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Sony Music CEO Confirms 'Apple Music' Unveiling at WWDC

ToroidalZeus said:
How?

Consumers:

Buy Music--The music is located in the internet and downloaded to your phone.
Stream Music--The music is located in the internet and downloaded to your phone.

There is absolutely no difference between how you get and play the songs.
The difference between buying and streaming is that when you buy a song, you have to pay for each individual license separately; while with streaming you pay for access to the entire music library at once. So for consumers streaming is far superior to buying.

Musicians:

They make their money off tours and concerts while the marketers and publishers make it off sales.

Marketers:

Traditionally these people have been the ones opposed to streaming. For consumers that purchase a lot of music, streaming is typically cheaper. For the marketers/publishers lose money. However sales are going down and streaming is going up so they got no choice but to get on board.

In short streaming is good for consumers, neutral for musicians and bad for publishers. Overall I'm happy with the new system as a consumer.
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I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, because I think nearly all your understandings are wrong:

Consumers:
Buy Music - It's yours forever, to enjoy without further payment.
Steam Music - The music available to you changes based on the whims of contracts you have no control over. One day your favorite band might sign an exclusive deal with a streaming service that doesn't have your second favorite band. Also, should you stop paying ever, all your playlists, collections, and personalized data is gone. There isn't even a standardized playlist format to make switching easier. Did I mention it's also totally locked down with DRM, meaning only approved devices and apps can make use of that music?

I don't quote Jobs often, because it's become too cliche. However, this statement about renting music is appropriate since the statement is truly timeless and is as true today as it was in the early 2000s, was true in the 60s, and will still be true in the 2060s:
"Just to make that perfectly clear, music’s not like a video. Your favorite movie you might watch ten times in your life — your favorite song you’re going to listen to a thousand times in your life. If it costs you $10 a month or over a $100 a year for a subscription fee to rent that song, that means for me to listen to my favorite song in 10 years I paid over a $1,000 in subscription fees to listen to my favorite song ten years from now, and that just doesn’t fly with customers. They don’t want subscriptions."​

Musicians:
No matter how you turn it, sales are a better revenue source than streaming for the artist.

Marketers:
In the long run, anything that successfully competed with and convinces people away from piracy is a win.
 
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oneMadRssn said:
Marketers:
In the long run, anything that successfully competed with and convinces people away from piracy is a win.
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Which is streaming nowadays. Not buying music, which is declining (sans Taylor Swift and all those top artists).

Before streaming, I used to pirate a lot of my music and only buy my favorites physically. Now I stream everything (paying for Spotify Premium) and still buy hard copies. Isn't that better than piracy? I think so. Even people using Spotify Free are gonna avoid pirating for the most part.
 
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oneMadRssn said:
Buy Music - It's yours forever, to enjoy without further payment.
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I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding on your part. You don't own the music free and clear. In other words you can't do whatever you want with the music such as put it into your own video on YouTube. When you buy music, you are just buying a license for a single song or album for personal usage. When you "stream" music, you are buying a license for the entire digital library for personal usage. In other words both buying and streaming are fundamentally the something with streaming simply having a better song:dollar ratio.

As for your other points. We already live in a world were an artist, like U-2, can release an album exclusively on a service, like iTunes. And yes music is just like videos.

Paradoxally said:
Which is streaming nowadays. Not buying music, which is declining (sans Taylor Swift and all those top artists).

Before streaming, I used to pirate a lot of my music and only buy my favorites physically. Now I stream everything (paying for Spotify Premium) and still buy hard copies. Isn't that better than piracy? I think so. Even people using Spotify Free are gonna avoid pirating for the most part.
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Great Point. In other words it can be said that music piracy was actually a manifestation of an ineffective business model.
 
Paradoxally said:
Which is streaming nowadays. Not buying music, which is declining (sans Taylor Swift and all those top artists).

Before streaming, I used to pirate a lot of my music and only buy my favorites physically. Now I stream everything (paying for Spotify Premium) and still buy hard copies. Isn't that better than piracy? I think so. Even people using Spotify Free are gonna avoid pirating for the most part.
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Streaming is still very young. I just don't believe that people have the financial stamina to pay upwards of $100/year for the rest of their lives for such a flaky and locked-down service.

I think the best service to lure pirates is a hybrid of both streaming and purchasing. A streaming app that lets you listen to every song, with ads periodical, up to a maximum of 20 listens per song per user. After you've listened to a song 20 times, you have to buy it to continue listening to it, but then its yours to listen to forever.

