What is Apple Music?

[bsacamano]

and, more importantly, how is it different than iTunes Radio? I've searched for differences between iTunes Radio and iTunes music and haven't been able to find any direct comparisons.

 

[MikeyG]

It's their new streaming service meant to compete with Google, Pandora, Spotify. Stream or download unlimited music for $10/month. They also have a more limited free service,like the others.

It seemed just the same as the others, but one thing I really like is the siri integration, e.g. "play the top songs from 1990"

 

[tiktok]

Apple Music lets you directly pick what you're going to listen to, a la Spotify.

iTunes Radio only lets you specify genre/artists that you're interested in, and then an affinity algorithm picks tracks that match that.

 

[aram]

It's going to have a HUGE effect on independent artists and smaller labels, and I'm really surprised there hasn't been more discussion of it here.

Here's two blogs I wrote about it:

http://arambajakian.com/blog/2015/6/22/thank-you-taylor-but-independent-musicians-are-still-****ed

http://arambajakian.com/blog/2015/6/30/sustainabilityat-002-per-stream

 

[MikeyG]

Enjoyed your blogs.... Hey do you have any details on artist compensation pre-streaming, as opposed to now? I have no clue what $0.002 translates into, compared to royalties in the past?

 

[aram]

Thanks Mikey! Interestingly, with terrestrial radio the US is one of a handful of countries that doesn't pay performers of songs. So Aretha Franklin doesn't get paid when Respect is played on the radio. Neither do the musicians who played on Respect. Only Otis Redding, the composer does.

And because the US radio doesn't pay these royalties, other countries don't reciprocate.

That being said, radio play was an advertisement for an album, which people could then buy.

But as I bring up in my blog, if someone has a choice of buying my album for $9.99 or streaming the entire iTunes catalogue for $9.99 a month, what are most people going to choose?

It's independent artists that are going to be ****ed over the most by this. I would have received $6 for my album, but it will take thousands of streams at $.002 to equal that amount.

 

[tiktok]

The big problem with figuring out what a "fair" streaming rate is that there's no direct precedence. The nearest was radio, but radio wasn't on-demand, and it was always going to multiple listeners, so the old "nickel per play" doesn't translate to a single person listening a song once. The economics of running a radio station are also very different from running a streaming service, particularly one that's on-demand. I've never found someone who can tell me what they think the streaming payout rate should be other than "higher than it is now"---and I can't blame that. How to determine what's fair in this new context?

 

[phil_m]

From an actual end user perspective, it doesn't look like there's a whole lot to differentiate Apple Music from Spotify. The one thing is that it does kind of interact seamlessly with your existing iTunes library, which isn't really that big of a feature. I know the thing I've heard people talking about as a plus is that Apple is supposedly going to have more of a focus on curation, which I guess will make it more attractive to some. I'll probably try it, but it's hard to see why I'd ditch Spotify.

I actually do still buy albums. If I find myself listening to an album a whole lot of Spotify, I will usually buy the album. I know I'm not the average user in that regard, though. I've often thought that streaming services should limit the number you can listen to an album before you have to buy it. I suppose the one issue with that would be that it would make the authentication verification pretty tough on their end.

 

[tiktok]

I actually do still buy albums. If I find myself listening to an album a whole lot of Spotify, I will usually buy the album. I know I'm not the average user in that regard, though. I've often thought that streaming services should limit the number you can listen to an album before you have to buy it. I suppose the one issue with that would be that it would make the authentication verification pretty tough on their end.

Nah--you have to log in to Spotify to use it. It's easy enough to track play counts. I mean, they already do so, so they can pay the rights holders.

If streaming services actually wanted people to pay, they'd put the commercials in the middle of the songs.

 

[MikeyG]

Well I'd like to install Apple Music to check it out, but it doesn't seem to recognize that I already have iTunes installed... ugh... to those people that think Apple is bullet proof, heheh....

 

[MikeyG]

Update, if you didn't have iTunes already installed, you won't be able to try Apple Music until the new version is released... Way to go Apple ... you do realize that not everyone is an existing customer, right?

 

[JRC4558Dude]

Can I ask a really, really dumb question?

Do people use streaming services on their smartphones?

Where I live (Canada) our cell phone plans are pretty expensive, and my relatively cheap plan has just 3 gigs a month of data. Wouldn't I blow through that pretty quickly if I was streaming music?

 

[phil_m]

Can I ask a really, really dumb question?

Do people use streaming services on their smartphones?

Where I live (Canada) our cell phone plans are pretty expensive, and my relatively cheap plan has just 3 gigs a month of data. Wouldn't I blow through that pretty quickly if I was streaming music?

I use Spotify on my iPhone all the time, but the vast majority of that time is when I'm connected to WiFi. Also, Spotify allows you to download up to 3,333 songs on up to three devices (10,000 total song limit) for offline use. It looks like Apple Music will have the same sort of thing, but perhaps with no limit on downloads.

 

[guitarlifestyle]

Can I ask a really, really dumb question?

Do people use streaming services on their smartphones?

Where I live (Canada) our cell phone plans are pretty expensive, and my relatively cheap plan has just 3 gigs a month of data. Wouldn't I blow through that pretty quickly if I was streaming music?

I use Rdio on my phone, and you can download any songs you want as long as you're a paying subscriber with a qualified plan. That way you can play those songs without the data hit, but to play music you haven't downloaded, you would go through your data fairly quickly. I'm fairly certain Spotify is the same way.

 

[tiktok]

Can I ask a really, really dumb question?

Do people use streaming services on their smartphones?

Where I live (Canada) our cell phone plans are pretty expensive, and my relatively cheap plan has just 3 gigs a month of data. Wouldn't I blow through that pretty quickly if I was streaming music?

I do, for iTunes Match. I'm typically in the city, where coverage is good (and if I'm at home or at work I'm using the wifi), I have an unlimited data plan.

Battery life is more my concern--pulling data on the network uses more energy than playing back local files.

 

[MikeyG]

Can I ask a really, really dumb question?

Do people use streaming services on their smartphones?

Where I live (Canada) our cell phone plans are pretty expensive, and my relatively cheap plan has just 3 gigs a month of data. Wouldn't I blow through that pretty quickly if I was streaming music?

I guess it depends on how often you use 3G/4G... if the average song is 4Megs, you get 250 songs/Gigabyte. If you have a 10Gigabyte plan and you're not a heavy phone user (for apps, navigation, browsing, etc), then you may be OK doing a fair amount of streaming off of Wi-Fi.

 

[MikeyG]

Sorry I see you have 3 Gigs... so I wouldn't recommend heavy streaming of music over your data plan. If you go over, the charge could be more than the standard $10/month for unlimited streaming/downloading.

 

[Funky54]

Is it lossless? Can't have it without iTunes account?

I don't care what service. I only want lossless or equivellant.

 

[JRC4558Dude]

Sorry I see you have 3 Gigs... so I wouldn't recommend heavy streaming of music over your data plan. If you go over, the charge could be more than the standard $10/month for unlimited streaming/downloading.

It's OK. My new phone has a 32gig card that I loaded up with 250 albums that I burned from my CDs. Shows how old school I am...

 

[bsacamano]

Enjoyed your blogs.... Hey do you have any details on artist compensation pre-streaming, as opposed to now? I have no clue what $0.002 translates into, compared to royalties in the past?

I bet Apple could also track this but it would be interesting to see the number of downloads after someone discovers something through the streaming service.

I download an album a week on average and it's usually because something new (or old that I hadn't heard before) that I liked popped up on pandora.

I also then go to concerts when those bands come through town and buy merch at the shows.