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Apple Managers Didn't Know How Spotify Worked, Engineers Used Pandora Over iTunes Radio

And what about offline listening, the good old-fashioned "it's my music" way? I like that way.
 
viacavour said:
Yap, they still don't have a lot of songs and performers I tried. You have to pay for them individually. They will have some newer ones for promotion of course, but the studios want your money too you know.

When their funds run dry, and can no longer afford the hot properties, it will just become a sea of mediocrity. Enjoy it while it lasts.
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Get serious. Spotify has been around for years. They have a massive music selection (At least were they started in Europe), they have huge resources and have more clout than Apple in Music industy over here. With 10 Million paying subscribers, They are not going to disappear or run out of cash.
 
Tiger8 said:
MobileMe
Ping

He was only human
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C'mon guys please stop quoting me on ping.
I didn't want to say that he never failed.
But he was crazy all over all important decisions made at apple, trying to have as much control over everything as possible. Sure he might have underestimated streaming services as well (don't think so of he'd seen the current situation)
But he would not have "not cared" and "not known how they worked", that's for sure! If he would have made a decision against it, it would have been because he was stubborn, not because he was lazy. Plus he wouldn't have tolerated behavior like this from his employees.

This article reminds me of some talk I once heard about a guy who explained how Nokia reacted to the iPhone in the first place. They were too concerned optimizing the headphone jack of their product line too see what kind of a game changer the iPhone was. All they were saying was like "naaahh, we don't need to check out this stupid gadget, I'm not interested, they have problems with their battery life, it's all just a hype and about to be gone in a couple of months."

This is exactly the same behavior but at apple, and a sure sign of decline.
 
mac1984user said:
At least the Netflix model makes more sense due to the frequency with which we rewatch films as opposed to music.
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What an odd statement. I am sure most people revisit 'old' music way more than they see old movies several times.

I don't think I have ever seen more than a handful movies twice in my life. I have probably listened to some of my favorite albums hundreds of times though.
 
Dagless said:
And what about offline listening, the good old-fashioned "it's my music" way? I like that way.
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Very few people in the markets that services like Spotify are represented in are truly offline these days.

And you can always sync up to 3333(!) songs to each of your Spotify devices (PC/Mac/cell phone/tablet) if you are going to be offline for a few days.

I used to have (still have, now stacked in my attic) a reasonably sized physical music collection (2000+ CDs and around 500 vinyl items). It has been more than 10 years since I have listened to any of it from the original media though, the only exception being newly aquired items that I buy at concerts and such to support the band - these are listened to maybe once before ripping them to file.

All my 'old' and 'owned' music have been converted to digital files, but I actually do not listen much to those exact files anymore since Spotify gives me a vast selection for a small monthly fee - this of course also includes the majority of (but admittely not absolutely everything) of my old physical collection.

I spend far less money on music now than I used to back in the day (where my monthly buys usually totalled more than what I pay for a whole year of Spotify these days), but have access to 10000x more.

I remember hoping for a service that would provide me with 'all the music in the world' for a yearly or monthly fee back in the early 2000s when Napster and similar 'illegal' services thrived. I never in my wildest dreams hoped for it to be so cheap that it actually is today.
 
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chfilm said:
This article reminds me of some talk I once heard about a guy who explained how Nokia reacted to the iPhone in the first place. They were too concerned optimizing the headphone jack of their product line too see what kind of a game changer the iPhone was. All they were saying was like "naaahh, we don't need to check out this stupid gadget, I'm not interested, they have problems with their battery life, it's all just a hype and about to be gone in a couple of months."

This is exactly the same behavior but at apple, and a sure sign of decline.
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I agree with you on this one. You see, I guess when you become this big management becomes such a trick thing.

Nokia is a classic example of a company that listened to its customers too much, too closely, and look where they are now.
 
I agree with this!

GuitarDTO said:
The employees themselves need to take responsibility, not just blame the ol' manager. An "A team" employee would walk into the managers office, demand that they use the other service, tell him why even when he says get out, and push the issue. Of course managers are clueless, but in this case so are the employees. It sometimes take's a big set of b@lls to drive change at a large company and sometimes going against the grain. (I am a mechanical engineer and deal with this daily). The larger Apple gets, the more this will become an issue.
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I myself would like to know if these employee's tried in anyway to tell upper management of what they felt? I always take story's like this from employee's with a grain of salt. All business's have the know it all, I told you so emplyee's that come out after the fact! A true and dedicated employee would have got a group of employee's or just by him self, and went to the top. This is also how great employee's move up, and if these employee's really felt that way, one of them or more would have tried in vain to get the point across, to prove themselves at the very least!
 
