Deals for Apple Custom Radio Service 'Nowhere Near to Being Completed'

[ArtOfWarfare]

Originally Posted by ConCat

Although honestly, that is subject to opinion. If you're the boring type who dislikes discovering new things or you enjoy the thrill of the hunt for new songs, then sure, Spotify is for you. If you like discovering new things, but you'd rather have the discoveries (that you'll enjoy) brought to you, rather than having to hunt them down, then Pandora is certainly a much better choice.

When I'm in a discovery mood, I take whatever song for which I'd like to discover similar songs and drop it into the "Moodagent" app in Spotify. It generates a list of 15-25 songs and explains the similarities for each, and I can promptly start whichever one I like.

Unless Pandora has substantially changed from the last time I looked at it, it had two big issues:

#1 - It had a tendency to get stuck in a rut. After a few hundred thumbs up and downs, it would decide to stop playing new music on a station and it would just give me songs I'd previously thumbed up.

#2 - It has very limited abilities to choose the music you want to listen to. It allows skip forward and backward, or to a different station, but no means of simply skipping the next 10 songs the way Moodagent within Spotify allows.

Plus... does Pandora have scrolling lyrics? The "TuneWiki" app in Spotify allows that.

Spotify is far superior to Pandora and iTunes - it's all the simplicity of iTunes coupled with the free of Pandora. Of course, that's just my opinion.

[Plutonius]

Originally Posted by dusk007

Set up a fake facebook account like I did. My dad never had Facebook nor intends to ever use it. I simple set up some made up name account that works for Spotify and absolutely nothing else. There is no info up on it that in anyway connects to my dad, no sharing in spotify activated.
I don't get why people take facebook so seriously. Setting up some facebook account is no more difficult than setting up an Apple ID or registering at Amazon or just about anywhere where you intend to buy something digitally especially subscriptions.

I think Spotify it just unbeatable for the way you can navigate your music, find new stuff and just listen. The iTunes store is still slow as hell. iTunes 11 is in some ways a great improvement but no competition for Spotify with just clicking on the artist and being provided everything. Using all kinds of Apps like Classify, musiXmatch, Last.fm. A store is nice if you are some audiophile you listens only to a narrow range of music or knows precisely which artists he likes. In Spotify I found great music that I would have never ever come across any other way.
Afaik they still don't make a profit but as model and place to go for the whole music business it is great. More chance that people try out music that doesn't play on MTV or the radio 24/7. Youtube was similar but not really intended for that use. Spotify is just pure music.
I think Apple is just to greedy and the industry probably guesses right that the consumers already have those services. They don't make a huge profit yet but is a good way to bring many who used to only pirate back to a paying model. On iTunes I think the labels prefer that people still pay full price as it is working well enough. Why offer those consumers the option of some streaming service that often offers less profit for the labels especially the milk cows like people that buy lots and lots of music would go.

Most people I know that had Spotify have ditched Spotify and got Rdio. I can't comment on either since I don't have them but you might give Rdio a try if you like Spotify. You might find it better then Spotify.

[Primejimbo]

Originally Posted by Stu-Pid

Spotify Premium costs £10 a month, so £120 a year. If I own zero music and use Spotify Premium for 10 years it will cost me £1,200. If I then decide that I don't want to pay £10 a month any more, I am back to owning zero music.

That is the potential downside of using Spotify Premium, as spending the equivalent £1,200 on CDs would mean that you owned around 170 albums worth of music that you could now listen to for the rest of your life for free, whereas with Spotify you have to carry on spending £120 a year for life to listen to your music, even if you are now listening to the same 170 albums over and over again.

Now, if you constantly listen to new music and are happy to spend £10 a month for the rest of your life then that isn't a downside and Spotify is the perfect solution for you. But if you spend less than £120 a year on physical music or iTunes downloads, or if you will eventually reach a point where you know what you like and are happy to listen to that selection, then it doesn't work out quite as well.

Don't get me wrong, I think Spotify Premium is an excellent service, but I do think that some people that talk about never having to buy music ever again are missing the big picture, and thinking very short to medium term.

I personally tend to subscribe to Premium for a couple of months a year and use that as a chance to listen to new music or artists that I want to get into, and then use the £100 that I've saved by not subscribing for the whole year to then buy the albums of those artists that I like.

Great points and I also agree. I personally rather have my iPod on random and enjoy exactly what I want also with or without internet.

[anutharoundu]

It'd be great if this was intregrated with itunes.

