The Problems Apple Music Needs To Fix Before Launch 110
journovampire writes: In less than two weeks, Apple Music arrives for consumers, but it still has some serious problems. Many in the industry are predicting the biggest digital music launch in history, but Apple hasn't even achieved its primary stated goal of de-fragmenting the music market. To illustrate, the article points out that Apple Music catalog is currently missing the current most popular artist (Adele), the most popular artist of the past decade (Taylor Swift), and the most popular artist of all time (The Beatles). The company is also promising a three-month free trial period. Great for customers, but not great for musicians, who won't see a dime from that trial, regardless of how much their music is being played. Apple has likely made you-scratch-my-back deals with the major publishers, but indies have no bargaining power. They've been hesitant to jump on board, and that only decreases the selection. Add to that the complications by DRM, Apple Connect, and the new service flat out not working on some music devices (competitors to Apple, now that they own Beats), and you have a recipe for yet another troubled streaming site.
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Adele, Taylor Swift, the beetles, and a few others are also nortorious for not allowing any online distribution of their music.
Seriously try to find them elsewhere? the big names don't have them or charge extra for them.
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Equally good at music.
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That's funny. Google play has Taylor Swift, Adele, and the Beatles all available, and at the same price as Wiz Khalifa.
So does the iTunes store.
[citation needed] (Score:5, Insightful)
the current most popular artist (Adele)
[citation needed]
Add to that the complications by DRM.
what DRM? You stream the music through the iTunes app. If you want to buy a song or album you download it as a DRM-free mp3. I don't see the complication.
Apple Connect,
for the non-fanbois, apple connect is a social media network specifically for music and tied to apple music. Remains to be seen if it can take off considering it is not facebook/twitter.
and the new service flat out not working on some music devices
. It works on any apple device. it may also work on some androids, I don't know. check if your device supports it before you do the free trial. if your device doesn't support it, then use a different service (spotify, Pandora) that does support it. no big dea.
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The article is roasting Apple for a lot of things no one but the music industry really cares about, with the exception of getting big acts like Adele and Taylor Swift signed on. But really, whether they do or not, the buying public doesn't really care that much. It is a tempest in a teapot.
Why? Because Apple is the one with all the customers (maybe listeners) and 780B in the bank.
Adele and Taylor Swift do not have that. I don't think the listener will care *that much* that those two artists are not availabl
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I tried listening to Taylor Swift, but I started to get abandonment issues and bulimia. At least with Adele I can still have a pasty.
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I was actually kind of surprised at the "most popular artist of the last decade" part about Taylor Swift. I knew she was doing indie rock or folk or something back before she went mainstream with 1989. (And yeah, I have
Speculation (Score:1)
"Apple has likely made you-scratch-my-back deals with the major publishers, but indies have no bargaining power."
You are just speculating.
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Just like the rest of the post.
Re:Speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like the rest of the post.
Exactly!
TFA (where the "F" doesn't stand for "Fine") is nothing more than rampant, trollish speculation. There is simply no way that most of the "facts" in the article can be ascertained before launch.
And as for the absence of Taylor Swift, she is on record (no pun) as being very against streaming music, period, and has pulled all of her material from Spotify [time.com]; so no wonder they don't have her signed...
tl,dr; Nothing to see here, move along.
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t-swiz is against unpaid streaming music; only 1989 [time.com] will be unavailable on apple music. she's involved in the hot mess that is tidal as well
...and, either way, nothing of value would be lost.
At least it's not (Score:4, Funny)
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Apple has had Zune beaten for years. The official fuck-up scale goes, from least to most severe:
Windows Vista
iPhone 4
Zune
Apple Maps
Microsoft has its work cut out to top Apple Maps, and app so bad it could actually kill you.
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He must have been holding it wrong.
Motown (Score:4, Insightful)
Does Motown immediately start playing? A+
Is there a list of Motown playlists? A
Does something else happen? Fail.
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You can measure the quality of any streaming music service by typing the word "motown" into the search box. Does Motown immediately start playing? A+ Is there a list of Motown playlists? A Does something else happen? Fail.
