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iPod You think iTunes and iTunes Store are doomed with the advent of streaming music?

phoenixsan

phoenixsan

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Oct 19, 2012
1,342
2
Man, I just had set an account in Spotify and I love it.....(problems with mi Internet connection dont let me try it well until now....:D)......So, what are you toughts about the future for the iTunes ecosystem, now we have excellent streaming services as Spotify and Pandora?.....


No wonder Apple are buying Beats and beefing up their music offers.....:eek:


:):apple:
 
We have this argument every month here. :rolleyes:

The answer is still no. Not allowing people to have the choice to buy digital music outright is the move in the wrong direction.

For me, it comes out cheaper buying because I buy so little of it these days. Some people argue that buying storage to hold it all is an issue, but I have drives from 15 years ago that could still serve as a library very easily. My newer 2008 drive doesn't seem like it's going to give up any soon either.

If you want to listen to new stuff, it works out great, but I found that in my case, I was listening to the same thing over and over and paying $9.99 every month to do so.

People say it's easier to throw away music when you're streaming, but just how hard is it to DELETE a digital file? There's a trashcan icon on our docks after all.
 
phoenixsan said:
You think iTunes and iTunes Store are doomed with the advent of streaming music?

Man, I just had set an account in Spotify and I love it.....(problems with mi Internet connection dont let me try it well until now....:D)......So, what are you toughts about the future for the iTunes ecosystem, now we have excellent streaming services as Spotify and Pandora?.....No wonder Apple are buying Beats and beefing up their music offers.....:eek: :) :apple:
Click to expand...

For the foreseeable future, there are going to be lots of people who want to own their content outright, music and otherwise so no, I definitely don't believe iTunes and the iTunes Store are doomed yet.

If you doubt the above assertion, check the forums here and elsewhere about that very subject.

Apple was apparently quite impressed with the Beats music streaming service, and not having to start from scratch obviously has advantages for them, but I believe there were additional solid reasons for that acquisition.
 
I used MOG, the predecessor to Beats Music, for a couple of years. Like Beats it let you download songs or whole albums to your mobile device. I found it quite valuable for being able to sample an album I was considering buying. Not sure it saved me any money but it did expose me to a lot of music I likely would not have been. Having said all of that, streaming music will not slow down my purchasing of music. I like to own it. I want the people making it to make a living doing it. That way they will keep making it.
 
Apple is in the early stages of dealing with "radio" or streamed music. Apple is also (rumour here) considering upping the quality of music one can purchase via iTunes. There are so many models Apple can choose from for getting coins out of our pockets for music and they certainly could even go as far as a subscription service to iTunes etc. (with agreements from where they presently get their music of course).

Most streamed music is lower quality than a 256 AAC purchased iTunes file. This might change but for now, many remain in the camp to "own" superior quality files. Some of us (myself included) buy CDs and convert to lossless files for our home and i-devices as well as get even higher quality files from other sources such as HDtracks (96/24 vs 44.1/16 or AAC compressed 44.1/16).
 
First of all.....

Thank you for not shooting the messenger......:D

Glad to see you again Jessica, long time not see.....:)....Me personally buy the "physical" CDs and rip the music to my liking. And I suppose is human nature "to own" something one had bought or paid. Maybe the word "doomed" is excessive?.....:confused:

But in travels, light listening and ocassional meetings, the streaming concept can be useful and appealing.It is possible that some demographics are working here, maybe young people "just want to hear" something, dont own it....

And yet, seems to me that Apple is feeling the heat from the streaming competence.Pretty sure Cupertino thinkers have a slew of schemes in hand to get money from media management, as a poster had said. We will see how this trending topic evolves....

:):apple:
 
Likewise! :D

I can buy a whole album for $2-5 on Amazon and eMusic a lot of times. So I've stopped buying physicals.

I don't worry too much about music when traveling. I make a playlist, buy some new stuff, and that's about it.

When I stream, it's usually iTunes Radio, Songza, Hype Machine, 8tracks, and Radium. I am all for the curated aspect of streaming, I'm not for the Spotify/Rdio create your own library thing.

Apple is feeling the heat, yeah, but they always are.
 
macs4nw said:
For the foreseeable future, there are going to be lots of people who want to own their content outright,
Click to expand...

Indeed--this is why I still buy CDs and rip them. If you have to check off a EULA to buy it, you don't own it.

