You're misunderstanding services like Spotify. The stream is not random. You listen to whatever album you want, whenever. You can create playlists from multiple albums and artists. You can download songs and playlists to your device so they're available offline. All for the price of less than one album per month. It sounds too good to be true but that's why people love it.
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U.S. Music Fans Continue Shift to Streaming Services as Apple Readies Beats Revamp
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You're misunderstanding services like Spotify. The stream is not random. You listen to whatever album you want, whenever. You can create playlists from multiple albums and artists. You can download songs and playlists to your device so they're available offline. All for the price of less than one album per month. It sounds too good to be true but that's why people love it.
Afaik Spotify has a family plan.
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Which fee is less than the price of one album.
Either music is worth paying for, or it's not. If not, then your only option is piracy (and the eventual demise of the music industry). If yes, then Spotify gives you better value than buying individual albums.
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You can do exactly that with streaming services.
What is all this talk about vinyl making a come back?
I know absolutely nobody that is reverting back to vinyl.
I know absolutely nobody that is reverting back to vinyl.
It's impressive to see how Apple has dropped the ball in digital music.
They had it all: a working online store with a huge selection of music, good physical and software players, a device connector that became a de-facto standard so that you could easily plug in your iPod or iPhone 4 into your hotel room's hifi set.
And what did they do ? Every version of iTunes got worse than the one before. Even worse Apple's marketing totally ignored the music streaming market. Now they bought a headphones brand and their more or less unknow streaming service for a fortune, just to realize that the brand doesn't really fit to Apple. They changed their phone connector and killed the standard.
They had it all: a working online store with a huge selection of music, good physical and software players, a device connector that became a de-facto standard so that you could easily plug in your iPod or iPhone 4 into your hotel room's hifi set.
And what did they do ? Every version of iTunes got worse than the one before. Even worse Apple's marketing totally ignored the music streaming market. Now they bought a headphones brand and their more or less unknow streaming service for a fortune, just to realize that the brand doesn't really fit to Apple. They changed their phone connector and killed the standard.
Exactly, which is why a paid download will always be better.
No. Paid Individual downloads is a better value for non-disposable music you truly care for.
Until you stop paying...
That is good and all.. But $10 for a year is $120. If I spend that same on CD, then at the end of the year I have some thing to show where that money went.. You have nothing to show other then spend $120 and have less in your wallet..
You stop paying for the service you have nothing, where I have CD and can keep on listening to as long as I want without having to keep paying a fee..
They changed the phone connector after nearly 10 years to something that is superior??????
OH MY GOD!!! Quel Horreur!
I know we don't legally "own" the music we buy, but I do agree. I prefer having all my music on me, or at least on my computer at home, with playlists I've made due to tagging and tweaks to the metadata.
I don't decide to listen to an album or a song, I'll put on my 4 or 5 star playlist (organised by date rated) if I want generic good songs, or all 4 star+, low BMP, electronic music (electronica, lo-fi, etc) if I want to chill out whilst working.
Plus I like game music which I doubt is covered by Spotify, unless it has both the NTSC and PAL Sonic the Hedgehog 1 soundtracks
I'll stick to the tried and tested way of storing my own music!
True, but I haven't purchased a music CD in YEARS. And if i want an album I just download it and keep wherever I want.
My sister, my brother-in-law, half the people I work with, some followers on Twitter. A year ago I didn't know anyone going for it. Something happened I guess. I've even found myself browsing for a record player on eBay to play the few I've got and I'm not sure why.
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What happens if content is removed from Spotify, like Netflix or game download stores?
On Netflix content comes and goes, on game download stores you can redownload the content even if it's removed. Curious to how Spotify etc handle it.
Well, part of it is that you don't get it in that you don't understand what Spotify actually is. It's not like Pandora or iTunes Radio--you can play any specific song from their library on demand any time you want as many times as you want. (There are occasional ads in the free tier, and you can only shuffle playlists or use Radio on mobile, but what I'm saying is true for the desktop.)
Oh, and did you catch that there is a free tier? You don't have to pay. Even if you do pay and stop paying, you can still get everything in your "library" and your playlists as before. The free tier requires that you be online, but you can download playlists for offline (mobile or desktop) in the paid tier.
There's also nothing stopping you from doing both: have Spotify, free or paid, but buy singles or albums when you decide that it's worth it. I've gone off and on with Spotify Premium, but currently I'm using it free and buy things on iTunes or Amazon or in store on occasion. It's pretty neat. Of course, your mileage may vary.
I assume that costs more than $10 per month? If so, being that I can get something for $10 per month and multiple simultaneous streams, that option would be pointless to me. This is looking to become a highly competitive segment. I'll go with whoever gives me the most for my dollar. They all have fantastic libraries anyway, so I can only really see price being the most competitive factor.
EDIT: Costs $5 per additional family member. That's a huge PASS for me.
I don't understand your question. Plus, I'm not advocating Spotify as better then owning a vinyl album, CD, or digital file. I'm on the side of paying for digital downloads etc.
On Spotify, if it's removed, then it's gone and you can't play it anymore.
I was simply going with the actual definition of download. Recording something with a mic is never going to be a download. You aren't transferring digital content from one place to another.