I guess by your test, Google Music All Access gets an A, though personally I think what it does is better than immediately playing motown. What it provides is several sections: Motown artists, Motown albums, Motown songs, Motown Radio stations (similar to Spotify), Motown Playlists (apparently put together by users and shared to the world) and Motown videos, each with a selection of a half-dozen choices and a "See All" button that takes you to the rest of the matches for that section.
Not caring for Moto
Yeah, how did that happen? (Score:1)
Apple Music catalog is currently missing [...] the most popular artist of all time (The Beatles)
That seems odd. Any reasons? (Must keep straight face, must keep straight face, ...)
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No, none whatsoever. Just like the rest of the 'facts' purported by TFP.
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Apparently, my sarcasm is super dry.
That might explain a lot of things...
Who needs Apple? (Score:1)
Really, who needs Apple? I just watched a tear down of Beats Solo headphones and its no surprise they are made of crap. I think the parts costs were estimated at around $16 for a retail of $199. This is no doubt the biggest scam in music reproduction. I'm sure Dr. Dre is laughing all the way to the bank. Apple on the other hand should be embarrassed at not only buying such a racket POS as Beats but it will allow it to tarnish its name. Apple doesn't exactly make oodles of cash by doing what Beats did with h
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I just watched a tear down of Beats Solo headphones and its no surprise they are made of crap. I think the parts costs were estimated at around $16 for a retail of $199.
1. You do realize, of course, that Apple didn't design those headphones, right?
2. If you look inside of any (and I do mean any) headphones, you will wonder how anyone could charge so much for so little. But the devil's in the details...
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"But the devil's in the details"
And if you're saying is true, then we can assume that Beats has no clue what those details are, because their hardware sounds like shit when compared to similarly priced equipment from other manufactures.
Of course, one man's "sounds like shit" is another man's "that's kickin' ". But I'm really not here to defend Beats. IMHO, it was a stupid acquisition for Apple; but I doubt it would hurt them financially to simply landfill the rest of Beats' inventory and take a writeoff, not by a LONG measure.
What I was saying, or rather trying to say, is that, if you look inside of 99+% of headphones, regardless of brand or price, they will, by and large, look something like the speaker inside of your first portable ra
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Really, who needs Apple? I just watched a tear down of Beats Solo headphones and its no surprise they are made of crap.
Because it turned out to be a pair of knock-offs?
This is why I still buy CDs (Score:2)
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Yeah, thats like saying you by software on Floppy Disk.
CDs/DVDs/Blueray are NOT a long term strategy.
No, but for now, DVD-A, Blu-Ray and SACD are the only way to get higher-quality audio than on any CD, streaming or even almost any downloadable format.
Too bad the market doesn't seem to care about high-quality audio anymore.
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The market *never* cared a about your audiophile bullshit!
All the market has ever wanted is the ability to listen to the songs they want to listen to with enough quality to drone out everything else.
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The market *never* cared a about your audiophile bullshit!
All the market has ever wanted is the ability to listen to the songs they want to listen to with enough quality to drone out everything else.
Your both nuts. There has never been a better time to buy high quality, FLACC / AAC non DRM music tracks. No, it's not iTunes. It's a very niche market compared to Taylor, et. all. But it's there and there is even a decent selection. Not cheap but not terribly expensive either - about the same as an old time vinyl album.
So mellow out. Listen to Taylor or whatever and leave us alone.
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The market *never* cared a about your audiophile bullshit!
All the market has ever wanted is the ability to listen to the songs they want to listen to with enough quality to drone out everything else.
Your both nuts. There has never been a better time to buy high quality, FLACC / AAC non DRM music tracks. No, it's not iTunes. It's a very niche market compared to Taylor, et. all. But it's there and there is even a decent selection. Not cheap but not terribly expensive either - about the same as an old time vinyl album.
So mellow out. Listen to Taylor or whatever and leave us alone.
I'd be more than willing to hear what you're talking about. Care to share a link or two?
And anyone who confuses me for a Taylor fan, or an "audiophile", is sadly mistaken.
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Even a modest-frequenc
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Different AC, which btw, your username doesn't have your real name in it, so it's effectively anonymous, pot meet kettle>
Except for the fact that I don't list my real name for Privacy reasons; but YOU and the GP post as AC's simply to protect your precious Slashdot Karma. BIG Difference.
