Apple Enters the Streaming Fray

[Purité Audio]

Pity it isn't lossless.
Keith.

 

[Tony L]

Pity it isn't lossless.

Agreed, but there is nothing stopping them adding that later or placing that option with the individual artists, which would be even better.

 

[Rack Kit]

I fear that we may end up with a situation where no single streaming service has all the important artists so to be able to listen to what you want you'll need to sign up to two or the different services.

Just like pay TV.

 

[AndyU]

It's buttons - $2.50 a month if you go for the family subscription - $14.99 a month covers up to 6 users. Not ungenerous. Better than the app store. If you've not got 5 interested family members, just find 5 friends.

 

[jackbarron]

The unique selling point here is unquestionably offering the musicians/artists direct input. On the whole musos utterly detest Spotify etc as they pay shit and distract people from buying product and present their product in such a bland one-size fits all corporate interface. If Apple's Connect feature enables a real news/promotion/communication platform between artist and fan then they'll clean up IMO. Especially if it also acts as a kind of 'BBC Introducing' stage for new bands - that aspect has the potential to work beautifully for both artist and Apple, i.e. provide a massive global platform to start-up bands and also hook them into the Apple ecosystem from the very beginning of their career. It could pretty much replace the messy disjointed world of MySpace, SoundCloud, Facebook and Twitter for the music industry and place all that functionality into a shopfront where punters can actually buy your wares with ease. It is a *very* good idea IMO.

It would be great if Apple's Connect worked as an introductory stage for new bands. It would definitely be easier to use than a combination of MySpace, YouTube, SoundCloud and Spotify etc.

I've had Apple gear since 1995 and will no doubt use their streaming service at a later point.

Jack

 

[Mongeddavid]

Apple are late to market with an inferior product in my view. Im sure lots of folks may consider that streaming is a secondary way to play music but for me its most definitely the future and it should be the best quality possible with options for lesser quality if bandwidth is an issue for you.

I am amazed that folks on here don't consider 256k an issue considering how much time and money they have invested in their kit. I am sure the Artists would rather you hear the music as they intended as well.

Tidal whilst it could do with more bands and better categorization is an excellent service and its readily apparent going from 320kbs to 1,411 kbps let alone 256kbs. If Apple takes off in a really big way my fear is it will kill any decent streaming service.

 

[AndyU]

I am sure the Artists would rather you hear the music as they intended as well.

Who says they didn't intend you to hear it at 256kbs on white earbuds?

 

[Tony L]

I am amazed that folks on here don't consider 256k an issue considering how much time and money they have invested in their kit. I am sure the Artists would rather you hear the music as they intended as well.

The percentage of music buyers who care about lossless let alone high-res will be a trace element in the music consuming public as a whole. It's there, but it's not a big thing, plus it can easily be bolted on later if there is a real demand. The interface between artist and public is infinitely more important in the grand scheme of things, and a substantial percentage of music creators utterly detest the likes of Spotify, Tidal etc and view them as parasites just one step above outright piracy given the paltry royalty rates paid. If Apple provide a slick and easy to use communications platform along with a shop window to proper paid product I suspect there will be a mass exodus from the other systems. Money talks, and it looks to me that Apple have just stuck a massively better deal on the table for those who actually create the stuff.

 

[davidsrsb]

Somehow I cannot see Apple being generous to the musicians,it's not their way.

I will expect lossless streaming after lossless iTunes, I pay a fairly high fee for one use of bandwidth

 

[akis]

I'll stick with Spotify for now.

 

[hi-fi132]

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).

Definitely for them. They rarely seem to care about the artists any more. At least, not the big labels anyway.

 

[hi-fi132]

Does anyone remember Ping? That was essentially the 'connect' part of Apple music, minus the streaming and radio. That is no-longer around because artists, and fans, didn't use it.

Artists interact with their fans via social media such as Twitter and Facebook. What Apple have done is offer yet another platform that an artist must sign up for and keep regularly updated, on the off chance that their fans are Apple Music users. It's another app to open, another service that must be kept up-to-date, another load of notifications to track.

I'm also not a fan of the new internet radio. Essentially it's just another radio station. There are 30,000 of those listed on VTUner alone.

I wouldn't mind Apple Music so much if I could turn it off. But the fact remains that when I, like many other iPhone users, upgrade to iOS9, it's going to be a key part of our music apps. Sure, I can still play back my local library, but only after I've waded through a ton of extra screens first.

