Soundcloud’s New $9.99 Streaming Service to Compete With Apple Music [Updated]

[jonnysods]

I'll stick with Spotify thanks!

 

[eastcoastsurfer]

Does not seem like any of these services will ever beat my grandfathered price of Google Music for $7.99/month. It even includes mostly ad free youtube red now. My fear now is Google will eventually raise the price on me :/

Or another perspective, you currently buy less than $10 of music a month and discover new music on the radio. For me I buy 2-3 tracks a month at the cost of less than half a subscription price so for me and many people it looks very expensive. Only the family plan Apple do is anything close to what I'd pay.

I used to think this way until I got a subscription service. My music habits and tastes have expanded to fit the near unlimited catalog. I have found music I would have never listened to before, and certainly not just new music.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Zune Music Pass used to offer this. Unlimited streaming, fill you Zune player (*snicker*) with as much DRMed offline music as you want, and choose 10 songs per month to keep permanently. It was $15/month. One those examples when a Microsoft product was too far ahead of its time. Compared to today's landscape, I would take that subscription plan over Spotify and Apple Music.

That's sort of the problem right? It costs about as much as one album, and at the end of the month, you have zero albums. Unless you pay again...

Agreed. The Zune plan was an amazing deal. It combined the best of both worlds: streaming and keeping some songs forever. But since it is gone... we have to look at what's left.

Yes... you can pay $10 and purchase 8 songs and keep them forever. You never have to pay anything again if you don't want to. You can listen to those 8 songs for the rest of your life.

Or you can pay $10 every month and listen to a huge library of 30 million songs.

Both options are acceptable.

 

[AndyUnderscoreR]

I just don't get how these companies sit around and come up with this $12.99 price point.

The record companies won't licence their content for less.

 

[BeardMan7]

Yeah, it's a small price to pay for access to such huge libraries. I've used streaming music subscriptions for probably 12+ years. I don't like filling up my hard drives with music and movie downloads. Unfortunately, out of all the formats, streaming is probably the worst for paying the actual artists.

What? Where did you get music streaming services 12 years ago?

 

[macintologist]

It is if subscribed outside of App Store. Apple shouldn't be getting 30% of monthly subscription fees anyway. Apple isn't hosting the content so what is the 30% for? A commission for having access to the iOS install base? Does that warrant $3/mo for every subscription? I don't think so.

They can go ahead and make their own smartphone OS and their own app store and see how that goes.
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Does not seem like any of these services will ever beat my grandfathered price of Google Music for $7.99/month. It even includes mostly ad free youtube red now. My fear now is Google will eventually raise the price on me :/



I used to think this way until I got a subscription service. My music habits and tastes have expanded to fit the near unlimited catalog. I have found music I would have never listened to before, and certainly not just new music.

You've been paying 7.99 a month since 2013? You know how much I pay a month for digital subscriptions? $0. That means I'm about $287 richer than you right now.

 

[eastcoastsurfer]

You've been paying 7.99 a month since 2013? You know how much I pay a month for digital subscriptions? $0. That means I'm about $287 richer than you right now.

So you have kept your music library completely fixed for the last 3 years? Maybe you think nothing good has come out in the last 3 years, but a lot of the music I have added is old stuff I have discovered. When I look at the use I have gotten out of Google Music, $287 is an absolute deal.