Why iTunes Radio Could Take Down Pandora 166
cagraham writes "Pandora has been the standard for internet radio since it launched in 2000, and just announced the appointment of new CEO Brian McAndrews. They claim they're not worried about Apple, but iTunes' massive user base (575 million), content deals, and cheaper pricing options should give them legitimate reason for concern. Can Pandora survive iTunes Radio? Do a-la-carte options like Spotify make any internet radio service irrelevant?"
Wouldn't call it a standard... (Score:5, Insightful)
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You can include Canada in that list. I'm 90% sure it's US only.
Re:Wouldn't call it a standard... (Score:4, Informative)
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OpenVPN.
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iTunes is available in Canada.
Pandora is not available in Canada.
Therefore, I must conclude that Pandora does not exists.
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I dont use Apple products but can access Pandora using Unotelly and my WD TV Live therefore I must conclude Apple doesn't excist to me in Canada but Pandora does.
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Actually, it's the big evil corporations that to the licensing that hate Canadians.
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Blue Jays!
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Sigh, this is ridiculous. Yes, the World Series is somewhat overblown, but players in those games come from pretty much all over the world. I can't think of any from African nations, but there's tons of players from Asia and South America that play the game, if having players from about a third of the world doesn't make it international, that's a bit ridiculous.
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Football teams all over Europe use international players - iirc, the premiership is about 1/3 English, the rest are foreign. And that does include Africa, and every other continent on the earth. Doesn't mean we call it the world anything though. Doing so for a club competition would seem a little obtuse, and arrogant.
I guess it's up to you what you call your club competitions.
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what's the fourth amendment exclusion perimeter? I thought at first you meant the US borders (no 4th amendment allowed within), but that would be like 8,000 miles
Re:Wouldn't call it a standard... (Score:4, Insightful)
what's the fourth amendment exclusion perimeter? I thought at first you meant the US borders (no 4th amendment allowed within), but that would be like 8,000 miles
Customs and Border Patrol have declared that their jurisdiction extends to within 100 miles of any border of the US.
Probably is some sort of mumble, mumble...Interstate Commerce!mumble mumble interpretation of the Constitution or something else that is intellectually dishonest and prima facie farcical, yet has been upheld by our perfidious judiciary as Constitutional.
It's shit like this that makes me wish we didn't have a written Constitution. The goddamn politicians were always going to do whatever they wanted, regardless of what any document says. At least if you don't have a written Constitution they don't look you in the eye and swear that growing chicken feed on your own land and feeding it to your own chickens is interstate commerce. Or that the Founders meant for border security to be able to turn the preponderance of the country into a police state. Or that simply existing is a legitimate rationale for levying a tax. Or that ex post facto regulations don't count as laws, even though you must abide by them or face punishment. Or that according to the 4th amendment it is fine for the federal government to track all mail forever, all phone calls forever, etc, etc.
It's the fucking hypocrisy that gets to me. I'm counting the years until I can get out.
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You can't even use it in Canada, and we're right next door.
As per usual, the US companies and article authors are confusing "America" with "The World."
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What filters?
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You somehow ignored iPad though....
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Android statistically overtaking iOS, coupled with a potential rise in other phones as life goes on, with varying licensing constraints for Pandora, competition from Spotify and a half dozen others, and the whole crux of this post is insane.
It's war, and more is better, and we all benefit from the competition. I could give a fleep for iTunes and its batty UI and DRM-ish approach. Pandora can be cute, but I want what I want, not what Pandora wants. The best is yet to come, if someone just had the guts to pro
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Android statistically overtaking iOS,
what, you mean android may or may not be taking over iOS, depending on your confidence interval? maybe you need more data points!
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Considered one way, Android has statistical leadership in terms of worldwide unit deployments currently in service. Then you can argue iOS static WiFi use.
Overall, I believe that worldwide, Android has statistical dominance. Now, let's apply that to the post, and see how it sorts out.
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Overall, I believe that worldwide, Android has statistical dominance.
i dont think that word means what you think it means.
Re: Ah the post-iPhonenote planted stories (Score:2)
Pandora is only available in three countries and in its largest country - the US - iOS has a 40% market share.