McCool71 said:
Very few people in the markets that services like Spotify are represented in are truly offline these days.

And you can always sync up to 3333(!) songs to each of your Spotify devices (PC/Mac/cell phone/tablet) if you are going to be offline for a few days.
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It's not so much storage but a sudden outtage that puts me off, and the fees associated with network usage. I've got a 1gb allowance but even under normal non-streaming use I come close to maxing that out a month.

So far I haven't seen a reason to shift my music playing away from iTunes/"owned" music and to something like Spotify. Probably for the same reasons I buy blurays and DVDs (stuff to keep) even though I have Netflix (cheap and for stuff I wouldn't normally watch).
 
TheMacPotato said:
Get serious. Spotify has been around for years. They have a massive music selection (At least were they started in Europe), they have huge resources and have more clout than Apple in Music industy over here. With 10 Million paying subscribers, They are not going to disappear or run out of cash.
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I'd like to see how this works. On the one hand, they may get acquired, but on the other, it's like saying, HTC sells a lot of M8s, it is the highest rated Android phone on the market, people love HTC, they are not going to disappear even if they're not profitable.
 
SchneiderMan said:
Pandora is a pile of crap in comparison to iTunes Radio and Spotify. I love them both and use them on a regular basis. Even Beats Music is a great streaming service.
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Really. Pandora is a pile of crap compared to iTunes Radio? You've got to be kidding. iTunes radio doesn't even come close to performing as well as Pandora.
 
Mildredop said:
Apple fanboyism at its best.
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Yep...Love Apple. Can they do wrong? You bet. But I trust them & if I am going to give my money to someone I would rather it go to Apple.

Have you tried Beats? I can't find a feature that I am missing going from Spotify to Beats.

If Beats didn't give me the as good (& I believe better) experience than Spotify I would not have switched.

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Yvan256 said:
Don't forget that some of us still think it's the best way. I don't depend on a monthly subscription, I don't hear ads, I pick exactly what I want, it works without a wireless connection and I'll never get roaming charges.
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Other than the Monthly subscription you just described Beats & Spotify.
 
TheMacPotato said:
Are you serious?! At least in the UK everyone knows what Spotify is and uses it. it is the default music player for most people. iTunes radio (when it finally launches in the UK) will never be able to compete.
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I was using Pandora, but the little widget I had downloaded stopped working and I couldn't be bothered to try and fix the problem. I've already moved on though, my "requested" station had about 20 songs in it.
 
iTunes Radio looks like an Alpha version. And... you can not use it in your iPhone.
 
theheadguy said:
But it can't be true... Apple isn't capable of such willful ignorance! Rome will never fall! /s
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Do you know how long Rome stood at the top of the world? How many times it faltered? This is what gives me a chuckle every time the US is compared to Rome...and with Apple, it's even funnier.
 
Rogifan said:
Streaming music/video is the future. Apple wouldn't be spending $3B on Beats if it wasn't.
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Is the future as opposed to what? In the future, everyone will rent music and pay a monthly fee for the rest of their life and never purchase a downloaded track? I don't think so. It's another option. That's it.
 
Aluminum213 said:
After Steve jobs got too sick to run things at apple and Tim cook took over people with MBAs started to take over, before it was engineers, artists, thinkers, who were running things


Quite pathetic top level employees didn't know anything about the leader in streaming music and to the point of refusing to use it


Tim cook era indeed
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Do you have a list of all these people with MBAs taking over Apple? I'd be curious too know who they are. The only member of the executive team with an MBA is Tim Cook. Craig Federighi and Eddy Cue have computer science degrees. Dan Riccio has a mechanical engineering degree. Jony Ive has an art degree. I'd love to know all the MBAs these guys are hiring to run Apple.
 
kds1 said:
Is the future as opposed to what? In the future, everyone will rent music and pay a monthly fee for the rest of their life and never purchase a downloaded track? I don't think so. It's another option. That's it.
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No, not everybody, but for most people the answer is a sound YES.

Spotify is a great service. It works flawlessly. If you've ever used it, you wouldn't go back.
 
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