Also, one obvious drawback to streaming services to date is the very limited selection of available material. Is still get discs routinely from Netflix for the simple reason that most of what I want to watch isn't available for streaming.
 
phoenixsan said:
.So, what are you toughts about the future for the iTunes ecosystem, now we have excellent streaming services as Spotify and Pandora?.....
Click to expand...

I love Pandora, and it's only $5.50/month. To me it's a great feature that Pandora does most of the organizing, as I don't seem to have the time or interest for that anymore.

I imagine there will always be folks who want to own their content, but I'd guess iTunes has seen it's peak. It will probably be with us for awhile yet, but will decline in influence as Apple turns it's attention to other more future oriented things.
 
I might be the odd one out, but I've never purchased a song on itunes or anything. I listen to it for free on youtube, and I listen to itunes radio, or the regular radio.

I have a cd player, and listen to some cds that I get at yard sales or discount stores. I will never pay for a digital song file.
 
To answer the question asked, no, I don't.

As others have pointed out, there are those of us who still like to buy physical content (I still buy - and enjoy buying CDs - and ripping to my iTunes library), and those of us who like the idea that we own that physical content. Personally, I doubt that this will change for me.

As with so many other forms of new media, I don't see the advent of 'streaming music' replacing or supplanting the older forms; however, I do see a situation where both forms continue to co-exist as each answers different needs.
 
I don't think they are doomed at all. Not every one wants to pay a subscription fee to listen to music. Not to mention, the times that you aren't able to connect and stream your music, data charges, etc.
 
I certainly don't use iTunes any more, rather Google Play Music All Access.

All my own music is uploaded on there, plus I have the choice of Google's own 18 million tracks.

Data usage doesn't matter to me - it's cheap, fast and unlimited; I generally use 60 to 120gb a month. Streaming music is perhaps 10gb of that.
 
I use iTunes Radio and buy lots of music that I've heard on it. That's the way I like it.

I do use iTunes Match and have my music uploaded to Google music. Still prefer iTunes Match.
 
I don't use Spotify and I let my Pandora One subscription lapse.

I'm more than happy with my iTunes Match and associated iTunes radio.

I also have SiriusXM and I have Amazon Cloud Player (I guess it's called Prime Music now).
 
yeah, i don't think that itunes is gonna last too much longer...at least they have itunes radio, but still they have tons of competition.
 
I absolutely do not want iTunes to end in it's current form, I've got a library of 15000 songs that has taken me nearly 8 years to accumulate, and categorize to within an inch of it's life, every song star rated, correct year, album - everything. This all sits neatly on my laptop and my iPod Classic which I can take anywhere and access whenever I want.

Add to this the dreadful mobile coverage in the UK at the moment and it doesn't even come anywhere near to suiting my needs. I live 20 miles from a major northern city and can barely get a phone signal, let alone anything else. Even if it was good coverage, 1: I'd have to pay for it and 2: I wouldn't trust any server to not screw up my collection at some point, which means I would always be carrying some form of backup with me, in which case I might as well carry on as I am as it doesn't depend on the internet connection or me paying for it. In short - streaming is useless to me.

Let the two things co-exist side by side and stop trying to tell us what to do. It's not like my portable hard drive takes up any more room than a smartphone.
 
Nope itunes may end up not as important. But simply put, too many people want to own their music. Plus not everyone has 24/7 internet access...and even if you do, it can be spotty. Also as a DJ I absolutely have to have access to my music, all of it pretty much instantly. When I'm doing a live performance and I'm literally mixing 2-4 songs simultaneously, making an instant decision on what to do next, the last thing i need is to have a song slowly loading up and ruining what I'm creating. I think streaming is fantastic, and I would like to have that in addition to owning my own tracks, but I don't think that we will move to purely streaming.
 
you could steal music.... I mean ..... aquire for free on bittorrent napster before there was an itunes and didn't stop it from making money. The issue is the price for music has to change. Same with movies. Why is digital the same price as a physical copy. Digital can be downloaded elsewhere for free. Tho the whole cloud thing is pretty awesome with itunes. I remember cds costing $20 bucks before napster then itunes took them to $10-12. With streaming maybe they will be even cheaper now. It just annoys me when itunes cd is $10-12 bucks and on amazon its $4.

I bought my nephew the lego movie for 16 bucks on blu ray with UV copy. It COST $19.99 on ITUNES !!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME !!!!!!!!! How is it more then the physical copy with a DIGITAL Cloud COPY !!! I know UV sucks but come on its not 4 bucks + a physical copy of the movie worse. It might have also come with a DVD I forget.
 
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