You can get $99 Apple Music codes online from eBay/PayPal or Walmart, delivered via email. Good for 1 years worth of Apple Music. That makes it $8.25/month. Link.
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Jimmy Iovine Talks Apple Music Exclusives Criticism, Says Service Was 'Too Ambitious'
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You can get $99 Apple Music codes online from eBay/PayPal or Walmart, delivered via email. Good for 1 years worth of Apple Music. That makes it $8.25/month. Link.
I'm reading a lot of comments that state they would rather buy than rent music... Correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't "own" the music you buy. You own the physical object (vinyl, plastic, tape) that holds a recording, but you don't really own the right to hold the actual music forever as your personal property. Proof of this: after a couple years of listenings you scratch and damage your favorite vinyl record. Go and take it to the record store with your original receipt as proof of ownership and see if they exchange "your record" for a new un-damaged one. Same for CDs. Or try exchanging your CD for a digital version of it. When you buy albums in any sort of distribution medium, you just get a permission to listen to the recording contained in the medium in a private environment (in your room with your personal player, in your car, or going to your friend's house and listen to it at the living room,) and you cannot exchange mediums as they come and go. Also, you don't get permission to do with it as you like, i.e. as background music for a podcast, video game, public broadcast tv/radio show, etc. All of those examples generate mechanical royalties that you must pay for each time you play it because you don't really own the music. The labels, composers and some performers do.
If you buy an mp3, chances are that in about 20 years the file format will be obsolete and not supported by most media players/operating systems by default. What will you do? Buy the next gen media of your recording. Right?
Streaming is just another type of medium for distribution of recordings where you are actually paying to access a huge collection of music hosted inside a server network maintained by some company that pays mechanical royalties to a label/composer/performer each time the servers stream a file to your device. Still, you don't own the recording. You just pay each month for all the mechanical royalties the servers generate, as well as the salaries for the curators, and the maintenance to the hardware/network that makes it all work. A lot of people like it because it lets you create playlists of your favorite music without using hard drive space by controlling what stays within your HD and what streams from the cloud. You can discover new music easily, too. And most likely, streaming recording quality will improve as the services mature and as increasing bandwidth allows it, something your vinyl or CD, or even your mp3 won't achieve. It's a medium that can actually mutate with technology, licensing schemes and might actually empower artists if, for example, they are treated as app developers, as some individuals around this forum have suggested before. It could be finally interactive on a really personal level.
Excellent, in my opinion.
If you buy an mp3, chances are that in about 20 years the file format will be obsolete and not supported by most media players/operating systems by default. What will you do? Buy the next gen media of your recording. Right?
Streaming is just another type of medium for distribution of recordings where you are actually paying to access a huge collection of music hosted inside a server network maintained by some company that pays mechanical royalties to a label/composer/performer each time the servers stream a file to your device. Still, you don't own the recording. You just pay each month for all the mechanical royalties the servers generate, as well as the salaries for the curators, and the maintenance to the hardware/network that makes it all work. A lot of people like it because it lets you create playlists of your favorite music without using hard drive space by controlling what stays within your HD and what streams from the cloud. You can discover new music easily, too. And most likely, streaming recording quality will improve as the services mature and as increasing bandwidth allows it, something your vinyl or CD, or even your mp3 won't achieve. It's a medium that can actually mutate with technology, licensing schemes and might actually empower artists if, for example, they are treated as app developers, as some individuals around this forum have suggested before. It could be finally interactive on a really personal level.
Excellent, in my opinion.
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I've been using an iPod/iPhone with iTunes for my music needs since the first iPod Mini. I love my iPhone and Macbook but Apple has consistently made it worse and worse for my music needs - which is a core function in my opinion. It's gotten so bad that I am actually using Spotify due to its usefulness and simplicity.
Thoroughly disappointed with what Apple has been doing with the music side of things. It's really not hard to make a music player app.
I really agree with one of the above commentators, where is all Apple's innovation?
Sure I like the iPhone but it's a mature tech now with iterative improvements. Smartphones are becoming a commodity and the iPhones high price tag is becoming harder to justify. Their Macbooks are a joke - I own the only one worth buying, the 15" Pro is still using Haswell silicon! I like the Airpods but boy are they expensive!
C'mon Apple, time to either give some price cuts or start justifying the high price tag.
Thoroughly disappointed with what Apple has been doing with the music side of things. It's really not hard to make a music player app.
I really agree with one of the above commentators, where is all Apple's innovation?
Sure I like the iPhone but it's a mature tech now with iterative improvements. Smartphones are becoming a commodity and the iPhones high price tag is becoming harder to justify. Their Macbooks are a joke - I own the only one worth buying, the 15" Pro is still using Haswell silicon! I like the Airpods but boy are they expensive!