Second, why are you talking about square waves and nyquist sampling?
Um, because the stupid GP AC brought them up first. Did you even bother to read the post to which I was Replying?
I didn't read the rest of your post, your 4 decades of embedded experience has clearly not taught you anything about signal analysis,
Clearly, you didn't read my post, OR the post to which I Responded. I wasn't touting my embedded experience in an attempt to make any claims about my signal-analysis skills (although, in the real-time industrial control world that I
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I like to control how my music goes digital and when. That's why I only play my vinyl on my hipster turntable.
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Are you sure?
You scratch my back and Ill scratch yours [thefreedictionary.com]
Those aren't problems for *Apple* (Score:3)
Those aren't problems for *Apple*. They're "problems" for a very small segment of the consumer market and for indie publishers.
The revenue Apple would earn from getting those indie publishers on board is *paltry*, so I really don't think they give a damn about them.
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In short, give up on the idea of there *ever* being a "They've got everything" music site. Anyone who puts up a site of any kind will only have agreements with a subset of publishers. That's just a fact of life.
You can always get the "missing" content from another publisher, or (shock! horror! apoplectic fit!) buy the CD!
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Give up on that idea?
Why would anyone ever have had that idea?
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Read between the lines of what the summary is complaining about. Apparently the slashdroids have that fantasy.
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Especially after the iTunes Music Store debacle that nearly killed the labels.
Basically the music industry was so happy with iTunes that they kept giving it more and more, and then they realized that they were no longer in control - they were Apple's bitch, and Apple knew that, for they kept stronga
Are you swayed by the article? (Score:3)
I read the article and I am not at all convinced against Apple music. After all during free trial, who cares if I miss few artists. It is not that all of sudden all my other way of listening going to disappear. None of the problems mentioned in the article are bottleneck.
I don't use any paid streaming service as of now, but I am considering either Spotify and Apple music. But my decision will not have any bearings to whatever nonsense is there in the article.
So, a totally click-bait hit piece light on facts (Score:2)
Add to that the complications by DRM, Apple Connect, and the new service flat out not working on some music devices (competitors to Apple, now that they own Beats), and you have a recipe for yet another troubled streaming site.
So, what? Android devices and Windows are not competitors to Apple?
Both ecosystems have been explicitly mentioned as supported by Apple during the launch announcement, so I'm curious what "competitors" are going to be "flat out not working"
We'll ignore the equally false DRM (there isn't any per se - it's a streaming service with a download feature for offline listening that links to the DRM-free store if you want to buy the songs outright.
Wait those are exclusive features (Score:2)
Imagine looking through music this not already played on the radio 50 times per day per song. Now THAT is an awesome feature.
The solution to a 'fragmented' market is.... (Score:2)
Beatles (Score:1)
I can find Beatles on iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/the-beatles/id136975
A prime example of FUD, I'm adding it Wikipedia
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I bought The White Album at Half-Price books. It was only six or seven dollars.
Now I have 'the dongle' that ensures my permanent rights to the MP3s that I rip off the CDs.
You can't buy anything streamed at a used media store. I like buying books, music, and movies at Half-Price books. I like going there in general.
The biggest problem the need to fix (Score:1)
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If Spotify has only 20 million paying customers and there are 80 million potential Apple streaming customers (numbers from TFA) then there are a metric shitload of people who don't have any skin in the game. Even assuming that a whole bunch aren't interesting in playing it's likely to be pretty good chunk of Apple fanboy change.
Personally, I'm hoping Apple doesn't run over Spotify and Pandora. Tried Spotify for a while - nice enough but I just don't listen to enough music within Wifi range to justify it
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Or, the out of the 80 million potential Apple customers only a quarter of them are interested in streaming music since they already a number of choices. Not everyone with an Apple device is going to be interested in streaming music. I'm one of them.
Oh god, who cares? (Score:2)
A few overplayed artists aren't on Apple, nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Also you can't even get good version of, say "The Beatles" on cd since the record companies made them fatal victims of the loudness war after stealing their music.
