Jimmy Iovine Talks Apple Music Exclusives Criticism, Says Service Was 'Too Ambitious'

[heckyeahinmyopinion]

Too expensive. I already own a ton of music. I don't buy more than 144 songs a year an I own them forever.

Exactly! This is the part that all these streamers miss. The OWNERSHIP Aspect of it all. STREAMING does not mean OWNERSHIP! It means license but not OWN. People who BUY their music either with CD or even through itunes and BURN IT to a CD or even Save it to a flash drive they actually OWN their music.. All you streamers out there you're getting PLAYED. You pay 9-15 bucks/mo for a license to stream music as much as you want but have ZERO rights to if if your card expires, or if you have no money in the account and cant pay the bill... I wish people thought about this more!

I'm happy to hear that you have!

 

[Shirasaki]

Exactly! This is the part that all these streamers miss. The OWNERSHIP Aspect of it all. STREAMING does not mean OWNERSHIP! It means license but not OWN. People who BUY their music either with CD or even through itunes and BURN IT to a CD or even Save it to a flash drive they actually OWN their music.. All you streamers out there you're getting PLAYED. You pay 9-15 bucks/mo for a license to stream music as much as you want but have ZERO rights to if if your card expires, or if you have no money in the account and cant pay the bill... I wish people thought about this more!

I'm happy to hear that you have!

However, based on copyright law, all we own is the physical media sold to us, not the data on it. We can do whatever we want on that physical media but we can do little on data stored on it.
One this is certain though, that when you don't pay for streaming you instantly lose access of all what you have. Total cost may be a lot cheaper in the long run but you just pay for something you cannot save forever. This drawback is almost my main reason rejecting streaming. Oh, when one day, internet is down for quite a long time, only CD will prevail.
We always need a "Plan B".

 

[DrumApple]

Too Ambitious = Sucked.

 

[geekymcfly]

SubGenre's suck now. I use to be able to click on a smooth jazz station in iOS 9 through the Jazz genre but now I cant find anything about Smooth Jazz unless I search for it and it still doesn't give me the options that it gave me before.

 

[jgdeschamps]

Exactly! This is the part that all these streamers miss. The OWNERSHIP Aspect of it all. STREAMING does not mean OWNERSHIP! It means license but not OWN. People who BUY their music either with CD or even through itunes and BURN IT to a CD or even Save it to a flash drive they actually OWN their music.. All you streamers out there you're getting PLAYED. You pay 9-15 bucks/mo for a license to stream music as much as you want but have ZERO rights to if if your card expires, or if you have no money in the account and cant pay the bill... I wish people thought about this more!

I'm happy to hear that you have!

Again, labels paid big money on intellectual properties registries so they can make all the copies they want to sell music, broadcast it, make merchandise abut it, charge for covers a third party might produce, make any kind of money they want out of it, etc. But that right to do what they want with the music is not transferred to you. Read the small print on your albums. You can just make a copy or rip the copyrighted content of a physical or digital medium you leagally paid for basically if it's a security backup, or to download to your phone, audio player or computer to be listened by yourself, and you don't get to give the copy away to friends for free or for money.
https://www.riaa.com/resources-learning/about-piracy/
Not yours. No ownership. No lending the album to your friends. Limited use and copying rights. You pay for the distribution medium only. You just "feel" safer with the idea of owning a physical object. Not better or worse than Apple's or Spotify's streaming, or Disney's Direct-to-Brain Network Distribution from the year 2075.
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Hopefully Apple music goes ahead and fails so Trent Reznor can get back to work with NIN

Don't support Apple Music failing, but HELL YEAH for Reznor to get his lazy ass back to work on the promised NIN material for 2016.

 

[johngordon]

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.

Subscription to offered more as time went on though.

Subscription music services provide pretty much all music from the get go.

Subscription tv, in its early days, was completely new and would have taken time to find its direction / price point.

Subscription music services exist now, at a time when entertainment subscription services have matured and found a price the market will bear.

It's unlikely that AM or Spotify is going to jump to $30 or even $20 any time soon.

