent show in the dirty streets of Liverpool. Today it's a rich kid in a bedroom sampling on a $1500 MacBook with an agenda to get internet fame and fortune through Twitter followers. Apple Music is perfect for him.

BJ

I don't think you can pass off the experience of you, your hot wife and your kids as the experience of everyone though, no matter how much you can't seem to help yourself.

And I don't think its remotely fair or accurate to just say that everyone making music now is a rich kid only doing it for internet fame and fortune. There are plenty of great bands still making great music with actual instruments and playing great live shows.

 

[flur]

The concept of "owning" any non-physical consumer good is clearly an anachronism that will mostly be gone within the next serval years, maybe within the next decade or two at the longest.

Stalin? That you?

 

[Benjamin Frost]

I get it, but what I think I really want is a hybrid-streaming service:

$120 a year commitment but I get to download and keep 100 of the songs I like each year.

This way, Apple gets more money than they usually do each year but I have the protection of knowing that if a record company pulls out or an artist goes exclusive elsewhere, those cuts that I discovered in 2015 are still safely in my library for 2016. It's the best of Spotify (deep library) and the best of iTunes (ownership) it gives the record companies what they want (more revenue) and it prevents the threat of discontinuance.

BJ

Exactly.

I wish Apple has done this. Streaming-only is just throwing money away, but I would go for a hybrid model like you describe.

 

[triptolemus]

Exactly.

I wish Apple has done this. Streaming-only is just throwing money away, but I would go for a hybrid model like you describe.

At what price point? Hope you say more than $10 / month.

My guess would be closer to about $70 per month, per user, per device.

 

[Rigby]

iTunes TOS prevents this. Purchased tracks are owned by their buyers.

You may want to read the terms again:

"As an accommodation to you, subsequent to acquiring iTunes Eligible Content, you may download certain of such previously-acquired iTunes Eligible Content onto any Associated Device. Some iTunes Eligible Content that you previously acquired may not be available for subsequent download at any given time, and Apple shall have no liability to you in such event. As you may not be able to subsequently download certain previously-acquired iTunes Eligible Content, once you download an item of iTunes Eligible Content, it is your responsibility not to lose, destroy, or damage it, and you may want to back it up."

 

[Benjamin Frost]

At what price point? Hope you say more than $10 / month.

My guess would be closer to about $70 per month, per user, per device.

No need to be so much.

If you spend $10 to buy music in iTunes, why not be allowed to stream for a month from the date of purchase? Chances are, you'll be encouraged to seek out more music and spend even more in iTunes! That is a win for every party involved, in my view.

 

[Benjamin Frost]

You may want to read the terms again:

"As an accommodation to you, subsequent to acquiring iTunes Eligible Content, you may download certain of such previously-acquired iTunes Eligible Content onto any Associated Device. Some iTunes Eligible Content that you previously acquired may not be available for subsequent download at any given time, and Apple shall have no liability to you in such event. As you may not be able to subsequently download certain previously-acquired iTunes Eligible Content, once you download an item of iTunes Eligible Content, it is your responsibility not to lose, destroy, or damage it, and you may want to back it up."

I think iTunes Match overrides this, though.

 

[Arndroid]

I am not saying that some people, people who routinely spend $80 to $200 a year for example, won't find Apple Music a fantastic product.

I am saying that if you look at the numbers it tells you that a) there are very few power buyers like that and b) Apple is looking for a 10x multiple spend from the average household and it's not going to happen.

Apple Music is here, it's not going away, I'm merely stating that it was exciting for a few days and then broke down for me. YMMV.

BJ

You seem to think iTunes is the only place that sells music.

Assuming your $12 a year per iTunes account is correct (which is actually a good number given 90% of iTunes accounts are not set up to buy music and haven't been for a long time)

A lot of people think the prices now are too high to buy music. So where I won't spend $10 a year for 10 songs I will spend $120 a year for on demand access to 30 million songs. You erroneously believe the size of the pie doesn't change.

However improving the value proposition for the consumer will likely lead to a much larger pie. Given the way digital music scales it is actually a win-win scenario where artists and labels make more money and consumers get more value.

You seem to miss that people who didn't spend any money on buying music will pay for streaming. 10 songs for $10 not appealing. 30 million songs on demand for 12 months, for $120 appealing.

 

[Arndroid]

What I'm saying is that Van Gogh would have had pressure from his backers and stopped making masterworks and instead banged out a bunch of color-by-numbers quality pieces if that's what it took to make money on Apple Museum, the streaming artwork platform. Oh, but he'd get his own social media cue card in the color of his choosing so there's that.

Today's popular music, and thus the music that will proliferate Apple Music, is a TLC album from 1994 that's been repurposed 500 times. There is no artistry and with all-you-can-eat streaming there isn't an incentive for labels to encourage it.

BJ

You insist on not understanding how artists get paid for streaming.