The original person that was quoted asked why we used the phrase "digital download". I don;t have a good answer to that. Looking at any definition in the books it is just completely redundant.
For the record, I was';t trying to have a semantics argument.
Pandora was amazing until they changed the algorithm to try to subtly shift your tastes toward what the large labels want your taste to be. That's why now every pandora stream you try to get going eventually turns into the exact same stream. lol it's really funny
interestingly, since Google bought Songza, it's getting worse. It's still very very very good, but it's slowly being shifted to all hip-hop all the time, which is what the labels really want us to be listening to and paying for - for what reason I'm not exactly sure.
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Oh. Darn. Well I guess I have time to go the the ATM machine then. cya later.
Honestly I see them as two different things. What people ignore when it comes to subscription services is the value of being able to trial and discover new music on demand that they wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. Your personal music library can just be so much more flexible and dynamic using these services.
Most everyone I know who subscribes to a music subscription service talks about this as there favorite thing about it.
Another point of view
Perhaps new music is not worth buying, and streaming the latest "disposable hits" are what people would rather do.
Perhaps new music is not worth buying, and streaming the latest "disposable hits" are what people would rather do.
And it's even better on the XBox Music "grandfathered" Zune accounts. With those you actually get the DRM removed on 10 songs every month.
Agree.
To build on this though, streaming took over, because the radio stations became so awful once they were completely bought out by the oligopoly. It may be hard to conceive of for younger folks, but there were some radio stations in the 30s through the 70s that were amazing!
Now the oligopoly is trying to take over streaming, but this time it hopefully won't work. Taking over radio was formidable, but doable because not everyone can scheme a way to take over thousands of 100,000 watt radio transmitters. Heck regular people can't even afford the electric bill for one tower.
Anyone can stream stuff over the net though, at essentially zero cost - unless laws are passed against it. Ultimately the oligopoly is going to have to try to make streaming illegal unless they are the ones in charge. If they can't pull that off, they're done. I think they have a good chance of pulling it off. They've pulled off lots of other stuff I didn't think people would tolerate.
Why? You can stream it and download it to a device, play it til you're sick of it, and then Download it again In the future or stream if it you want to listen again. It's as good as owning it but you can do it for tens of millions of songs for the same amount as purchasing one album.
Paid Spotify and the like makes no sense unless you want to piss money down the throats of the music companies on a monthly basis for the rest of your life vis a vis paying once for tracks you really love. On top of that, rights may change and *poof*, your beloved Britney track is no longer available on the "service". It's like Netflix-you'll subscribe, but every movie doesn't stay there permanently forever, nor is everything available on it. The movies you really cherish you'll buy on a DVD, Blu-Ray, or as an iTunes digital download (or some of you will just pirate it
If it's a track I really love, I buy it on iTunes. It makes no sense to spend $10 a month to listen to the same songs over and over again on Spotify. For music discovery and for granular control of the music I'm listening to, services like Spotify and Rdio fill that need quite well, I find.
No one knows what the music landscape will look like in five years. That said, I'm not going to base my listening habits today on what could happen in the future. If I cancel my Spotify subscription tomorrow, I will have listened to music that would've cost me hundreds of dollars if the tracks were purchased on iTunes just in the last 30 days alone. To me, that's a good deal. Sure, I don't own any of that music; but I've broadened my musical horizons by listening to music on Spotify that I likely never would've purchased on iTunes anyway.
If I then go to a concert that I never would've gone to had I not been exposed to the artist on Spotify, the artist is then happy because that's how artists make the vast majority of their money -- concert ticket sales and merchandise sold at concerts.
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I just turned 45, and have lived through several formats -
Vinyl in the 70's, cassettes in the 80's, CD's in the 90's and MP3's/file-based ever since. I 'own' Purple Rain on all the formats mentioned, and have never once had the urge to pull out the vinyl, cassette or disc for a spin.
What I will do is pull up the file on iTunes, and more recently, select it on Spotify to listen to.
I have a rather large physical collection of records and CD's that now live in boxes - and here's the irony - I pay a monthly fee to store them, along with all the other stuff I no longer use or have space for, at Public Storage.
Physical media can take up a lot of space (if you have a lot of it), so to have my entire collection, plus stuff I've never owned (or even knew existed), via streaming is a plus.
I can't see how anyone can argue that. I enjoy music even more since becoming a Spotify member.
My 2 cents...
Vinyl in the 70's, cassettes in the 80's, CD's in the 90's and MP3's/file-based ever since. I 'own' Purple Rain on all the formats mentioned, and have never once had the urge to pull out the vinyl, cassette or disc for a spin.
What I will do is pull up the file on iTunes, and more recently, select it on Spotify to listen to.
I have a rather large physical collection of records and CD's that now live in boxes - and here's the irony - I pay a monthly fee to store them, along with all the other stuff I no longer use or have space for, at Public Storage.
Physical media can take up a lot of space (if you have a lot of it), so to have my entire collection, plus stuff I've never owned (or even knew existed), via streaming is a plus.
I can't see how anyone can argue that. I enjoy music even more since becoming a Spotify member.
My 2 cents...