 

[deany]

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.

yep it has to be:

1st worst investment in history yahoo's $570,000,000 "mistake" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast.com TOTAL LOSS dont forget this was 1999!!!
2nd worst investment in history apple's $3,000,000,000 "mistake" http://uk.pcmag.com/headphones-reviews/45742/opinion/why-apple-may-dump-cheap-beats-headphones SHOULD HAVE PAID $50,000,000 for KOSS and REBRANDED Tidal music to AM

 

[Soni Sanjay]

Exactly! This is the part that all these streamers miss. The OWNERSHIP Aspect of it all. STREAMING does not mean OWNERSHIP! It means license but not OWN. People who BUY their music either with CD or even through itunes and BURN IT to a CD or even Save it to a flash drive they actually OWN their music.. All you streamers out there you're getting PLAYED. You pay 9-15 bucks/mo for a license to stream music as much as you want but have ZERO rights to if if your card expires, or if you have no money in the account and cant pay the bill... I wish people thought about this more!

I'm happy to hear that you have!

Except most people don't care about that... Have you ever thought about that?

 

[deany]

Exactly! This is the part that all these streamers miss. The OWNERSHIP Aspect of it all. STREAMING does not mean OWNERSHIP! It means license but not OWN. People who BUY their music either with CD or even through itunes and BURN IT to a CD or even Save it to a flash drive they actually OWN their music.. All you streamers out there you're getting PLAYED. You pay 9-15 bucks/mo for a license to stream music as much as you want but have ZERO rights to if if your card expires, or if you have no money in the account and cant pay the bill... I wish people thought about this more!

I'm happy to hear that you have!

I look it like buying or leasing a car but an amazing lease deal.

Assuming a cd cost $10.00 and you buy one a month its yours to keep like buying a car.

With this super dupa lease deal you have a choice of 30,000,000 / 10 = 3,000,000 DIFFERENT cars A MONTH some Rolls Royces like The Beatles some less expensive cars like, um, put your least favorite band here X.

So a choice in a 30 day month or 100,000 different cars to drive a day.

Of course like a car lease you can hand the keys back.
However there are two MAJOR selling points of a music lease in this instance over a music purchase.

• 100,000 different cars a day to drive verses the owner who gets a paultry one car a day (a car he might not even like). and he or she is stuck with said car for a month.

• Being a streaming subscriber is a dream for many - why
Its like owning a Tower Records or HMV (UK) chain and being able to listen to your hearts content all the records in your record shops.
However no lease on record shop buildings, no staff wages, no insurance VAT, taxes, staff ringing in sick, holiday pay etc etc etc
It truely is like owning your own record chain WITHOUT the exorbitant overheads and stress.

Cheers

A very very happy Google Play Music subscriber with a FREE 50,000. "locker" for my thirty years old music collection mixed with my leased 30,000,000 tracks.

Happy as Larry

 

[LordVic]

[

Exactly! This is the part that all these streamers miss. The OWNERSHIP Aspect of it all. STREAMING does not mean OWNERSHIP! It means license but not OWN. People who BUY their music either with CD or even through itunes and BURN IT to a CD or even Save it to a flash drive they actually OWN their music.. All you streamers out there you're getting PLAYED. You pay 9-15 bucks/mo for a license to stream music as much as you want but have ZERO rights to if if your card expires, or if you have no money in the account and cant pay the bill... I wish people thought about this more!

I'm happy to hear that you have!

Eh, I used to think that way, now I've got a giant bookshelf that wastes precious space, full of hundreds of CDs, that I literally never use anymore because of digital. Not to mention the boxes of cassettes, and the dozens of records.

And as I get older the more I realize that materialism and possession don't benefit me as when my time has come, I can't take them with me.

All I'd be doing is leaving garbage behind for my relatives to clean up after.

 

[ParanoidDroid]

Apple Music in iOS 10 is so awful that I decided to downgrade to iOS 9 after using for a couple of days. Ugly bold headlines – "made for old people" – bothered me a lot. The inconsistent UI is now dumbed down for a target audience that I don't feel part of, yet (5 to 12 and 70+ years old). Im waiting for iOS 11, and possibly switching to Spotify.

 

[dan110]

You know Iovine is going to get a slap on the wrist for saying that.