Apple makes licensing deals directly with the music companies so can be available anywhere where Apple can make a deal. Pandora depends on compulsory licenses th
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So, to use your figures, iOS has 40% share, and that leaves the rest with 60% share. But we're only talking the US, and only for purposes of comparing Pandora, who is limited to three countries in availability.
For insanity sakes, we add a pool of 60% to the mix that probably don't want iTunes, or have foresaken it for their phone base. Maybe they use it for iPods/iPads/etc.
Pandora's turf is pretty large, in an area with large amounts of disposable income. There are other competitors to both. One doesn't fin
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Starbucks has been doing iTunes promotions since the iPhone came out....
https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/09/05Apple-and-Starbucks-Announce-Music-Partnership.html [apple.com]
(this only works from within Starbucks stores)
http://www.starbucks.com/coffeehouse/entertainment/pick-of-the-week-error [starbucks.com]
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My point exactly. Marketing is both more mature with iTunes, and pervasive. But such habituation doesn't necessarily cling clientele. And the number is ultimately domestic, as the density of Starbucks in the US is huge, not in the EU, Asia, SA, and Africa.
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1. Spotify has by far the best deep catalog of any of the online services. I was just looki
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Technically true, but aren't streaming services (and payments for them) likely part of "the standard contract" new artists sign? Yes, if there's a standard contract, there's a non-standard contract too, but of course not all artists could get special contract stipulations for them.
Basically, if an artist wants to be in the big leagues (and yes, there is another article I have open in another tab about amateur musicians destroying the professional music biz), they're
iTunes Bloat (Score:3, Interesting)
Anything but the monstrosity of iTunes.
To the Moron Above (Score:2)
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Winamp is still one of the best Windows music players/jukeboxes available when you don't give a rat's ass about iCrap from Apple.
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frownie face! what's that supposed to mean? what don't you like about me? you can always foe me if you want (but that would be required to log in)
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as of tuesday it will only be available for iOS. when Mavericks eventually comes out it will be available for mac. I imagine eventually it will get to windows with an itunes dupate. who's the fucktard now?
Isn't Apple the minority platform? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Except Pandora is pretty much US only, and even though Spotify is available in about 3 dozen countries or so, still doesn't have a user base of more than 20 million. I suspect iTunes Radio will be available for every market where there's a local iTunes music store. A much much much bigger possible market.Will Pandora survive? Probably, though it will probably lose listeners. Spotify may not. In either case, I would think that iTunes radio would have a much bigger userbase than both combined.
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Except Pandora is pretty much US only, and even though Spotify is available in about 3 dozen countries or so, still doesn't have a user base of more than 20 million. I suspect iTunes Radio will be available for every market where there's a local iTunes music store. A much much much bigger possible market.Will Pandora survive? Probably, though it will probably lose listeners. Spotify may not. In either case, I would think that iTunes radio would have a much bigger userbase than both combined.
No reason to suspect iTunes Radio will be available for every market where there's a local iTunes music store - it's missing in quite a few countries. E.g here in Norway. And there are tight links between iTunes Match and iTunes Radio - there's no ads in the radio if you have iTunes Match [apple.com].
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I don't know why you would suspect that. Apple has no record of consistency in offering all their services to all markets. They need to negotiate the same licenses with the same companies that Pandora and Spotify do, and they will hit the same obstacles that have held them back.
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I'm sure the meetings with the record companies went something like this:
Apple" iTunes has 65% of digital music sales. With iRadio, listeners will be able to buy a song directly in the player. Failure to allow us to spin your records in iRadio will cost you money".
Record execs: "Where do we sign???"
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In that respect, given your small market share statement, then the headlines should be: Will iTunes Radio survive against the likes of Pandora and Spotify and and SkyDrive and Google Drive and streaming to your devices from your personal cloud at home... Not to mention the increasing popularity of copy
How to discover Free music w/o data plan? (Score:2)
Not to mention the increasing popularity of copyright free music such as found on streaming services like Jamendo and Magnatune
How do people discover these services and these free-culture-supporting bands in the first place? Not everybody has a data plan, a car stereo with an AUX input, and the motivation to keep plugging an audio cable into the phone. This means people keep discovering RIAA bands through the convenience-by-default of in-car FM radio.
