Apple Reportedly Planning Streaming Music Service 95
Nerval's Lobster writes "Apple plans on taking a big bite of the streaming-music market, according to unnamed sources speaking to The New York Times. Those sources suggested that an Apple streaming-music service would 'probably' center on an app of some kind, and link to iTunes in order to better evaluate the listener's musical interests. In broad strokes, that would make it similar to Spotify, a streaming-music service that also requires an app. Other popular cloud-music hubs, including Pandora and Last.fm, operate primarily as browser-based services. The Wall Street Journal, citing its own unnamed sources, indicated that any Apple streaming service would work on iOS devices such as the iPad, Macs, and 'possibly on PCs running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system.' In keeping with Apple's intense rivalry with Google, one source added, the service would not appear on Android devices."
Innovative (Score:5, Funny)
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Now they just need to sue Spotify so they stop copying them.
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I wouldn't bother with Spotify. I don't want my musicial tastes, horrid as they might be, linked to Facebook and its advertisers.
Instead, I'm very happy with Rdio. It not just streams, but downloads (encrypted) tracks. Rdio also seems to have a better band selection than Spotify.
Re:Innovative (Score:4, Funny)
That's funny, neither do I. That's why I never linked Spotify to Facebook. Same with my Netflix account, I didn't fancy everyone being told I watched Nude Nuns with Big Guns, it's rubbish by the way. In fact I've linked nothing to my Facebook account.
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It is actually possible to sign up on Spotify without a Facebook account if you are in Germany and some other countries: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2012/120904spotify [digitalmusicnews.com]
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Rdio would be awesome if it weren't another shit service with regional restrictions. I can't use Pandora, Spotify, or Rdio where I'm located. Why can anyone come up with a worldwide service for god sake.
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So, does that mean no-one should do the same since it's sufficient that Nokia do it? "No, Mr. Ford, you should not make cars, we already have a company here that does that"...
Or maybe you took the AC's statement seriously?
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Apple never claimed to "invent" that any more than Microsoft claimed they invented word processing by releasing Word. They just made their own versions of it. The myths the Church of Anti-Apple is constructing baffle me. Even more, that you seem to believe your straw-man constructs.
Should every product only be manufactured by the first person/company to think of a category?
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No, they are making their own variety of it. Nobody said "Microsoft have invented word processing!" when they made Word but that did not stop them...
News flash! (Score:1, Flamebait)
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Apple launches a service that further degrades your rights to 'own' something that you've bought.
You mean I won't be able to leave my music streaming enjoyment to my heirs? Curses!
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Apple launches a service that further degrades your rights to 'own' something that you've bought.
You mean I won't be able to leave my music streaming enjoyment to my heirs? Curses!
Bruce Willis is working on that. [cnn.com]
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Did you read the article?
The "Die Hard" actor's wife, Emma Heming-Willis, cast doubt on the report when she said Monday on Twitter, "It's not a true story."
The record industry don't consider music you buy to be your property, Apple sells music, so therefore Apple don't consider music you buy to be your property. I see how that works.
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Did you read the article?
Nope; was aiming for a laugh, not trying to have a serious discussion about a dead horse that's already been beaten to a bloody pulp.
Re:dead horse already beaten to a bloody pulp (Score:2)
Oh come on now, you have no sense of innovation!
You have a quality Dead Horse, pre-processed! And you're what, going to throw it away? I hereby patent methods and procedures for purchasing bloody, pulpy, dead horses and selling the component parts to tennis racquet manufacturers, biological testing factories, and McDonald's.
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Oh come on now, you have no sense of innovation!
You have a quality Dead Horse, pre-processed! And you're what, going to throw it away? I hereby patent methods and procedures for purchasing bloody, pulpy, dead horses and selling the component parts to tennis racquet manufacturers, biological testing factories, and McDonald's.
Don't forget the glue makers!
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Link? I have a few iTunes purchases that I'd like to unchain, especially since they not only disappeared from iTunes but also every other music service out there.
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you haven't bought the music from a streaming service. you've bought access privileges to listen to what they serve, like sirius or xm radio. you don't own anything you listen to on satellite radio, which is essentially just a streaming music service locked to some proprietary hardware. you don't own what pandora decides to play for you, even if you pay for a subscription. and you know i hate apple as much as the next guy but the itunes store does allow you to redownload music a
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Sounds about right (Score:1)
Streaming services have been around for YEARS. And Apple since the release of the iPod has been making a mint releasing technology and services that have been around for years.
