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Apple Enters the Streaming Fray

It's one market they can't charge the Apple 'premium' for.

User will just go 'feck off' and go to the cheapest with best catalogue.
 
andyoz said:
It's one market they can't charge the Apple 'premium' for.

User will just go 'feck off' and go to the cheapest with best catalogue.
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Apple wanted to pitch the service at $5/month, but the record companies weren't happy with that. Which makes me wonder what will happen when their current contracts with Spotify come to an end, and what their attitude towards the free and low quality Spotify services will be when those contracts come up for renewal?

I'm guessing the records companies have realised that there's a trend towards streaming, and there's money to be made (for them, if not the artists).
 
Martin D said:
Hello Apple, this will be a monumental fail, MMW, just like the Beat stuff, laughable
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Surely this is "the Beats stuff"? As far as I can tell Apple only bought Beats to get Dre's streaming service and his credibility in the rap and R&B music industry.

It will be interesting to see what the Apple version offers/what if anything new it brings to the table. I'm sure there will be some winners and many losers in the streaming market as the real players are the big corporations that own the back-catalogues. Ultimately they will decide who is dominant, and they will do so over a complete portfolio/package deal. As Apple is, as far as I'm aware, by far the largest seller of downloads I'd be very surprised if they don't end up dominant in the streaming market too. No label will care too much about snubbing say Spotify's 0.0001p per play or whatever paltry fee the artist gets to preserve a good download price on iTunes. I expect there will be much horse trading behind the scenes and many big catalogues vanishing from other services.
 
Press reports say it is not the Beats stuff.

I agree with Tony though, they will take over.

5 years from now Spotify et Al will be a distant memory.
 
Tony L said:
It will be interesting to see what the Apple version offers/what if anything new it brings to the table. I'm sure there will be some winners and many losers in the streaming market as the real players are the big corporations that own the back-catalogues
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In terms of what's new, it's difficult to see what Apple can bring to the party other than a huge catalogue with accurate meta-data - the latter is especially important for classical music.

There are reports that there will be a 90 day free trial, so I assume that means they realise it's going to take time to get people away from Spotify etc.

iTunes radio is supposed to be being rolled out worldwide, or at least to more of the world than the USA and Australia(?). A bit 'meh' for me, though I suppose it depends on how granular the available stations are.

Perhaps the biggest plus for Apple is that the product will be shipped with every new iOS device, and will be available to the vast majority of existing iOS users. With a three month trial perhaps they'll get a lot of users very quickly.
 
Vital said:
That would be nice.

Trouble is, so many folk like their music for free. It's their right, innit.
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Free is what turned "listening" to music into "consuming" music. Seems to me most don't even think about what they are listening to as long as there is "something" on.
 
it would be cool if i could keep using iTunes as I normally do, but when I want an album, i "buy" it and it is added to my existing iTunes library with an icon stating it's on the cloud/not local.
 
A tenner a month for full res and they will corner the market.

But streaming will have a big impact on the ITunes Store which must be a huge earner, so I'm not sure I can see this happening?
 
Jezmond,

But streaming will have a big impact on the ITunes Store which must be a huge earner, so I'm not sure I can see this happening?
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Apple is already something like that with movies -- you can buy the HD or SD download or rent a movie for 48 hours.

Streaming music is sort of like renting a movie, so maybe it'll coexist with music downloads.

Joe
 
Joe P said:
Jezmond,


Apple is already something like that with movies -- you can buy the HD or SD download or rent a movie for 48 hours.

Streaming music is sort of like renting a movie, so maybe it'll coexist with music downloads.

Joe
Click to expand...

I can only see a downwards trend for downloads in the long term. In 10 years it'll be vinyl and streaming only IMO.
 
If that's true, I can see increases in the cost of steaming subscriptions once they have people by the short and curlies.
 
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