C'mon Apple, time to either give some price cuts or start justifying the high price tag.
For those with years invested in the Star system, this is indeed a problem. If you love music you not only listen to it, you acquire throughout life. You have a Library and Smart Playlists? They evolve. Love or dislike is sufficient only for a streaming service, not the curation of objects on any scale. Except maybe deciding what goes to the garage sale.
Looking a lot like a pointless deletion made solely to force change. Change to what? This is not an audio jack, where arguments can be made that it's taking up space and hindering all the Great Things we have in store for you. This is promoting subscriptions, which is great for recurring revenues.
A binary system works great for computers, not the real world.
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I'm glad we both found ways to enjoy music
Never considered the original Apple Music interface to be confusing, but I think the new version is better overall, and I like the increased size for album art when you're using it on an iPhone. The original probably did have a tendency to be too small/light in terms of it's elements. Needed some effective visual contrasts, and it has more of that now.
Well, you are in denial if you try to maintain Bears brings in only "a few million,"
Come on KP, quit resisting our rescue. When you're making up rumors about rumors, you're only digging yourself in deeper. LOL that "beats was experiencing a major slowdown in sales." The inconvenient truth is that Beats now has around 60% of the entire worldwide premium headphone market, and is the world leader in wireless headphone sales.
As far as the benefits to Apple Music, Spotify needed six whole years to attract its first 10 million paying customers--Apple hit the same milestone in just a few months and went from zero to number 2.
Finally KP, and I hate to break it to you, as far as your theory that Apple Music doesn't bring in much money because of your analysis of the revenue gains in the "Other" category,"in Apple's financial reports, the problem is that Apple Music isn't in the "Other" category; it is under "Services." Yes, "Services," which is growing at a record pace at Apple since Beats was purchased, and now produces more revenue in one quarter than all of Facebook. "Services" is on pace to become so large it would be a Fortune 100 company all by itself in 2017.
When you are in a hole, stop digging KP. Whatever Eddy did to you in junior high, it's time to move on.
But it can add up, and the total cost is not that "attractive".
Plus, this is a fee you need to pay monthly. Once you stop paying it, you instantly have no music to listen to.
Link helps define iTunes etc. music rights:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/who-inherits-your-itunes-library-2012-08-23
You can do anything you like if one has the music files, maybe not legally.
and to further this. in the time since the beats purchase at 3.5BILLION, the "Other Category" of sales have only equalled a total of approximately 20million. THAT includes Apple Watch sales, Accessories, and other times in the Apple store that do not qualify as either iPhone, iPod, iPad, Computer, or services.
that means its likelyhood, apple ha likely only pulled in < 4 million from beats sales in the last year.
that is a terrible ROI, unless there is something else in that 3.5b that is returning better.
Just talking about personal experience regarding costs and I think many have used this example before, but I have bought since the late 80s up to 2009, around 180 CDs. Each with a cost of around US$12 to US$16 dollars. Only a couple had a cost of US$1.50. On average, the cost could be US$14. If we do the math, 14x180=2,520. That would be US$2,520 spent on, lets say on a lapse of 20 years give or take, on music recorded on a CD medium. Math again: 2,520/20=126. US$126 dollars spent per year on music for a collection of 180 albums.
I'm paying a family subscription that costs in Mexico around US$10.00 (yes, it's cheaper than in the States taking into account the average cost of the Peso against the Dollar since September 2015.) It's more or less what I've spent on my music collection per year, but with access to tenths of millions of tracks not only for me, but also for my wife and my daughter. Again, great deal in my opinion. Only gripe: I just wish I could pay a year of the service in advance.
Help me out here... Apple's sales for the last 12 months have been around $220 Billion.
"Other" sales are around what, 6%?
How about $13.2 Billion? For just the last year. And Apple acquired Beats in August 2014?
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The Tim Cookified Apple at it's worst right here. Apple Music, while having the most music available of all streaming services, should not be tailored to Older people. The app is horrible, since when is it a good idea to put recently played songs at the top so you have to scroll to discover new music?
I'm almost at the end of my rope as far as investing in Apple goes. They have not only gotten off the track, they lost the map to get back on the track.
I'm almost at the end of my rope as far as investing in Apple goes. They have not only gotten off the track, they lost the map to get back on the track.
It does definitely add up but relative to what you're getting I don't think it's that much. Because of illegal downloading becoming so prevalent people have been conditioned to think music has almost zero value, that's just not true. The biggest complaint people seem to have about streaming services is the price but those services arguably offer more value than something like Netflix (just based on where and when most people use it) which doesn't get nearly as much flak at a very comparable price point. Theaters have shown commercials before movies for years but no one is out there arguing that the commercials should make the movie free.
The fact that my comment was one of the highest rated for this article speaks volumes that I'm not alone.