At least on my iTunes, all the songs that have 20+ listens are from my favorite albums and I probably bought them anyway before getting to 20 listens.

ToroidalZeus said:
I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding on your part. You don't own the music free and clear. In other words you can't do whatever you want with the music such as put it into your own video on YouTube. When you buy music, you are just buying a license for a single song or album for personal usage. When you "stream" music, you are buying a license for the entire digital library for personal usage. In other words both buying and streaming are fundamentally the something with streaming simply having a better song:dollar ratio.

And yes music is just like videos.
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Yes, when I buy a CD or a song on iTunes, I don't own the entire set of rights to that song. I can't play it publicly for large audiences and profit from it. There are other branches of copyright I don't own. Sure. It's similar to when I buy a painting - I don't get the right to make copies of it and sell them. Are you really going to tell me I don't own this bottle of Coca Cola because Coca Cola owns the trademark to that branch? You can nit-pick this stuff forever, at the end of the day, when it's my file on my hard drive with no locks and restrictions, I own it. End of story.

But even that right of "personal use" that you mention is mine, and I own it. I can enjoy that song in my home, office, car, and wherever I bring it forever. There are no limits on how many time I can play it, Apple or the Artist can't reach in and take it away from me (legally anyway), and I can put it on any device I chose without anyone restricting me.

And when you stream music, you don't even get that license. You get no license. You get someone else's sub-license for a limited amount of time, on terms you can't negotiate.

And if you you think music is similar to videos, in terms of consumer preference, then you must not like music very much.
 
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oneMadRssn said:
Streaming is still very young. I just don't believe that people have the financial stamina to pay upwards of $100/year for the rest of their lives for such a flaky and locked-down service.
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Spotify may be locked-down, but it's not flaky. It's very reliable, unlike Tidal which buffered nearly every time I tried listening to HiFi tracks (my Internet is very fast, it shouldn't do this even with the increased file size).

I see it as "would I rather buy one album a month or legally have access to nearly unlimited amounts of music 24/7/365?" Then $10 don't seem like much.
 
Paradoxally said:
Spotify may be locked-down, but it's not flaky. It's very reliable, unlike Tidal which buffered nearly every time I tried listening to HiFi tracks (my Internet is very fast, it shouldn't do this even with the increased file size).

I see it as "would I rather buy one album a month or legally have access to nearly unlimited amounts of music 24/7/365?" Then $10 don't seem like much.
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When I said flaky, I meant as to the contents of their catalog. I'm sure their network systems team is top-notch. :)
 
oneMadRssn said:
When I said flaky, I meant as to the contents of their catalog. I'm sure their network systems team is top-notch. :)
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So? Much like Netflix that'll grow as more corporations sign up for the service.

oneMadRssn said:
Streaming is still very young. I just don't believe that people have the financial stamina to pay upwards of $100/year for the rest of their lives for such a flaky and locked-down service.
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Netflix would like to have a word with you.

oneMadRssn said:
Yes, when I buy a CD or a song on iTunes, I don't own the entire set of rights to that song.
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When you buy a song on iTunes you already lose a lot of rights like being able to play it on non iPlatforms. Everything you said is moot because "buying" or "streaming" from iTunes results in the exact same song being played on your iPhone.
 
ToroidalZeus said:
So? Much like Netflix that'll grow as more corporations sign up for the service.

Netflix would like to have a word with you.
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See above music is not TV/movies. There is no magical one-size-fits-all formula for media consumption. Each has a place, and it's naive to assume that when one strategy works for one, it will also work for everything else digital.

ToroidalZeus said:
When you buy a song on iTunes you already lose a lot of rights like being able to play it on non iPlatforms. Everything you said is moot because "buying" or "streaming" from iTunes results in the exact same song being played on your iPhone.
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That's just plain wrong. iTunes songs are DRM-free and encoded in an open and standardized audio codec (AAC) which is supported on pretty much every music device and app out there.

And the difference isn't moot at all. The difference is very plain. When the money stops, the streaming stops. No matter what happens (short of world-ending apocalypse), I will always have my purchased music.
 
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redkamel said:
I personally think its a lot better to just slowly build an actual music collection, over time, that you own, of music you love, rather than pay 10 bucks a month to essentially listen to the radio and make your own playlists. But I guess not a lot of people think long term. My large for the average person music collection is 730 albums with a lot of singles. To recreate it would probably cost about...~9k?. Thats only 8 years of streaming.
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$9,000 ÷ $10 = 900

900 ÷ 12 = 75

I think your 8 years is a bit off. ;)
 
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