Radical.FM Launches New 'Pay What You Can' Streaming Music App

[GoldenJoe]

22 million songs at no cost and with no advertising. Rather than charging a subscription fee, Radical.FM asks its customers to "pay what you can" for the service.

Lol wat? I cant pay anything do I still get all the goodies?

Sure. Until you leech all the life out of the system, anyway.

 

[GoCubsGo]

Don't worry. RadicalFM may not 'charge' you to listen, but you'll still be 'paying'--with your information and choices.

There's always a spare tinfoil hat laying around here, isn't there?
If you're on a forum posting then you've already given more information than you think. If you've ever liked a status on Facebook, or joined Facebook at all, subscribed to something online, etc etc. Very little is private any more. Hell, you could be the dude at Disneyland walking in front of a couple during a proposal and suddenly become internet-famous. For that, you don't even have to be on the internet. So this app, it really should be the least of anyone's worries. And who cares if someone knows that I occasionally listen to Katy Perry on purpose.

I don't know if that is indeed true.....I think overall people are honest and will do the right thing, allowing this service to have a good run. But I may very well be wrong, we shall see.

I don't think it would be dishonest to use this app and never donate. I think it would be ******, but not dishonest. I have donated to a few apps such as CyberDuck, Raw Photo Processor, and a few others. In fact, I think I'll be donating to AdBlocker because I do use the extension and love it. However, I have other software that is donate ware that I never donated to and likely never will. There is no reason but that does not make me dishonest.

It would be nice if people would donate to keep a service like this running but it is unlikely that the mass public will. This service won't last long without cash flow.

This sounds like Wikipedia's model to me - most people never pay a cent but get tons of benefits. A handful of people donate and get nothing more for it. I made a one time donation of $20 to Wikipedia a few years ago. When I'm out of debt (hopefully soon, probably not for another two years) I'll probably make another donation of $20.

A big difference, I would expect, is that whereas Wikipedia only has to pay for a few staff and a lot of servers serving mostly text with a few images, this has to serve up audio (probably more intensive than text and images) and whereas Wikipedia authors/editors make contributions on their own time and dime, musicians and publishers generally expect to be paid.

This is what throws me on this. Musicians expect and demand payment. How can a model working only on donations (for the most part) expect to tell a musician what they can reasonably expect to be paid? I'd like to know what the contract looks like and whether the owner has set up a guaranteed payment for each musician. If not, did the musicians opt to just let their music be played without payment?

 

[HowEver]

This was about how a service survives.

How do you think they make money?

There's always a spare tinfoil hat laying around here, isn't there?
If you're on a forum posting then you've already given more information than you think. If you've ever liked a status on Facebook, or joined Facebook at all, subscribed to something online, etc etc. Very little is private any more. Hell, you could be the dude at Disneyland walking in front of a couple during a proposal and suddenly become internet-famous. For that, you don't even have to be on the internet. So this app, it really should be the least of anyone's worries. And who cares if someone knows that I occasionally listen to Katy Perry on purpose.

 

[GoCubsGo]

This was about how a service survives.

How do you think they make money?

Donations and frankly, I don't see this surviving.
Spotify has ads and if you want to use their iOS app, it is better to be a subscriber if you want something other than radio. I know that's what got me to subscribe.

 

[nburwell]

I'll pass. Spotify can continue taking $10/month from me.

 

[testcard]

I'll stick with Radio Paradise.

 

[unplugme71]

That model doesn't work for everyone's prefences--my wife, for example, prefers a stream of random content with a DJ and actually likes a few ads--but that describes my own decision process and personal taste exactly.

I don't listen to enough music or watch enough TV to justify an ongoing subscription, and I would MUCH rather pay an a-la-carte fee for exactly the things I want and consume them with no advertising. With music, particularly, my tastes are eclectic enough that that allows me to buy the specific, obscure stuff I like and listen to it as much as I want without any ongoing fee. And the more I pay in, the bigger my "personal radio" playlist of stuff I REALLY like gets.

I also strongly prefer being the consumer, rather than the product. And let's face it, when you buy a track or movie outright, you are the consumer. When you watch something ad-sponsored, you are the product being sold to the advertisers, like it or not.

While I do agree the ability to listen to radio (paid or unpaid) is great for discovering new songs, I rather do that on an unpaid basis. Once I hear that song I like, I add it to my playlist. Like you, I listen to a large variety. So I get a good mix of music (now over 23,000 songs).

 

[12vElectronics]

lol "pay what you can"

Lets all revisit this thread in 6 months

 

[tumtumtum]

Bloom.fm

Shameless plug but you try Bloom.fm. Beautiful and built from the ground up for iPhone

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

What is the deal for the artists (and/or labels, for that matter)? If everyone chooses to pay "zero", how do artists get paid?

They don't. I know this first hand. Unless you stream a bazillion songs, you get NOTHING (they typically pay like 1/1000th a cent or something at best unless you are Puff Daddy or Lil Wayne).

This all sounds too good to be true.

Sadly, it isn't. Artists get ripped off every day. But the industry makes money.

 

[skiltrip]

The Appstore reviews on this are terrible. With ratings like that, I'm not even giving it a look. I just switched from Spotify to Rdio, and I've very happy. Rdio is great.

 

[HowEver]

btw iTunes Radio with iOS 7 beta gets my vote, and works in Canada. And so far it's free (will have ads soon of course).

 

[PNutts]

An honor system? Good luck guys.

Unless they reveal the real method of making profit from this service i see it shutting down in 6 months.

It would be interesting to see their TOS and Privacy Policy. I don't care enough to go look but it has to be monetized somehow. I don't think the record labels are generous enough to let something be listened to for free in the hopes that the person will buy it or more.