Apple Streaming: Too little too late?

Apparently independent labels will go royalty-free during Apple's three month free trial. Can't imagine they're too delighted.

Link

I bet Apple are not having a royalty free three months on anything other than their Music product. Nice to get someone else to pay for your loss leader. 

Don't understand how others can be having the deep sleep problem with their Musos unless Naim has meddled with the hardware. The only parameter I have changed is for it to switch off after two hours of non use and that seems to work, although I rarely leave it on if I am not using it.

It isn't just the independents, it applies to the majors as well.

I'm a bit amazed no one picked up the fact that they actually have launched a music hub. It is not just a streaming music service, they have a 24 hour radio station promoting music that is not just 'other people who have listened to this song have liked these songs also' and a platform for any artist to create a channel to promote their music, involve people in their activities and create a community, while offering a sales channel for the artist as well! And that delivered to the hundreds of million people who happen to have an iPhone or iPad.

yes, it is a little late, but if the execution is anything like what they have demo-ed, it is amazing in itself. And what I have seen of the revamped iTunes App, now Apple Music, it looks very, very promising. It doesn't feel at all like a rushed job, it feels like a carefully developed music platform. The question is if it will catch on.

The Naim user feels a little sad though. If Apple music turns around the music market once more, I'm afraid Qobuz, Tidal and Deezer will feel the pressure. And I don't know what that will mean for the availability of high res music.

The library of hires music today is nothing to write home about. It is a rare thing indeed to find what I am looking for on any on the hires download stores.

I would be less worried about the impact on hi-res and more worried about losing what availability there is left of regular uncompressed audio like CDs which many of us still use as our ripping source for home streaming. Each one of these services adds more weight to the scale that will eventually kill off CD permanently and then we will be in limbo with a huge online library of lossy audio at one end and a tiny library of hires at the other.

I have a terrible feeling that you are 100% correct on your analysis - God help us.

The challenge for Apple isn't the service or content - which can always be fixed in flight - it's demographics.

Where my generation adopted iTunes with iPods and early iPhones, there's a whole younger generation that aren't using iTunes for music at all, either because they're on Android devices or they use cloud services such as Spotify or whatever. For me, iTunes is a necessary evil, but for them it barely exists.

Added to that, Apple is now competing in an 'open-system' market with a 'closed-system' mindset. The whole point of cloud-based music services is to divorce the music from the device, but that is hardly Apple's strength area - they've never succeeded in social or cloud-based business, and yet those are key to the younger generation's behaviour. 

Apple continue to make mouth-watering devices at reasonable prices and clearly they're massively successful at that. But this launch plays to their weaknesses, and I predict a hard road ahead.

@solid air

@Wat

I believe you are both right.  I've seen the new interface and I think its top rate. However I do remember "Ping" from Apple their first attempt at Social Music and it failed and their first couple of iterations of iCloud weren't pretty either so I am a little skeptical. Guess I'm in the "older" demographic now :-(  Apple's new service isn't targeting me anymore its aimed at my 19 yo nephew who doesn't buy music he just listens from multiple sources.

Well, well.. Who's afraid of little Taylor Swift. I am no fan of her stuff but first she has a go at Spotify stopping them from streaming her "music"  and now the almighty  Apple conglomerate bow down to her demands. Mind you, who want to work for free, musician or not?

Well done Apple!

Aaaaaaaaaaawww. I'm crushed.

She is ever so lovely though!

Her music is still shite...but she is a clever cookie. Maybe Spotify were right when they did not give a flying duck to her removing her stuff. 

Agreed about the music but then most country is.  Johnny Cash aside of course and some of the 70s West Coast stuff.

And  she really is lovely!

+1 Lovely girl. Smart and I can appreciate her talent.  Funny, streaming is the only way I'd listen to her music besides the Radio.  