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Actually, Google Music's All Access has a fair quantity of cover artists as well. Not sure about other radio options.
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How do people discover these services and these free-culture-supporting bands in the first place? Not everybody has a data plan
YouTube?
You must not be an American. Due to poor or nonexistent public transit in much of the United States and a perception that public transit is for people with poor hygiene, a lot of American workers end up driving a motor vehicle to and from work. You can't wander YouTube while driving, and even if you can take good public transit, you still need an expensive data plan to do so on the commute.
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Virtually all FM radio music is non-free (Score:2)
This means people keep discovering RIAA bands through the convenience-by-default of in-car FM radio.
There is an ancient device called a radio that plays all manner of music
In my experience, a radio doesn't "play[] all manner of music". It plays only music published by labels big enough to afford payola, and this music is inevitably non-free.
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From all the videos on MTV!
Certainly (Score:1)
Certainly they're concerned, but honestly, the drones that follow every whiff of apple are going to do just that. There's no convincing them that anything not-apple is any good, it's nigh unto a religious zeal, so that audience has ALWAYS been lost to anyone not named Jobs.
Nevertheless, this has equally spawned a smaller but dedicated cadre of apple-haters, who will use any service that ISN'T apple for a number of reasons.
Personally, I think one could have a comfortably successful business based solely on
Fixed entry points (Score:2)
I am meaning, all the way back to when Apple started running the Apple 2 Clonemakers out of business with lawsuits.
The only reason those lawsuits happened in the first place is that the Monitor ROM (the BIOS of the Apple II) used entry points at fixed addresses in $F800-$FFFF. Fixed entry points mean that the implementations of BIOS routines have to be the same length in bytes as the existing routines, which pretty much ensures that only one specific copyrighted implementation will work. The IBM PC BIOS was more easily cloned because it used a proper syscall mechanism.
appless (Score:1)
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There is no standard. (Score:5, Insightful)
I find the summary nearly trollish. There is no standard bearer in internet radio, and if there were, I don't think Pandora would be it. Yes, lots of people use Pandora. Lots also use Last.fm, and/or listen to the tens of thousands of independent internet radio stations out there - many of which are actually, I believe, much more in the spirit of "radio" than automated algorithmic music-recommendation services like Pandora and Last.
I say these indie stations (House of Sound [houseofsound.org] is one that I co-founded, and I currently DJ at Radio 23 [radio23.org] - there are thousands of others) are more in the spirit of radio, because they actually have live DJs, "spinning" (sometimes literally) records, mp3s, YouTubes, even cassettes, on a constant basis. These "stations" are interactive to a degree that music recommendation services are not - they are inflected by the taste of the DJ, many have live-chat or call-in features, and they are in real time.
My conclusion is that neither Pandora nor Last.fm are actually "radio" at all. Pandora recommends music to a listener based on pseudo-scientific analysis of what a person listens to (key, tempo, tone, volume, etc.) and Last uses the Amazon social model (x people who listened to y track also listened to z). I find, personally, Last's social model to be more effective for me than Pandora's algorithmic approach. Neither are radio. Radio, to me, whether based on radio waves or not, is a real person exposing their tastes, quirks, personality and even mistakes.
Re: There is no standard. (Score:2)
For me, radio has always been about automated music selection, and I have been frustrated with having to listen to what this real person thought. So Pandora is radio, perfected.
Re:There is no standard. (Score:4, Interesting)
A major problem with Pandora is you never hear, in theory, anything you dislike -- but also never hear anything NEW, you MIGHT like, either.
I remember about a year, maybe two, ago there was discussion about Google and Bing and the like "censoring" your search results -- tailoring them to news sources and (this is the big one) ideologies that it thought you were a part of, due to their data mining.
This created a minor bubble, a lesser kind of the bubble you see Fox News (or god forbid, Infowars) followers stuck in. This is a disaster in the making when dealing with news, but it's also pretty darned bad when talking about entertainment.