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Streaming services have been around for YEARS. And Apple since the release of the iPod has been making a mint releasing technology and services that have been around for years.
It's the fanboi tax.
and they are more than happy to pay it and defend their right to pay it!
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What? Are customers "fanbois" if they are customers of a competitor to your particular choice? Why can't you enjoy the services you like and let others choose without such childish digs?
another mediocre ecosystem (Score:3, Interesting)
i hated the complete ecosystem crap since MS tried to do it years ago. what happens is that you have a few good products and lots of mediocre ones that are easily beat by smaller competitors.
same here. iphone and ipad and lots of so so when compared to everyone else.
amazon is usually better to buy music
spotify is awesome
apple is still doing the buy music thing when everyone has moved on to the subscription model
blu rays are still better than buying locked down digital versions linked to specific products and ecosystems
amazon and netflix do subscriptions while apple is still a la carte
same here, i bet apple will come out with some mediocre licensing/rule scheme to make it useless
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Subscription models suck. Why? Because they are locked down and only good for "consuming" music. Some of us like to "buy" non-DRM'd music from iTunes so that we can do whatever we want with it for personal use. I can use samples of it in my personal videos within the terms of fair use. I can sample it for use in songs. What can you do with the music in a pure streaming service other than listen to it? What do you do when the network is down? What do you do about the bandwidth use? Not everyone has unlimited
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there is too much music for me to buy. $10 a month for an all you can listen to spotify is much lighter on the wallet.
spotify premium and others like slacker have caching and offline listening modes. have had them for years. stupid geek fears have been overcome long ago for normal people
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there is too much music for me to buy. $10 a month for an all you can listen to spotify is much lighter on the wallet.
It's really all about personal preference. I am in the mood to listen to streaming music at times, but other times I want to listen to specific singers or bands I know. So I buy stuff and have a library of a few hundred albums.
Streaming music is really going back to the future - it's listening to the radio, except you have a larger selection of stations to choose from.
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"apple is still doing the buy music thing when everyone has moved on to the subscription mode"
Everyone has "been moving to the subscription music model" since the late '90's.....
from Wikipedia....
AOL MusicNow (closed)
Yahoo! Music Unlimited (closed)
Spiralfrog (closed)
MTV URGE (closed)
MSN Music (closed)
Musicmatch Jukebox (closed)
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spotify - hundreds of millions of $$$ every year in PROFIT
pandora is profitable as well
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"Pandora still far away from turning a profit"
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/07/us-pandoramedia-idUSTRE8261C520120307 [reuters.com]
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/05/spotify-is-said-to-profit-from-its-subscribers-but-lose-more-luring-them/ [nytimes.com]
"Media Decoder recently looked at the books of Spotify and Pandora, two of the most popular digital music services, and noted that both companies â" despite having very different business models â" wind up paying most of their revenue in music royalties."
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so? almost every company pays out 50% or more as cost of goods sold or some other cost of doing business. apple is in the 45% range.
if you want to talk about net profit which is the final profit after every expense has been paid then apple is pretty high at 15% with a few other companies. food companies and fox con are in the low single digit range. that's right, a lot of companies spend 95 cents of every dollar they bring in revenue as a cost of doing business
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You claimed that these companies were making a net profit -- they are not.
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They make profits for their record company owners because they pay out a pittance to the artists. It's easy to turn a profit if you keep more than your fair share.
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So, buy your music there, or wherever you want, and use it on your iPod or iOS device, if you happen to have one. Who is stopping you?
So at first you're *complaining* about the "buy music thing" in comparison to subscription (which presumably inherently includes DRM), the
Seems like a bad move... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Seems like a bad move... (Score:5, Interesting)
Google does media distribution now through the Play store and they offer cloud based music storage. It wouldn't be surprising to see Google launch a streaming music service.
What google is doing that Apple is not is test marketing it's own broadband service. If Google Fiber goes nationwide over the next several years Apple and MS both will be scrambling to play catchup.
Apple wants to take over your music and movie library.
Google wants to be your new Cell phone, Cable TV, Netflix, and high speed internet.
Google's battle plan looks more formidable.