If, through Apple Music, I could, for example purchase physical copies of the albums I love, I would use it. However they didn't think of that, and as such they've created another streaming service that is basically the same as everything else out there.

 

[bownose]

Ping was a real damp squib. Apple has a very shaky history with Music Products. When they work they dominate, when they don't they sink without a trace. Mentioning Apple HiFi to any Apple PR drone old enough will return you scowls

Dreadful, just dreadful. Arrived Stillborn and died a year later.

 

[jamesd]

As a $10/mo Spotify subscriber, I am interested in this for a few reasons:

1) the iTunes Match functionality. I am interested in hearing whether or not there is an upload limit.

2) a better UI than Spotify. I find Spotify on the iPad particularly annoying.

3) the human suggestion curation. Spotify radio artist radio is horrible. If I like a band and want to drill down into suggested artists, there isn't much "deep digging" going on. There's always the same 5-10 associated bands within a genre/micro-genre

 

[hi-fi132]

The problem I have with the suggested artists function is that, like every other service, the artists you're recommended will doubtless be mainstream, signed, high-profile artists who you'll have already heard of. And while that's not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes the fun of music discovery is discovering lesser-known artists.


It would also be nice if you could use the discovery function to find music by location; for example, to find local bands / artists.


As for the UI, that is a big thing for me too. I'm visually impaired and rely on accessibility software to access such services. I know for a fact that the Spotify desktop client is completely inaccessible, though their mobile client does meet accessibility standards. On the desktop side, I'm forced to use their web player which is very flash-oriented and can be a pain to use. Having everything integrated into iTunes would be far easier - but then if I'm using iTunes, I may as well buy CDs and rip them in.

 

[Tony L]

The problem I have with the suggested artists function is that, like every other service, the artists you're recommended will doubtless be mainstream, signed, high-profile artists who you'll have already heard of. And while that's not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes the fun of music discovery is discovering lesser-known artists.

In the presentation Apple gave the impression the whole thing was very new artist friendly, and even featured a new act (whose name I have forgotten) as the example. The radio station aspect is also led by Zane Lowe who I suspect was picked for his work with BBC Introducing etc. Obviously it all depends on how good the search and recommendation algorithms turn out in reality, but the intent seems to be to provide a level playing field to big and small acts. I can see there is a strong business aspect to this - I'm sure the aim is to attract the next generation of music creators into the Apple ecosystem as soon as is possible and to keep them there. Given how awful Spotify etc are from the artists' perspective they could be on to a winner IMO. It will be very interesting to see the fine detail as it emerges.

 

[hi-fi132]

That being the case, they may indeed be onto a winner. However, I suspect somehow that when money and record label contracts come in to play, things will change. While I like the idea of a more human-oriented suggestion algorithm, I'd rather they gave me better filtering options and a better search facility so I could discover artists myself.

 

[bownose]

Record companies are getting less and less relevant as time goes on. What happens is that the old libraries are indeed sewn up by the labels and a few licensing bodies owned by people with money who own most of the music on pretty complete licensing terms but as time goes on into 2000 onwards the labels were marginalised and better deals made that clawed back digital rights to artists and their licence holders (usually management). This set a precedent and people like Jimmy Iovine were one of the first to publicly say "no" to labels wanting a percentage cut of merchandise and products.

Word gets around on contracts. If you sign away live income and merch deals and so on then you have been shafted.

So the classic stuff and music from the old era of records and cds are unlikely to be great revenue generators wherever you play it, it goes to the labels because they own it.

Later on things get better as licensing deals encompass exclusion rights which say things like "all profits from airway are managed by x tariff, digital radio is covered by y, sales are z,z1,z2, download sales are z3, extra licence formats (MoFis etc) are z4, while streaming revenues are expressly forbid (in the case of Taylor Swift et al) or tariffed at the agreed rate s1 for a clearing house rate usually. You need a manager and an accountant and a digital rights lawyer to read your contract for you. This is always the way when you sell intangibles.

I linked to an article by David Byrne about the complexity of accounting for music sales and how online streaming does it. If Musicians want the kinds of income they are expecting on a like for like from sales and radio airplay then services will easily cost £200+ month.

 

[Martin D]

Yes, just like the iPod....

err, its nothing like an iPod

 

[Fudgemaster]

Apple moves in, Artists move out.

It's time we start paying again for music.

Peter

At the prices I've been paying for vinyl recently, I feel I'm paying more than enough. And no, I won't be streaming from anyone, for the forseeable future, anyway.