[diazj3]

Just what I wanted: another iFlop. Perhaps they are getting ready to break their own record by putting out another "amazing" service that combines the inaccuracies of Apple Maps, the permanent confusion of the App Stores, the lack of critical features of iTunes, the unreliability of MobileMe, the rigidity of iOS... and all this with the traditional Apple price tag.

right.... can't wait for Apple to get into radio and TV.

[/sarcasm]

[brettg123]

Most Americans haven't heard of Radionomy yet, but they will soon. They just launched in the US after a good start in the EU. What made radio amazing back in the day was real personalities that programmed the stations that we loved. You'd listen to a station because you knew and trusted the DJ behind it...algorithmic radios like Pandora or the proposed Apple Radio don't seem to get back to this basic greatness of radio. Enter, Radionomy...thousands of stations programmed by real people all over the world. One moment I'm rocking to Xmas tunes and then I can get my French pop jam on...and it's all programmed by producers. Disclaimer: I have a station on Radionomy... it's at http://www.radionomy.com/en/radio/viceroy-radio/index . Try setting up one yourself if you get the itch...it's free (streaming, royalties all paid for) and you can easily set up a month's worth of programming in a hour. Super fun, then you can access it (and so can your friends and followers) globally 24/7. What now?

[EbookReader]

Originally Posted by drasil

then there's the ethical issue of spotify: their payments to artists for streams are laughably low, so much so that lady gaga famously made $162 last year in one month for over 1 million plays. that's not a typo.

Spotify pays 70% of its revenue as royalties to the labels/artists/publisher/songwriter.

So if Spotify makes $1 billion in revenue, it will pay $700 million. About the same rate that Itunes pay by the way.

Spotify pays $5000 to LadyGaga/her label/her publisher/her songwriter for 1 million plays (at $0.005 per play). I guess Lady Gaga cut of that is only $162. Nothing Spotify can do about it since that is in her contract with her label.

I doubt Spotify has the power to force Interscope/Universal Music Group to pay Lady Gaga better.









Here's the payout rate from subscription music.
Keep in mind that only Spotify has free streaming (5 million paying subscribers + 15 million free users). Having free users is losing Spotify a lot of money BUT it help Spotify grow. In comparison, Rhapsody is profitable while Spotify something like $50 million in 2011.




http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/perm.../120604youtube

per source: "Payable to Artist/Label via digital distributor for sales from July to December, 2011."
(Rhapsody purchased Napster last year, though the Napster name continues in various European territories.)

Zune
15,159 plays
Payout = $437.58
$0.028 per song
Ratio = 25:1 iTunes Song Download

Napster
30,238 plays
Payout = $479.07
$0.016 per song
Ratio = 43:1 iTunes song download.

Rhapsody
50,822 plays
Payout = $668.57
$0.013 per song
Ratio = 53:1 iTunes song download.

Spotify
798,783 plays.
Payout = $4,277.39
$0.005 per song.
Ratio = 140:1 iTunes Song Download




---------------------

p.s. If Spotify get rid of free streaming, it growth will SLOW but it will be profitable. And it will pay $0.01 for every stream.

And payment to artists/labels will drop because 15 million free users disappeared. (ad revenue will be gone).

[Tech198]

Originally Posted by EbookReader

Spotify pays 70% of its revenue as royalties to the labels/artists/publisher/songwriter.

So if Spotify makes $1 billion in revenue, it will pay $700 million. About the same rate that Itunes pay by the way.

Spotify pays $5000 to LadyGaga/her label/her publisher/her songwriter for 1 million plays (at $0.005 per play). I guess Lady Gaga cut of that is only $162. Nothing Spotify can do about it since that is in her contract with her label...

What about increasing the price for Unlimited & Premium users ?

If Spotify never had a "free" service, it would knock those people "wanting to try it out" first

... Raise the monthly price for those like me on the Premium (& Unlimited) accounts, and part of that could go towards where it matters. While Spotify keeps its free service. Everyone wins.

[EbookReader]

Originally Posted by Tech198

What about increasing the price for Unlimited & Premium users ?

If Spotify never had a "free" service, it would knock those people "wanting to try it out" first

... Raise the monthly price for those like me on the Premium (& Unlimited) accounts, and part of that could go towards where it matters. While Spotify keeps its free service. Everyone wins.

I doubt it will be increased anytime soon.

If anything, they should decrease it to attract more subscribers. But that won't happen.