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Not true. I'm a generation after the Beatles and all of my friends in high school knew all of their music and had all of their lyrics memorized.
And if you really care you can get good digital copies of their music though the sources are odd. For instance the best copy of Abby Road is from the initial Japanese CD release (one of the first CDs ever made)... They were slapped down and told they didn't have the right to release it by the parent company, but since digital is eternal, there are flac files out t
The problem with Apple is compatibility... (Score:5, Interesting)
One friend had a MacBook which was 4 years old. She purchased a new Airport Extreme, Apple's home router. The only way to manage the Airport Extreme is with Apple's Airport Utility. The version of Mac OS X had an older version of Airport Utility that wasn't compatible with the router. Furthermore she couldn't upgrade the version of Mac OS X on her laptop to the current rev because it was 4 years old. In order to install the Airport Extreme, she had to borrow a new iPad.
Every other home router on the planet is managed through a web browser interface. There's NOTHING about the Airport Utility that you couldn't do with a browser interface, but noooo... It's an Apple product so you HAVE to use their app to manage it, and if you don't have a current Apple platform to do it from, you're screwed.
Another friend purchased a new iPhone 6 and found that iTunes wouldn't work for him with his laptop. Again, he had to upgrade Mac OS X. His laptop was new enough that it could go up to the current rev of OS X, so he got his iTunes working. But then his ProTools wouldn't work with the new OS X. Three years of studio recordings were lost.
Apple stuff is not only not compatible with other platforms, it's not compatible with itself. Anyone who buys into the Apple eco-system is going to run up against this kind of problem.
Re: The problem with Apple is compatibility... (Score:1)
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As for ProTools breaking, it certainly is Apple's fault that an older product does not work. I've got shell scripts I wrote 15 years ago which work fine on any Linux system today. I use an 8 year old $100 laptop running Windows 7 to do location recording with a 13 year o
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You don't know much about Macs - my 2008 MacPro is running 10.10.3 (Yosemite) and according to Apple, should run the next iteration (El Capitan). The only thing I had to do is replace the video card (who runs 7 year old video cards on anything?). My wife has a 2010 MacBook Pro which also will run 10.11.
Yes, there are Linux distros out there that will boot off an 8 inch floppy. That's impressive, but it's not Apple's MO.
And you can use command line programs [osxdaily.com] to manipulate Airports. Even the old ones. Now
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The first Intel MacBook Pros didn't last as long. They had the Core Duo processor which wasn't compatible with 10.7. I think the next iteration of the laptops had the Core 2 Duo (which were 64-bit instead of 32-bit) and where supported longer. But I didn't get 7 years of current OS X releases on that laptop. It ran for a long time though.
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You're quite right when you say I don't know much about Macs. I have no idea what is the current rev of OS X, so Yosemite and El Capitan are just noise to me. The point here is that my friend's Mac apparently couldn't be upgraded to run a compatible version of the Airport Utility in order to manage her new Airport Extreme, which is absurd. Were the Airport Extreme to have a web based management interface, like EVERY OTHER consumer router on the planet, her old Mac, as well as any other machine with a web browser, could have managed it.
As for running Linux on old hardware, it's not just that it runs. It's *USEFUL* too on old hardware.
As for the CLI to manage the Airport Extreme, what makes you think that rev of the CLI would work if the Airport Utility wouldn't? The GUI is just a front-end to the CLI.
The point here is that Apple's gear isn't compatible with itself over time, and it forces people to purchase upgrades unnecessarily. I suppose the best thing you could say for it is that its clearly a successful business model...
All very well, but it comes off as baseless Apple bashing - you admit yourself that you don't know anything about it. The Airport Extreme is controlled by an application and always has been, and the system requirements are listed on the box. Your original comment posited an impossible situation - I can't think of any combination of Apple laptop hardware and AE hardware that would result in incompatibility if the time is restricted to 4 years.
Sure the choice of using an app to control the AE is an unusual on
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I like the fact that we have unified ecosystem. Stuff breaking means forced upgrades and allows developers to know that everyone is on the latest version of everything. The cost of the upgrades are low because it helps everyone to be upgrading and we get features far faster than the Windows eco system where the time between first availability of a feature in the OS and every application depending on it can be 20 years.