By the way TLC > Oasis

 

[Arndroid]

No, LOL, Oasis is not the pinnacle of music-as-art. They were just a fun band for their time.

I'm not criticizing you and your listening habits personally, I'm talking about everyone in the music listening ecosystem. Think of it this way:

If there are 40 Genres of music.
And only 3 appeal to you.
And there are only 3 artists in each that are actively making relevant music.
And they only release 1 album every-other-year.
And only 3 of the 12 tracks on that awaited 1 album are decent.

Why pay a fixed fee to pay for them in perpetuity? $150 a year to listen to the songs I already owned or already rejected plus the new handful of tracks from a favorite artist and the odd new track that emerges from nowhere is a lot of coin and data for the rough equivalent of listening to the free iTunes Radio "Indie" and "New On iTunes" stations. Pandora, iTunes Radio, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, there are a ton of ways to discover new bands that don't require an upfront payment and the unfortunate enabling of the record industry to degrade the state of music further than they already have (if that's even possible) by a playcount driven model.

BJ

Just realize the way you consume and ingest music is in a tiny minority. Most people have thousands of songs they might want to here once, twice, ten times or a hundred. In your world where you only enjoy almost no music does your proposition make sense. In the more common usage or desires of music listeners being able to listen to a song they liked ten years ago is not worth paying for. However adding those hundreds of moments on top of regular music listening and it becomes a no brainer.

On top of that a streaming service allows you to discover music in a much more efficient manner. Your discovery and acquisition of music seems horrib,y inefficient.

 

[turbineseaplane]

No need to be so much.

If you spend $10 to buy music in iTunes, why not be allowed to stream for a month from the date of purchase? Chances are, you'll be encouraged to seek out more music and spend even more in iTunes! That is a win for every party involved, in my view.

It's a very interesting idea...
I too would be much more inclined to participate in some type of hybrid model of streaming/purchasing/rent to own or something.

Perhaps something that allowed "x number of purchased downloads" per month or something (with rollover - So maybe per year then?).

The reality of my local library is that I add to it with a lot of discretion and thus I don't need a ton of purchases every year, but when I really like a song, I want to own it and have that concern behind me, permanently.

 

[Arndroid]

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

Yes I can get

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

Yeah because the ability to discover music you like is magnitudes greater on AM than on pandora and iTunes. Your whole argument hinges on not finding much music you don't already own to listen to, yet that is the core of apple music.

I own more music than you and if I had the option to have rented it for the last twenty years instead of buying it (not to mention the massive time investment it would take to make digital files out of purchased CDs) I would have snap accepted and I would have been much better off because of it.

You have paid much more than a lifetime of streaming would have cost in the music you have purchased. Your position only begins to have merit if humans become immortal.

New music will continue to drive the revenues of every music form forever. That I don't listen to as much newer music as I used to means the fear of me losing out on all that old music via tiers or gouging is highly unlikely.

Someone who can't fathom discovering 120 new songs in a year just by osmosis probably has no business arguing so strenuously against a music service.

In the first five days of using am it paid for itself for the year over me buying music. I am opened up to thousands and tens of thousands of songs through curation and other features to find music that interests me. You are limited to word of mouth and pandora.

 

[Arndroid]

First off, stop with the "30 million songs" logic. McDonald's makes 30 million burgers a day. It doesn't matter because you can only eat 1. If you think of today's Hot 100 on Billboard, there are probably only 10 songs you want to hear and only 1 you'd want to own and replay in the future. And since key artists and key albums aren't available, it's not a complete library. It's bogus. It's a giant count of songs that no one cares about. It's like paying for a fabulous vacation in Pittsburgh.

Next, stop with the math logic of how many songs I own vs. what they cost. Half my songs I got from friends, didn't cost me anything. A half of what's left I ripped from CD's. The rest I bought off of iTunes. And of those 20,000 songs there are only 1,000 that I listen to in a typical year, and they're on playlists that I've curated to my personal needs.

The flaw in Apple Music, besides the cost and the data overages and the missing key artists and the threat of an artist pulling out and the threat of a new LP launching exclusively on a competing service is that there simply isn't enough good new music to justify $120 a year for the rest of your life. The day I discovered Oasis in 1997 I must have spent $300 buying their entire catalog, import versions, no less. But I've gone entire years without buying any songs on iTunes, the absolute dearth of good new music is staggering in genres like Rock and Alternative and anything other than Teen Girl Dance Pop which is driving 90% of the revenues today.

The number of titles doesn't matter. What matters are the number of good titles net of what you already own or already decided you didn't like. It's a very small number.

BJ

It's only a small number for you. For the average person it is fairly sizable.

Your biggest problem is your discovery methods are horribly ineffective to non-existent. So you just fulfill your own claims by saying there is not enough music out there to listen to, even though the ways you apparently use to discover music are not very effective.