No, well done Swift and musicians in general, hate her and her music but what she achieved was a win-win for every musician. You cleverly don't explain her 'demands' so here goes for those who don't know:

The 3-month Apple Music trial was not going to pay artists during that period, now due to Swift's insistence Apple will. You can by cynical all you want but this is a biggie especially for new artists. Whether her decision to pull out of Spotify is yet to proved foolish or not, but I would say the latter will be concerned now.

... or Morrissey. 

Did anyone mention that she is also very lovely?  Because she is - rubbish music though.

When did I say I hated her?  I find her music, like most country music to be inane in the extreme.  I think she is lovely to look at.  But I have never met her so how can I possibly hate her?

ps don't even hate Phil Collins.

Meanwhile in other news...

An activist artist uses her influence to self promote;

Iinternet forums think that this is good for all artists and applaud her stand against the big evil corporate entity

Yet, no one really knows what contract each artist has signed with their producer/label and the cost/revenue implications.

Up and coming artists should be thankful that Apple are launching this service, where else can they get promotion and feedback on this scale (Youtube and MySpace don't quite cut it)

Getting back on topic, even though Miss Swift is very lovely.

Apple will rely on the 'Apple' effect.  Talk about streaming in a lossy format is kinda not relevant to a very large proportion of the market.  There will be Apple 'fanboys' out there who will tell you that  AAC files sound better than the original CD tracks, believe me because I heard it said in the Apple shop at Bluewater.  The shop assistants did not agree with said moron.

So lossy versus lossless ain't gonna swing any of these guys away from over-priced Apple boxes.

Another example is headphones.  I bought a set of B&W P7 cans a while back and I love them.  Now many of the reviews for these cans was very positive but a load of these reviews was for the cans plugged into an iPad or iPod.  Now these are expensive and on testing them with my iPad they don't sound much better than a cheapish pair of Beyers I also have.  Plugged into my UnitiLite, with or without my headphone amp (DIY Class A) the difference between the 2 is now very marked.

So what is the point?  The Beyers plugged into the iPad are very enjoyable, I can sit and listen to them for a while and I take them with us when we go off n out camper.  They fit the bill.

But why-o-why spend P7 amounts of money on a product that will underperform vastly?

It is a matter of faith and this faith may well propel the Apple streaming product to the top.  Would anyone like to bet against it?

NO NO NO There is no such thing as the right bits to lose, even if you are talking country music or  ABBA or The Beegees.  Actually, thinking about it, maybe you are right!

Wat that'll be Voltaire's older brother Kenny I guess.  Ya know in a cheesy way I quite liked that song - no forget I said that and don't tell anyone I said it.

Seriously though I generally really dislike country music, most of it says nothing and sounds like everything else.  But I love Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson & Nancy Griffith.

Just spent the last couple of hours checking  the new streamer. Very sleek  as expected  but apart from a choice of radio stations, of which there is a plethora on the net, I don't think Spotify have anything to fear. Yes, too little too late!

I have a feeling the winner in the streaming long game will be Apple Music.  They have a distinct advantage over all the other cmpys such as Spotify & Qobuz in that their music stream software will be loaded as a software update on the zillions of iPhones & iPads globally.  Plus they can run it as a loss leader far longer than can the others.  

It probably will not be not a question of lossless or lossy as 99% of the potential Apple Music users are only interested in something that makes a noise like their MP3 player.  But with far more music choices & slicker than most others, Apple will probably take a lot of market share,  & no matter what the SQ & the fidelity, it will probably result in some (at least) of the existing streaming services disappearing  -  especially so considering the possible/rumoured trading difficulties with a few of them.

Spotify have 20 million subscribers worldwide and I doubt the majority will move to Apple if  they  can't take their stored music with them. As for quality, Apple streams at 256kbps compared to Spotify's 320 but, as you  said, I do not think the majority of subscribers to either company will care about it. I have already cancelled  my automatic subscription to Apple music before its free trial expiration in September. Apple will have to come up with something really spectacular if they want my money. 

The only type of Apple streaming that holds any interest for me is a cider press.