Apple looks to kill off free Spotify streaming to make more $$$ for itself

[editor]

Scum, etc.

Apple looking to beat Spotify by killing free music streaming services
Spotify’s free streaming music service revolutionised the way we listened to tunes when it first burst onto the digital stage back in 2008, now Apple wants to come to spoil the party by ending the free ride.

Apple is vying to compete with Spotify and others on the music streaming scene with the launch of its own paid-for service, which is set to debut in June. To help it compete and to snuff out the success of rivals, Apple is reportedly urging music labels not to re-new their licensing deals that allow services like Spotify to stream for free.

If successful it would effectively kill the free option and force 45 million of Spotify’s 60 million subscribers who currently use this price tier to re-assess their music streaming decision. If pay is the only way, then Apple will be right there waiting hoping to catch and entice all these strays with its service, which is said to be priced cheaper than Spotify at £7.99/mth as opposed to £9.99/mth.

The Verge reports Apple is allegedly going about its business in a “cutthroat” manner according to a music industry insider. Apple is also believed to be encouraging music labels to not license its music to Google’s YouTube Music Key - another comptetior in the market.

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[Pickman's model]

only surprise is it's taken them so long

 

[sim667]

I thought there was already a thread on this?

I still have yet to find a decent streaming service, they're all pretty dire, so I'm still buying my music anyway.

 

[editor]

I thought there was already a thread on this?

I still have yet to find a decent streaming service, they're all pretty dire, so I'm still buying my music anyway.

Spotify works just fine for me. What don't you like about it?

 

[sim667]

Spotify works just fine for me. What don't you like about it?

When I last tried it, I wasn't able to find quite a lot of stuff I wanted..... That was a while ago.

Plus advert, I hate the adverts after every 3 songs.

I also need to be able to download stuff to mix, so unless I can download from something at 320KBPs, its not worth having.

 

[belboid]

I also need to be able to download stuff to mix, so unless I can download from something at 320KBPs, its not worth having.

you seem to miss the point of a 'streaming' service

 

[sim667]

you seem to miss the point of a 'streaming' service

Well why would I pay for a streaming service, then have to pay more money to download something so I can mix it....

I may as well fuck the streaming service off, and spend the money on buying the stuff I want no?

Plus if I want to listen to music streamed on my phone, it absolutes kills the battery life.

 

[editor]

Well why would I pay for a streaming service, then have to pay more money to download something so I can mix it....

I may as well fuck the streaming service off, and spend the money on buying the stuff I want no?

Plus if I want to listen to music streamed on my phone, it absolutes kills the battery life.

You don't have to stream it - you can download the songs off Spotify on to your phone. If there's a new artist I want to hear (*up to 3.3k tunes for £10/month), I just download the album and listen to it when I'm out. Sorted!

 

[belboid]

Well why would I pay for a streaming service, then have to pay more money to download something so I can mix it....

I may as well fuck the streaming service off, and spend the money on buying the stuff I want no?

Plus if I want to listen to music streamed on my phone, it absolutes kills the battery life.

because you want to listen to a lot more things than you might want to buy and then mix?

But, fair enough, maybe streaming just isn't for you

 

[skyscraper101]

I've been with Spotify since pretty much the beginning. They have pissed me of a lot with their constant software upgrades which have made the app bloated and crap, just like iTunes became. It's a real memory hog now and you can no longer search within your own playlists for tracks, and there's a definitely less customization on offer. That said, I do like some of the integrated stuff they have going on like the tie in with the deejay app, and partnership with Uber to play your tunes while you're on an uber ride.

I'll see what apple offer when this launches, if it's more user friendly, I'll give them a go as I have an ipod and an iphone but they'll have to go a fair bit to catch up with spotify.

 

[mwgdrwg]

With Spotify I used to be able to "star" songs onto a starred playlist. I can sort of still do this, but they push the "add" thing. Add it to what? I've already added it to a playlist. I don't understand what they mean and why they changed it. Also, the way it works with what I've got on my hard disk library is incredibly shit. So I look forward to what Apple does, as I really like iTunes (initial loading time aside).

eta: also, Spotify Facebook log ins can fuck off.

 

[sim667]

You don't have to stream it - you can download the songs off Spotify on to your phone. If there's a new artist I want to hear (*up to 3.3k tunes for £10/month), I just download the album and listen to it when I'm out. Sorted!

Ah I didn't know you could download. I've got myself a nice little system sorted anyway for a similar price

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I can't stand Spotify tbh, I think their website is shit and they never have anything I want. OTOH my not liking a service isn't a reason to have it stepped on. OTTH (on the third hand) Spotify are exploitative corporate bastards at least as much as Apple, and this sounds a bit like Spotify press release stuff. So, in summary, meh, I'll see what happens.

 

[EastEnder]

Well I suppose poor old impecunious Apple needs to do everything it can to earn a few pennies. If that means trampling the competition & coercing consumers into paying more cash (to Apple, obvs) they can hardly be blamed for that. It's pretty much what Microsoft did for 20 years, and look how much everyone loves them these days..........

 

[twentythreedom]

Spotify is my preferred streaming service atm. If apple make a better, cheaper service, I'll change to that.

 

[editor]

Apple are expected to announce their new streaming service tomorrow. If it's another of their walled garden Apple-only escapades they can suck my balls.