 

[Ian Howlett]

How come Apple's biggest innovations are always just around the corner? "We couldn't be more proud of our pipeline!" I think people are finally starting to ask, just where are these truly revolutionary products in the pipeline? Hopefully we see some innovation in the next few weeks...

I reckon he's talking out of his "pipeline"!

 

[Sakurambo-kun]

I've used Apple Music since launch and whilst it's undoubtedly a UI train wreck (even more so in iOS 10, where it's now stunningly ugly as well as obtuse), the catalogue is simply better than Spotify. Every now and again I check Spotify to see if it's caught up, and the gap has only got wider.

That UI though, my word it's terrible. So complex and illogical, and the jumbo fonts in the iOS 10 version make it feel as if it's running on some sort of accessibility mode for people with poor eyesight. It's beyond terrible.
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No wonder....it was designed for old people.

Well it certainly has giant oldster friendly font sizes.

I'm generally stunned at what a mess iOS10 is from a UI standpoint. Some apps looks unchanged from iOS9, but others now have a hideous giant, bold font look which reminds of the dreaded red top tabloid press here in the UK. Even the thin styled icons from iOS9 have been partially replaced with chubby fat ones. I expect the official system font for iOS11 to be Comic Sans.

 

[ErikGrim]

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?

 

[johngordon]

Exactly! This is the part that all these streamers miss. The OWNERSHIP Aspect of it all. STREAMING does not mean OWNERSHIP! It means license but not OWN. People who BUY their music either with CD or even through itunes and BURN IT to a CD or even Save it to a flash drive they actually OWN their music.. All you streamers out there you're getting PLAYED. You pay 9-15 bucks/mo for a license to stream music as much as you want but have ZERO rights to if if your card expires, or if you have no money in the account and cant pay the bill... I wish people thought about this more!

I'm happy to hear that you have!

I see - so it can't just be that people disagree with your view.

You want to make an assumption that people are somehow missing something?

Exactly how arrogant do you need to be?

I subscribe to AM, and I completely understand the ownership aspect. Fact is, it really doesn't bother me. What I am interested in is this - the ability to listen to as much music as possible, for the lowest (and legal) amount of money.

Whether I pay to download and own music, or pay to stream that music, it all sounds the same to me.

A card expiring isn't that big a deal, as people are capable of updating their card details. I don't think you actually lose everything immediately anyway.

And you're clutching at straws with people suddenly not being able to afford $10.

If you want to use that logic, I'm going to say that buying and owning music is a bad option too, as if someone doesn't have $10, they won't be able to afford to buy much music.

If someone loves music, but doesn't have much disposable income its difficult to argue that paying $10 (for_the_sake_of_the_argument) for every album they would like is a better option than paying $10 a month for all the albums they would like.

People streaming can absolutely understand and accept that its not for everyone - why can't you do the same instead of patronising people about how they don't understand what they are doing, and how (if only they they did understand) would do the same as you?

 

[thekeyring]

Ahhhh. That's true, albeit shuffle cues 100 songs, so I'm not sure what you were expecting. At least you can still rearrange them!

There used to be two options: "Play Next..." which would play the song when the current song had finished.
and "Add to Up Next..." which kept on adding songs to play. When the Add to Up Next playlist was finished, it would resume shuffling all music. This function would be great!

I could be browsing through music, see a song I want played next, so add it to Play Next. Then I keep scrolling and think "Oh, that would be nice to listen to after the next song..." But all I can do is have it play before the song I've just added to Up Next. Why is this so confusing to explain?

 

[johngordon]

There used to be two options: "Play Next..." which would play the song when the current song had finished.
and "Add to Up Next..." which kept on adding songs to play. When the Add to Up Next playlist was finished, it would resume shuffling all music. This function would be great!

I could be browsing through music, see a song I want played next, so add it to Play Next. Then I keep scrolling and think "Oh, that would be nice to listen to after the next song..." But all I can do is have it play before the song I've just added to Up Next. Why is this so confusing to explain?

That's exactly what I was talking about earlier - but you explained it much better than I did.

Seems they have replaced Add to Up Next with Play Later, but works differently.

I've fired off this as feedback to them. I'm sure they'll be right on it!