For example, I use Pandora for stand up comedy. I have a station for each comedian, and the new shuffle thing at least mixes things up. But I never hear comedians other than the X number of stations I have +/- a few more, give or take a rare playing of some odd or new comedian.
Contrast this with playing a comedy radio station, an actual radio station, one where the music is all set by a DJ or a "impartial" randomization routine. Will I hear stuff I dislike? Probably. Will I hear new stuff I wouldn't have heard on Pandora? Absolutely.
I don't know how to fix that particular problem. Maybe Pandora should allow for an option where for an hour a day, or at random, it goes into "Pandora Power Hour" where it loosens up the algorithms and intentionally makes you listen to things you might not have known you liked? Not sure.
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Amongst many other streaming services in Canada, we have CBC Music [music.cbc.ca], which covers a wide variety of properly licensed streams. In fact, some of the other internet radio stations in the country are right pissed at the agreements CBC managed to sign up to, and even the record companies have cried "foul" over the fact that CBC has the right to stream their entire catalogues for a fixed fee.
But they can't do jack shit about it, because they negotiated the contract -- they just didn't think it through.
Much
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I'm a new DJ at Radio 23 - I have nothing to do with their web presence. I built or modified a lot of the web presence at House of Sound. I also see confusion in what I think is a pretty, but dysfunctional, web site they've got going. I like their human-side approach, though, outside of the website - online training for free for would-be DJs anywhere on the planet and then a platform for broadcasting.
And of course, feel free to listen to other stations instead! That is practically the whole point. Democrati
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a classy response. i'm a somaFM fan, but i'll check out Radio 23.
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Well, I didn't actually say anything negative about either Pandora or Last. I in fact said Last works better for me. I simply said that I don't consider automatons to be "radio". I agree with you here - I have found many artists that I now love, have paid money for their records and to see them that I would never have heard at all if it weren't for Last, and to a lesser degree, Pandora.
I am simply making a distinction between automated services and actual DJ based stations. There are MANY shows on both stat
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what's disappointing about the launch? it looks like a great new product, and there is no sales yet to say if it is disappointing or not
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If anyone wants a shot at killing Pandora, get Microsoft to buy them.
They can rename it "Windows X-Box Zune Radio" and only make it work on Windows 8.
Now watch someone at MS get a raise by stealing my idea.
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Windows X-Box Zune Radio 64 Bit Ultimate Edition for Windows 8 SP2
The advantage and disadvantage of iTunes Radio (Score:2)
the problem with iTunes Radio is iTunes (Score:3)
iTunes was good 6 major releases ago: iTunes 4. Every release since then has gotten slower and more bloated than the last. Yecch.
This is the uphill battle Apple faces: the client is a pig.
A lightweight client (ala Google Music) has a much greater chance for success.
Depends (Score:2)
Both can do well. But Pandora needs to grow rapidly globally
It's all about the lock in... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Given that the "everywhere" support that Pandora has is actually restricted to only three countries - if iTunes Radio works on all Apple devices worldwide, I would be worried.
Just like iTV (Score:2)
It is the same way in which iTV took down the cable providers. Oh wait...
Can Pandora survive iTunes Radio? (Score:2)
If not, she'll open her box.
somaFM (Score:2)
Dear headline writers (Score:2)
"Take Down", in general, refers to a DMCA or similar violation, where the legal system removes a web site. This is NOT what you meant.
Try "Why iTunes Radio Could Defeat Pandora".
A query (Score:3)
Isn't using your monopoly in one area (online music sales) to leverage your entry into another market (online radio) the definition of abuse of monopoly ?
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Isn't using your monopoly in one area (online music sales) to leverage your entry into another market (online radio) the definition of abuse of monopoly ?
Yes, it is illegal to use a monopoly in one market to seek to gain a monopoly in another market. At least here in the US.
That said, Apple has something like 60% of the market for online music. Amazon has somewhere around 30%. Not really "monopoly" numbers.