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Hahaha yes, pretty much
Yesterdays word was suck 
I wonder if you will still think Apple Music is excellent in a few years time when the monthly subscription fee is $20 or $30 a month. I prefer to "own" my music in the sense that once I've paid for it I don't have to keep paying for it month after month. If you're worried about scratches then rip the CD into iTunes and you have a pristine copy forever.
Apple Music is probably a good idea if you would otherwise buy a lot of CDs and only listen to them for a year or so. Personally, I don't do that. I have a few favourite artists and I will listen to the same albums over and over. If I want to discover new music or listen to a variety of music I just put the radio on.
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If a week's holiday in Hawaii only cost $10, you wouldn't argue that "it can add up"! That's a terrible argument.
It is horses for courses, and the subscription model isn't for everyone.
But objectively, it just isn't expensive, period.
Even if you stopped paying it, and had no music, in many cases you could then go and buy CDs of al the stuff you actually still listened to, and it could still work out the cheapest option.
Mileage will obviously vary, but for example:
Option A: Someone has a moderate interest in music and buys a CD every week, for 10 years, at $10 a CD.
Total cost: $5200
Option B: Someone subscribes to Apple Music for 10 years.
Cost: $1200
Which allows them to also listen to anything, including a lot of stuff they were interested in hearing, but wouldn't have bought the CD, either because they weren't sure about it, or were already spending what they could afford on CDs.
Now suppose AM closed, or they stopped subscribing.
Chances are, after 10 years, there's a lot of that music they never really listen to that much. But even if they then bought 25% of it on CD that they still listened to, even at $10 a CD (many probably less because it would be years old by then), that's another $1300.
Total cost: $2500.
Of course you could plug in all sorts of numbers here, but the point is that even if someone stopped subscribing and went and bought stuff as well, the total cost could still be less.
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Would you like to put a timeframe on when the price will treble?
If people don't like AM, that's fine.
But stop trying to convince people who do that they shouldn't.
I am happy to pay my $10, and never have to think about whether I've got money to buy a bunch of new albums that I want to hear.
And I don't see it as paying over and over for stuff - the $10 I paid last month covered all the stuff I added last month. This month's $10 covers all the stuff I'll add this month.
We were talking about headphone sales, which is in the "other" category.
It doesn't matter how long Spotify took to get to 10 million subs. Apple clearly helped the streaming cause, but by botching the launch, they helped Spotify more than they helped themselves. Apple Music is at 17 million and Spotify is at 40 million. Those numbers should be flipped considering Apple's massive advantage.
With the redesign and iTunes Match included in the sub, Apple Music is better than Spotify in almost every way IMO, but they didn't need to spend $3B to get there when they could have achieved the same result, and likely get there much faster, for $15MM, as Google had.
As you pointed out, services like Apple Music is the prize, not some headphone business.
You didn't get the point. I'm not worried about scratches on CDs or vinyls, but discussing about the idea that an individual keeps his/her recordings forever in the same format/medium, as well as pointing out the false perception that most users have of music ownership.
You say: "rip your CD and have your copy forever." Hard drive failure, copy's gone. "Have it in a second hard drive or USB as backup!" That implies paying at least the same amount of money for a USB stick as if I bought a second CD of the album, even worse if I use an external HD, also prone to damage. "Then have many copies in many different storage devices!" Pffft... never ending countermeasures just for a recording.
"But I didn't break even this month and I can't pay the 10 dollars for my existing Apple Music library and services!" Damn, you can't pay 10 bucks? Whatever your situation is, that means you are screwed and a music service is the least of your concerns. Sorry, but it's true. Now, I wouldn't panic in that situation, because as soon as you can pay the service again, Apple servers remember everything you had archived and restores it, no problem (even for iCloud Photo Libraries and iCloud Drive files.) Probably has an expiration time, though.
In my opinion, streaming as distribution is able to adapt to changes and add features to an already existing vast catalogue.
As for the monthly price exaggerated increase, you are of course speculating, since no one has seen any indication that the service will go up to those prices. You inferred this just for laws of offer/demand? iCloud storage prices have gone down, not up, even though users have increased. Everyone said the same about that service: "Wait till Apple kidnaps your files and pushes the cloud services price up to the skies!" Haven't seen any of that happen.
Those thinking that streaming subscription prices won't go up much in the future should have a look at how much subscription TV cost in the early days vs. how much it costs now.
Of course people will have a higher propensity in general to pay for TV than for music, but it's likely at some point everyone who wants a music subscription will have one, and then the services' key metric will become revenue per subscriber.
Of course people will have a higher propensity in general to pay for TV than for music, but it's likely at some point everyone who wants a music subscription will have one, and then the services' key metric will become revenue per subscriber.