 

[Abazigal]

Exactly! This is the part that all these streamers miss. The OWNERSHIP Aspect of it all. STREAMING does not mean OWNERSHIP! It means license but not OWN. People who BUY their music either with CD or even through itunes and BURN IT to a CD or even Save it to a flash drive they actually OWN their music.. All you streamers out there you're getting PLAYED. You pay 9-15 bucks/mo for a license to stream music as much as you want but have ZERO rights to if if your card expires, or if you have no money in the account and cant pay the bill... I wish people thought about this more!

I'm happy to hear that you have!

Using the same logic, isn't watching a movie in a cinema a scam since I don't have anything concrete to show for my money after 2 hours?

Maybe I don't mind not having any music of my own to show for years of subscription to a music streaming service. I have listened to a ton of music over the years, some of which I might never have considered trying out if it had required me to pay for it first. What matters more is the enjoyment and the utility I have gained from having on-demand access to any song I want when I want it. I don't have to agonise over whether a song is worth me paying for it or not. I have already paid my subscription, so no harm in listening to it.

Is this worth nothing?

 

[marty1980]

I don't like that the Music app on iOS includes Apple Music. To me, these are two different ways of using music and everything would be easier if things were separated. If I'm listening to my music, I'm not interesred in Discovery. When I stream, I'm not as much interested in listening to music I already own. I want the integration between the apps, so streaming knows that I own a song and only plays if I have it configured to so. I want to be able to buy songs directly in Apple Music and they show up in My Music.

Labels pay for the marketing to make an artist. It seems that most artists get stuck with a relatively crappy contract. Especially on first signing.

I'm not in favor of fully exclusive music. Timed exclusives can be ok. I don't like the idea of putting music behind a walled garden. I don't like much over the air radio, but free music in this fashion has been around since the radio came about. The stations found ways to pay the labels so the artists could get paid. Streaming is a transformation of radio onto the Internet where technology allows for much higher payouts for everyone. But everyone is fighting over who gets what percent of the payout.

In the end music lovers (consumers) have to deal with the negative affects of all this. Maybe some day it will all work itself out in our favor...maybe.

 

[MS_Hedrick]

View attachment 660341

Tell me more about what I'm seeing

 

[DevNull0]

Cool.

What do you do, and can I have your services/skills/talent/experience for free?

Funny how easy it is to brainwash people who are too young to have perspective or know history. So you agree with Johnny that a free music tier is a bad thing where leeches just rip off artists?

Have you heard of this thing called RADIO? Well, with Radio, not only is it free for the consumer, the labels actually pay the radio station to play the songs they wanted to promote.

So now with the free tier on spotify, the user doesn't get to select the track they want, they can choose to play an entire album or playlist at random and Spotify also inserts other songs they want to promote. Much like with radio, music is being used to promote music. The labels come out ahead because they don't actually pay the payola, and there is no difference for the artist because they payola/promo money comes out of the label's piece of the pie.

Now how did you get so brainwashed to believe that every single time a song is played that artist deserves to be paid for the play? It has never worked that way, and that way would kill music fast.

 

[johngordon]

I don't like that the Music app on iOS includes Apple Music. To me, these are two different ways of using music and everything would be easier if things were separated. If I'm listening to my music, I'm not interesred in Discovery. When I stream, I'm not as much interested in listening to music I already own. I want the integration between the apps, so streaming knows that I own a song and only plays if I have it configured to so. I want to be able to buy songs directly in Apple Music and they show up in My Music.

Labels pay for the marketing to make an artist. It seems that most artists get stuck with a relatively crappy contract. Especially on first signing.

I'm not in favor of fully exclusive music. Timed exclusives can be ok. I don't like the idea of putting music behind a walled garden. I don't like much over the air radio, but free music in this fashion has been around since the radio came about. The stations found ways to pay the labels so the artists could get paid. Streaming is a transformation of radio onto the Internet where technology allows for much higher payouts for everyone. But everyone is fighting over who gets what percent of the payout.

In the end music lovers (consumers) have to deal with the negative affects of all this. Maybe some day it will all work itself out in our favor...maybe.

I disagree - I think its just one way of listening to music. The music comes from different sources. If I have some stuff in my library that I've added over the years that isn't in Apple Music, I don't want to have to switch apps to listen to different things. Having it all together in a single, apparently seamless, library is much more convenient IMO.