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Pandora will do fine. (Score:2)
1) There are enough it's-Apple-therefore-I-hate-it types out there that there will always be a market for an iTunes Radio alternative. Those people have existed ever since there WAS an Apple, they're not going away, and they listen to music too.
2) Spotify is fine for accessing music I already know about and like. But I have most of that in my iTunes library already. So I wound up canceling my premium account. Where Pandora really shines is in introducing me to new artists/songs/albums that I'll probab
Maybe an advantage on IOS only (Score:2)
I'll continue to use both, unless Apple licenses (Score:2)
I've been using Pandora since shortly after launch. I've been using iTunes Radio since the beta launched.
Generally I prefer iTunes Radio, although there are some custom stations I've made in Pandora that I can't seem to get the same level of match quality in iTunes Radio. Usually the opposite is true though, the stations in iTunes seem to be better matched and have more songs rotating.
It's also hard to beat that iTunes Radio is commercial free with iTunes Match, which I have anyway, so it's just a bonus.
The standard? Really? (Score:2)
Given I've never used Pandora, it's hard for me to accept calling it a standard. But then I like to play songs I choose on my own, from USB drives or an ancient iPod or whatever. I'm not sure I even know what Pandora is supposed to give me that I don't already have.
It seems to me, the main thing wrong with commercial radio is the idea that somebody at a station (or these days, a software package) plays songs in the order they dictate and you sit there passively consuming it. Pandora seems awfully simila
Spotify (Score:2)
Pandora doesn't have the selection I want, and I'm not an apple user so I wont use iTunes.
I have other places to buy mp3 cds and my music discovery of choice is Spotify.
Amusing my car has a pandora app, but I use bluetooth to stream spotify music and metadata.
So again, how is Pandora and iTunes the standard?
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Spotify pays artists the least of all online streaming services, and since I have a lot of friends who are professional musicians, I will never use Spotify. Inking a deal with Facebook just sealed the deal for me.
Apple's iTunes has not improved their Genius selection system in any obvious way since its release. I'm still waiting for it to recognize and understand my large collection of ska, reggae, trance, punk, and other music that doesn't fall under the pop or classic rock genres. That's something that La
never going to happen (Score:2)
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Why loose time on useless time wasting speculation ?
Slashvertisements are not useless time wasting speculation. They are productive platform agnostic information resources that help produce civil, reasonable and equally valuable discussions between like-minded individuals in a public forum.
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Slashvertisements are not useless time wasting speculation. They are productive platform gnostic information resources that help produce civil, reasonable and equally valuable discussions between like-minded individuals in a public forum.
got it
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iTunes on Windows blows chunks. I assume that it's better on OSX, but it's ugly and bloated and generally gets uninstalled from my computer within hours of when I install it.
There are some nice features to it, but I have yet to find a feature that iTunes has which isn't done by somebody else better.
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1) itunes radio is free. if you have an itunes match subscription ($25/mo, does a variety of things) then there are no ads even.
2) itunes radio is only for iOS right now. you listen to it on your phone or ipad. has nothing to do with the desktop itunes software or windows (you'e still on windows?)
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yes, accurate, thanks for the correction. $25/mo would be a lot! brain fart.
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maybe a developer release thing? considering it's not publicly available, then it's not really a "bug" yet.
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I still use it, though, because I haven't found another solution that:
- Organizes my music and lets me rate it
- Plays over synchronized remote speakers (like Airplay)
- Allows itself to be remote-controlled from Android, iOS, etc.
I'd love to move my music to my FreeBSD server, but right now I'm stuck leaving my computer on all the time and serving it from there. Allplay (the Qualcomm effort to compete with Airplay) has me hopeful, though Airplay has already been reverse-engineered.
Re: Streamtuner (Score:2)
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No. It won't sync audio, so if you have two zones in audible range (say "living room" and "kitchen") you will hear a very annoying echo between them. Sonos gets this right and Airplay (mostly) gets it right. The open-source Airplay clone Shairport doesn't quite have it right, but you can screw with the buffer until it is good enough. Allplay does it in theory, but I don't have any devices (or music players) to test it.
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So, pancakes on a rabbit.
LOLWUT?