 

[Sunray]

They are separate companies, Apple would have to give the music industry something very special before they would just do what Apple says. Not sure they could get an entire industry to bend to their will just because they ask?

 

[editor]

I keep hearing good things about Google Play Music so I might give that a go next.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

They are separate companies, Apple would have to give the music industry something very special before they would just do what Apple says. Not sure they could get an entire industry to bend to their will just because they ask?

I imagine their basic argument will be that at the moment they are the company with the best chance of making streaming a viable business model. They did it with mp3's, they did it with apps, streaming will be next.

 

[editor]

I imagine their basic argument will be that at the moment they are the company with the best chance of making streaming a viable business model. They did it with mp3's, they did it with apps, streaming will be next.

Pretty sure Google are capable of making streaming a viable business model, you know. And Spotify's model seems to be getting there.

 

[dervish]

I keep hearing good things about Google Play Music so I might give that a go next.

I got a three month free trial with my chromecast for play music, to be honest I wasn't that impressed. It was ok, quality was good but there was a fair amount of stuff that I couldn't find. I have now tried spotify, play music and deezer and for streaming deezer was definitely the best.

 

[editor]

I got a three month free trial with my chromecast for play music, to be honest I wasn't that impressed. It was ok, quality was good but there was a fair amount of stuff that I couldn't find. I have now tried spotify, play music and deezer and for streaming deezer was definitely the best.

I've looked up a fair few comparison reviews and quite a few have Spotify and Play as the best.

 

[dervish]

I liked deezer more, it had pretty much everything I asked it for, I also liked how fast it loaded tracks, click play and instantly it would start, no buffering.

I really like the free version of play music but wouldn't pay for it.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Apple are expected to announce their new streaming service tomorrow. If it's another of their walled garden Apple-only escapades they can suck my balls.

They just announced Apple Music at WWDC a few minutes ago. Looks much like a slightly reskinned version of iTunes so far, with some of Dr Dre's Beats app interactions thrown on top.

 

[RedDragon]

How embarrassing. they allocated too much keynote time to your uncle trying to sell you next hot music thing from some dodgy oxford street pop-up

The only minor saving points were the 3 months free sample and the $16 family plan for up to 6 users.

 

[mwgdrwg]

Looking forward to trying it out. Can't use Spotify now because I haven't got a fucking Facebook account.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Spotify's not free you either pay or suffer adverts. Personally I think the streaming space desperately needs competition.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

How embarrassing. they allocated too much keynote time to your uncle trying to sell you next hot music thing from some dodgy oxford street pop-up

The only minor saving points were the 3 months free sample and the $16 family plan for up to 6 users.

That family plan means I'll actually save money while having more music to listen to than Spotify currently offers. Also would mean I can finally rationalize my music listening, using both Spotify and Apple Music is a pain in the ass...

 

[skyscraper101]

Personally I think the streaming space desperately needs competition.

Definitely.

I'm quite willing to jump ship from Spotify is Apple can produce something decent and not bloated - unfortunately they've both got form where that's concerned. But if they'd do a tie in with iTunes Match so I can upload my entire mp3 library into their cloud server, and combine my offline library with a streaming library for a decent price then I'm definitely interested. The main advantage Spotify still have is the size of their catalog, the free tier to get people onto the platform, and the grandfathered $5/month unlimited tier which I'm on which is still a bargain.

I'm also interested to know if they've been able to strike deals with all the major artists that Spotify took a long while to acquire. For instance, Pink Floyd, Metallica, Led Zeppelin were all much publicised deals which Spotify had to do individually with the artists - presumably on unique terms so those artists got a better deal and Spotify got the PR. The Beatles and AC/DC are still notable by their absence. As is Taylor Swift who just left, and Adele who I think XL/Columbia have put an embargo on her last album. Given the long-wrangled over agreement Apple did with Apple corps for the Beatles catalog on iTunes, I'm keen to know if they'll feature, or if they'll opt out.

I don't really care about all those artists but they'll be big names not to have. Spotify have been able to strike a lot of cool brand tie ins such as with Uber so you can play your music from your Pro account when you get in an Uber, and their integration with the Deejay app is pretty nifty. Apple need to come up with some cool shit like that IMO to really start poaching users away from Spotify. The family plan is a good deal and probably the best advantage they have over Spotify right now. The Beats 1 stuff is all fluff. Zayne Lowe. ffs

Incidentally in the US, Spotify is still not as much of an established brand as it is in Europe. Half the people I talked to about it were more familiar with Pandora and it seemed like people hadn't really got with streaming as quickly as the UK. So perhaps the Apple/iTunes brand will have more gravitas there than Spotify has managed.

Google Play are mainly good in that I've been able to upload upto 50,000 tracks from my offline library to my account for free (regardless of size or length of the tracks) which neither Apple nor Spotify offer. It took ages to get them all up there but at least I know have a complete cloud based backup of my mp3s all for free. The only problem is when it launched with just a web interface to play the music it was terrible, buggy slow and generally unpleasant to use. I haven't tried out the desktop app yet so I may revist it again, but generally I wasn't keen on anything apart from it being a free cloud based hard drive to stick 160GBish of music.

 

[editor]

I know loads of people who use the free Spotify service, even with its annoying adverts. Funny to hear Apple being welcomed as some sort of competition given that their gameplan is to usually leverage their unrivalled resources to try and crush the opposition.