 

[MS_Hedrick]

I don't like that the Music app on iOS includes Apple Music. To me, these are two different ways of using music and everything would be easier if things were separated. If I'm listening to my music, I'm not interesred in Discovery. When I stream, I'm not as much interested in listening to music I already own. I want the integration between the apps, so streaming knows that I own a song and only plays if I have it configured to so. I want to be able to buy songs directly in Apple Music and they show up in My Music.

Labels pay for the marketing to make an artist. It seems that most artists get stuck with a relatively crappy contract. Especially on first signing.

I'm not in favor of fully exclusive music. Timed exclusives can be ok. I don't like the idea of putting music behind a walled garden. I don't like much over the air radio, but free music in this fashion has been around since the radio came about. The stations found ways to pay the labels so the artists could get paid. Streaming is a transformation of radio onto the Internet where technology allows for much higher payouts for everyone. But everyone is fighting over who gets what percent of the payout.

In the end music lovers (consumers) have to deal with the negative affects of all this. Maybe some day it will all work itself out in our favor...maybe.

I used iTunes for discovery. There were these Celebrity Playlists (artists from varied fields in the arts) updated regularly. I figured these people were well connected, and if I found their work interesting, their playlist could expose me to a greater scope of music.

This worked better than expected. Many a night I dissected those lists, sampling tons of music in a relatively short time. I'd buy single tracks to round out my CD collection, which goes deep for artists/genres I like. It would be hard for someone to pinpoint my musical tastes from the music I purchased this way.

iTunes changed as the focus shifted from owning to streaming. The Playlists are gone. I suspect what I'm supposed to do now is tell Apple what I like (Love or Dislike), then they will tell me what I will like.

Now, the thrill of the hunt for me is pretty much gone. I received strong hunter/gatherer genes from both my parents. It's deep in who I am.

 

[DevNull0]

Again, labels paid big money on intellectual properties registries so they can make all the copies they want to sell music, broadcast it, make merchandise abut it, charge for covers a third party might produce, make any kind of money they want out of it, etc. But that right to do what they want with the music is not transferred to you. Read the small print on your albums. You can just make a copy or rip the copyrighted content of a physical or digital medium you leagally paid for basically if it's a security backup, or to download to your phone, audio player or computer to be listened by yourself, and you don't get to give the copy away to friends for free or for money.
https://www.riaa.com/resources-learning/about-piracy/
Not yours. No ownership. No lending the album to your friends. Limited use and copying rights. You pay for the distribution medium only. You just "feel" safer with the idea of owning a physical object. Not better or worse than Apple's or Spotify's streaming, or Disney's Direct-to-Brain Network Distribution from the year 2075.
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Wow. That's a bit shaky on the concept of ownership.

Also you don't seem to realize most people's music taste tends to freeze as they age. I'm in my 30's now, I add maybe 50 songs/year to my music library (mostly discovered by listening to the radio when my wife drives since she loves top 40). I have thousands of songs legally ripped from CDs I bought many years ago.

Let's say been age 15 and 30 I bought 2 CDs/month at $10 each (paying double the cost I would have to subscribe to a service). That means I've spent $3600 on my library and I will have it forever (that's what is meant by ownership). I don't ever have to pay again to listen to these songs. And now I pay under $50 a year to keep my library up to date with every single song I want to add.

You between age 15 and 30 will pay $5/month until you're 20 (assuming student plan) and then $10/month until you're 30. Total is $2100, so you're ahead of me. But at 30 you actually have zero music in your own library. You can keep paying $180/year just to hold onto your library and add whatever few songs catch your interest. And you will never get out of that hole. When you're 50 you'll still be paying for streaming while your smarter peers will be listening ot all their favourite songs for free. And for discovery, don't forget free radio and free tiers aren't going anywhere -- the labels want you to discover new music and they wouldn't shoot themselves in the foot that way.

And you also have no idea what you're missing out on the enjoyment of opening a brand new CD, putting it in your player and browsing the pristine new album art as you give the disc its first listen. That experience is definitely worth something if you care at all about music.

And as for your last point about not being able to give it away or resell it...doctrine of first sale is still valid law. I absolutely can legally give away or resell music from my collection as long as I don't keep extra copies.