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I'd rather have two subscribers that pay then a hundred that don't but then again I guess you can always chop it full of ads.
 
I'd rather have two subscribers that pay then a hundred that don't.

I'd rather have the 100 that don't. I'll make a heck of a lot more selling ads.

I guess you don't believe broadcast radio and TV is a viable business model?
 
... and progressing to legal, ad-supported platforms like Spotify and YouTube. Iovine thinks it's wrong, and insists artists should get paid for their work.

Umm, isn't that what the ads pay for? I mean, at least theoretically. YouTube, for example, is reported to pay significantly less than many (most? all?) other streaming services, and none of them have a great reputation for paying very much. But that includes Apple Music. Whether the consumer pays does not appear to affect how much the artist gets paid when it comes to streaming.
 
As long as my collection of ripped physical CDs is in iTunes, I won't be subscribing to Apple Music. Too many horror stories of carefully curated collections going kaput.
 
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He's right, free music services like Spotify are unfair to the artists.

Yeah but I'm pretty sure they get a piece of the Ad revenue or they wouldn't be offering their music for free. That being said the Ad's and lower sound quality of the free tier don't appeal to me.

Not so sure everyone would jump off spotify to AM if it were free either as many spotify users find the playlists better on spotify.

I tend to create my own with smart playlist in AM and I like having the star rating and love options. I just wish AM had BPM info to help me make running and sleep smart playlists of my top rated songs. That and star ratings and ability to create smart playlists on ios. That would get it pretty close to perfect for me.
 
Oh well… I am a Mac-User since system 7. I used iTunes forever and was a paying user of Apple Music from the very beginning until the end of 2016.

Now I am a much happier paying user of Spotify. And no! I never used the free version.

The Apple Music interface just kept being a disaster, essential things just didn't work conveniently… I especially hated how it was impossible to mix pre-owned music with new tracks from Apple Music and how synchronizing long existing playlists with the iPhone didn't work along with using the service. On top of that songs that I bought and owned before Apple Music were deleted or replaced by ones from Apple Music. Albums turned to be incomplete. Loads of issues.

Worst of all… after I quit on Apple Music... iTunes just deleted ALL my playlists! Some of which I had built for a decade. I was so angry that I wanted to smash my MacbookPro... but as I still luckily own a 2015 model with fancy oldschool USB ports, that would have been stupid.

Apple Music was okay to discover new stuff, but in every other other aspect Spotify DOES THE JOB MUCH BETTER. Fact.

I am done with Apple Music!
 
Except it sounds bad. Sorry but 320 kbps MP3 sounds like mud compared to 256 kbps AAC and I can easily doing a blind test tell.

Who cares when 9 times out of 10 you're listening to Google Play (or any of the streaming services) when doing things in noisy environments like in your car, while exercising, out by the pool, hiking, etc??? I think most people don't care whether it's 320k MP3 or FLAC. If you do care, you're sitting at home in a quiet room with expensive headphones or speakers...not the 95% of the population that uses streaming services...

Not to say there isn't a time or place for Tidal or Spotify HIFI or FLAC files on a DAP, but I wouldn't say MP3's in noisy environments sound like mud...
 
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Apple Music's biggest problem is the train wreck of an app that is iTunes. They need something sleek and stand-alone. Break up that monstrosity of an app and that'll help!
Separate but equal! I'm totally on board. I spent quite a while cleaning up the mess after my trial of Apple Music wreaked havoc on my carefully tagged and curated iTunes library. Mismatched cover art, songs attributed to lame "best of" compilations... thank god I had Time Machine backups to revert to. They may have fixed some of this, but I was too freaked out by that experience to trust it after that.
 



In fact, he said if Apple Music were to offer a free tier like Spotify, it "would have 400 million people on it."​

I would actually say it's their reputation of reliability. If a user chose to play a song and it played either the live version or another entirely different track instead, they'll lose subscribers.

For example, "Live: Selling the Drama" - All the songs are screwed up for me. Playing the song "I Alone" plays "Lightning Crashes".

Weezer's Pinkerton plays live tracks instead of the studio version. Off the top of my head, the song "El Scorcho" does this. I've given Apple feedback countless times over the years and it has done nothing.

Basically, they need help fixing their catalog.
 
That is why I don't go to the movies. If you only wait a few months you can purchase the movie on digital ad free.
Are your movie theaters playing ads in the middle of the movie? Every movie theater I've ever been to plays ads leading up to the movie, but after the movie starts... it's an ad free experience. If you don't wanna see ads, don't show up until the movie starts.
 
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Apple Music will never surpass Spotify if it doesn't have a free tier.

That said, screw low-bitrate "free" music.

I agree. That's one of the reasons why I keep going back to Spotify, if for whatever reason, I can't pay for my Apple Music account, I can no longer use it versus if I can't pay for my Spotify account, I always have access with the free version, just don't get all the perks with it.
 


Iovine thinks it's wrong, and insists artists should get paid for their work.

About 90% of the music that 75% if us want to listen to is from a time when the artists have been paid for their music, or the artists themselves are already dead. I have paid for the same material in 45 RPM,LP, 8-Track, cassette, MP3 and even Reel-to-Reel (Columbia Record Club).

In the meantime, Disney and company keep extending copyright law so that stuff that should LONG be in the public domain remains locked up. It is no wonder that so many don't take it seriously any more. Before recorded music, the best composers/writers/lyricists had to rely on sheet music sales. Otherwise, they had to do what a lot are doing today, making their money through live performances.

Frankly, if every currently producing artist stopped producing tomorrow, many of us wouldn't even notice. It kind of stinks if there is a great new classical composer trying to compete with Mozart, Chopin and Beethoven, but new artists/groups are competing against the Beatles, Led Zeppeli, Aerosmith, Abba, Bing Crisby, Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. Rap/Hip-Hop are outside of my competence/interest, so my comments do not apply to those genres.
 
He's right. No one values anything they get for free.
"Free", totally ruined the App eco-system (both iTunes & Play).
It's toxic and doesn't nurture high quality apps that get regular updates.
 
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Are your movie theaters playing ads in the middle of the movie? Every movie theater I've ever been to plays ads leading up to the movie, but after the movie starts... it's an ad free experience. If you don't wanna see ads, don't show up until the movie starts.

And get the worst seats in the place. Or pay extra for assigned seating.

The poster put his solution right in his post. If he doesn't want to see ads, he's not going to go to the theatre at all. And that's the appropriate solution.
 
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that's just plain BS IMO and he is just high on his own products... Apple has 3 months of free trial, so they have more than enough time for people to test and consider the product. A lot of users try it, but it doesn't stick... Spotify is a better product overall and the only reason people stick with apple is that its part of the eco system...Just like Windows Explorer has the majority of users even if it was the worst browser. If it wasn't part of the eco sysyem I wouldn't even consider using it, spotify is better overall in almost every way.
 
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