So half your songs are illegally owned by you or half are friends music which they paid for but then gave up the rights to own for you? So the music was not good enough for them to keep? Or do you mean half your music was bought as gifts. To be honest all three of those options harm your stance in this thread to varying degrees.

I am starting to believe you have a music collection where little to no money went to the artists or labels.

Pretty sure 99.999999999999999999999999% of people on earth would take three years of streaming over the entire oasis catalog you bought.

 

[YYR123]

Well hasn't this been an interesting thread

 

[kmj2318]

Being a genre fan is a thing of the past. It was a way to commit so you didn't waste money exploring. And it eventually became part of a person's identity. People just 10 years older than me think it's weird that I listen to music that "isn't my style," meaning how I dress I guess. Today's availability of music allows people to not need to commit to a certain lifestyle. Younger listeners, and listeners in the future, don't really have the concept that older people do; that is "I am my genre of music."

If you're looking for the same kick you got when discovering britpop, you won't get it by rediscovering britpop. If you're committed to a certain genre, you'll never get that feeling again by going down the same path. But also, you won't want to step out of your comfort zone. It's a lose/lose. Do you want something that sounds new? no. Do you want something that sounds like what you already like? sure, but that sound was already perfected (is a current mid-90s britpop revivalist band ever going to do it as good as Blur?) You say that alternative and rock aren't special right now, but maybe it's because your looking for something that's just derivative of what you already like. It's set up to fail you. Also, maybe you have fond memories of the Hot 100, but referencing its current quality to indict the quality of all current music is just... absurd. No one thinks the Hot 100 is good. No one. Music fans hate it. It only reflects what Clear Channel thinks will put people into a daze long enough until the next commercial wakes them up. Radio used to be a great thing and the old Hot 100s reflected that. The Hot 100 is more an indictment of radio, not current artists.

I listen to every genre of music, and I'm regularly in the process of discovering sub-genres. Right now I'm on a metal kick. It gives me the same joy when I dived deep into hip hop years ago. And every sub genre has great monumental classics. The back catalog of great influential albums is massive when you take it to the scope of all of music. Streaming is a really good solution for me. And I think it will be great for people in the future who take a post-genre view of music.

 

[dumastudetto]

There are definite downsides to music streaming. I've been doing this since Napster went legit many years ago, and music was wrapped in Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM. The biggest frustration is always when a label or artist pulls out, and all their tracks suddenly become unplayable in your library, playlists, etc. It will happen on Apple Music too, and when it does you can guarantee writers will proclaim this is proof Apple Music is doomed.

Overall though if you love music, and you love exploring artist back catalogs as well as discovering new stuff - music subscriptions are amazing.

 

[lchlch]

No, LOL, Oasis is not the pinnacle of music-as-art. They were just a fun band for their time.

I'm not criticizing you and your listening habits personally, I'm talking about everyone in the music listening ecosystem. Think of it this way:

If there are 40 Genres of music.
And only 3 appeal to you.
And there are only 3 artists in each that are actively making relevant music.
And they only release 1 album every-other-year.
And only 3 of the 12 tracks on that awaited 1 album are decent.

Why pay a fixed fee to pay for them in perpetuity? $150 a year to listen to the songs I already owned or already rejected plus the new handful of tracks from a favorite artist and the odd new track that emerges from nowhere is a lot of coin and data for the rough equivalent of listening to the free iTunes Radio "Indie" and "New On iTunes" stations. Pandora, iTunes Radio, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, there are a ton of ways to discover new bands that don't require an upfront payment and the unfortunate enabling of the record industry to degrade the state of music further than they already have (if that's even possible) by a playcount driven model.

BJ

I fail to comprehend how a play count driven model is worse than a free model.

I fail to comprehend how a $120/year model is worse than a $12/year model in terms quality of craft.

In both cases the former is better for artists than the latter.

There is no doubt in my mind that the latter for both cases are better for the consumer. But do you really think that artists should not be rewarded for their hardwork? Most of artists aren't living that comfortably (of course there are a few exceptions).

And I would argue that Apple Music although pays by the playcount is not a playcount focused service. The main section of the service (at least for me) is the "for you" section. The section features human created playlists that have been hand selected by curators. A playlist could include both well known or relatively unknown music. And that is great for the smaller guys.

To better frame where I'm coming, I don't think it is a section dedicated to music discovery. It is a place that generates great playlists from both music I own and those that I don't. Which is impossible to do with your own music collection regardless of how big it is.

 

[Dark Void]

If you enjoy Apple Music, use it. If you don't enjoy Apple Music, don't use it.

What's the problem? Options exist for a reason. I don't understand the back and forth with trying to prove the worth of either platform or medium and how it is better or worse than the other.

Just. do. you. It's a fairly simple concept really. Vinyls and record players still exist, and people get a lot of enjoyment out of them. Streaming won't take over anytime soon, or if ever at all if that is your concern in this thread.