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If Verizon couldn't bring FIOS nationwide, and stopped expanding it, is it really reasonable for Google to bring Google Fiber to even a significant portion of the U.S.?
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COULDN'T bring it? or just realised it was easier and more profitable to just keep what they had and squash any potential competition?
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spotify supports offline caching. even for the radio.
sync your device via wifi and no need to worry about bandwidth caps from att or vzw
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As awesome as Pandora is, it is still vulnerable to the suckage of wireless networks. This is a problem even if you don't have draconian usage caps to worry about.
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Around the time that iTunes came out, I was of the same opinion. Napster and Rhapsody all had subscription services to listen to whatever you want, whenever you want and it seemed ridiculous at the time... I wanted to keep my music on my machine/devices.
Things have changed. Now I almost exclusively use Spotify. The only time I don't is when I'm on the subway because NYC doesn't have cell service down there.
With the massively popularity of streaming services, I don't see this as a bad move at all.
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Something curious - I searched this thread for "live365" before I decided to comment - nothing. Curious indeed - I pay ~USD$75/year to listen to ad-free streams. You don't have to pay, but then you'll get the ads.
Dozens if not hundreds of genres, thousands of stations ranging from awesome to pathetic. The least attractive thing seems to be a limited playlist, that repeats too soon - so I switch to a different station, and life goes on. No requirement to link to facebook or other accounts, just an em
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Hey, was it warm under the rock where you slept for ten years? They settled that dispute on February 5, 2007.
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Wow, 2012 - 2007 = 10?
Technically they already have a streaming service (Score:4, Interesting)
With iTunes Match on, you can stream any music you have to any iOS device.
So it would be a really small leap to have an app that would let you stream anything in the iTunes catalog.
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I have iTunes Match, and it doesn't currently stream to my iPhone - I have to download the tracks to listen (although I can do that anywhere). iOS 6 is supposed to change that, so portable devices will be able to truly stream as well..
I can, however, currently stream to a laptop or desktop - or Apple TV.
Downloads but also streams (Score:3)
I have iTunes Match, and it doesn't currently stream to my iPhone - I have to download the tracks to listen
On my iPhone, on WiFi I can press on a cloud track and it starts playing before it's downloaded, so it is streaming... - but you're right, it does currently trigger a download also so it would be on the device after.
Basically the only change would be with a streaming service it would probably lower the quality and throw away the cached file when it was done.
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Basically the only change would be with a streaming service it would probably lower the quality and throw away the cached file when it was done.
Agreed - although for convenience sake I'd be willing to make that tradeoff on my portable devices. Doubly so because I wouldn't really need to think too much about my music when I'm trying to decide what size iPhone/iPad/iWhatever to buy the next time.
why not buy spotify? (Score:2)
Spotify totally rocks and is growing fast. Why not buy them?
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Yeah, because it has the grubby fingers of the Big Four record labels all over it instead. That is so much better...
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Do you have examples of such cases? I can get email clients, video and music players etc. from the app store for instance...
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Well, Kindle is a pretty good example. No, Apple didn't kick them off the App Store. They just made sure you couldn't buy books via your Kindle nor could you launch Safari and have it go to the site where you could buy books. That makes it more difficult for people to buy books on their iPhone/iPad compared to Apple's iBookstore.
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Spotify is too integrated with Facebook (it might make sense for Facebook to buy them and make them their bitch, but for Apple there is too much baggage attached (Apple usually buys small companies for their talent (and very rarely for their product), and pretty much never buys a well established player))
Of course... (Score:1, Funny)
They can't launch until they figure out who they will sue for patent infringement once they create the product.
I hope it uses the Genius Mix algorithms. (Score:4, Funny)
That way even when I'm not at home I can have The Pixies thrown in with every kind of music that exists.
I swear it feels like that damned thing says, "Oh, you like having a sound in your ear? Have some Pixies!"
Streams of music... (Score:2)
Been there - done that!
Paradigm Shift needed. Breakout tech for bridging, integrating and flying free of the net just on the Verizon (typo_)
Truth in Marketing... finally (Score:2)
Those who forget.... (Score:2)
Having worn themselves out... (Score:5, Insightful)
...hating on Apple things that actually exist, the Slashdot crowd decides to start hating on speculative Apple things that may not ever exist. And second-guessing decisions that may not have actually been made.
After all, arguing about NYT link-bait is so much easier than making reasoned comments based on facts.