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Linux runs just fine on an 8 year old laptop with all the newest tools. It comes with a variety of excellent I
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MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)
MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later)
(source) [macworld.co.uk]
Mind you that's the unreleased OS X version currently in beta! And it definitely supports ANY MacBook or MacBook Pro shipped in 2009. And a lot of them shipped before then. (There was no 13-inch MacBook Pro shipped in early 2009.)
Furthermore your Mac doesn't support Win8 under
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To clarify: My used Macbook came with Snow Leopard, and I automatically updated to Yosemite, because I didn't know any better. A piece of hardware(M-Audio Firewire Audiophile) and some software(Native Instruments Komplete 2) I had expected to work, because I thought, "hey, osx = osx, right?" didn't. I had to downgrade to the last possible version that was known to be working with the hardware, Lion. The software still didn't work. I was then going to bootcamp to Wind
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Apple expects you to upgrade. Part of what makes a unified ecosystem is that everyone is essentially on the same version of everything. They are pretty open about that and its been policy for a long time. 3 years of studio recordings were not lost btw Pro Tools has a version which supports the current operating system.
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Spend, spend, spend...
Off-Topic (Score:2)
The problem with Apple gear is that it isn't compatible with Apple gear
You have already failed in several ways from the outset.
1) Apple Music is not "gear". it's a service.
2) Apple Music will be available for Android, not just "Apple Gear".
3) The Airport case you bring up is annoying but pretty unique, mostly Apple Gear works fine with other Apple Gear (including iTunes supporting the very oldest iPods still).
Re: The problem with Apple is compatibility... (Score:2)
My MacBook Pro from 2010 is running the latest OSX. My MBP from 2008 ran Lion and the AirPort Extreme app would run on that. You are a liar and the people who modded your post up are morons.
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I apologize for my immature outburst. Hope you're having a good weekend.
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I've seen this exact complaint before (Score:5, Insightful)
The problems in this article apply to any streaming service. It's what happens when a new technology collides with the writhing mass of overwrought little Hollywood egos that is the entertainment business.
Look at the example of television. Though in the old days we complained about having to sit through commercials, the sponsored broadcast model was one that everyone understood and was able to use nationwide without much thought. When cable came along, you had to pick out service tiers, but it brought TV to all those places where it had never seen seen before.
Enter streaming. For broadcast networks which have always used the sponsored-by-commercials model, this could have been a chance to use the reach of the Internet to provide "infinity" broadcast range to each over-air network. Networks began to make shows available on streaming after each air date, and it looked as though we were on our way to TV utopia. Miss a show and you can see it online; for sponsors, their reach is now vastly expanded both in space (programs becoming visible outside of city antenna range) and time (vacationers are watching your commercials after they get back to town and stream their favorites). As a bonus, Internet streaming gives broadcasters viewer metrics that make the old Neilsen diaries look like cave wall drawings.
But no service model is so simple and beautiful that Hollywood can't screw it up. Some shows can't be streamed because a TV "Adele" considers her ego worth trashing the service model for. Other shows disappear after a few episodes, so if you're away for a month you will never see them at all. Industry middlemen, the medallion cabdrivers of the business, want to flimflam double and triple sets of fees out of users, which is why a lot of over-the-air content hides behind those miserable "verify your cable provider" interfaces online. The result: we, the users, are sticking to our torrents until the mess clears up. If Apple wants to make music as simple and accessible to all by subscription as Netflix DVDs are for the movie business, it will have to strongarm Hollywood in the same way Netflix did, by becoming a default standard means of access that nobody will mess with.
Ridiculous anti-Apple clickbait (Score:2)
Really? You criticise them for it not being a success before they've even launched the damn thing? No other company gets berated for not achieving its goals for a product pre-launch. This is just another of those bizarre articles that holds Apple to not just an unattainable standard, but a standard that doesn't even make sense.
The real problem... (Score:2)
Apple's real problem is that they need to fix the bloated mess that they call iTunes (and the Podcast app).
It needs... (Score:2)
They need to make it work with network streaming devices (Sonos, Bluesound, etc.), not just computers and phones, and have an option for lossless.
Without them, it's dead to me.