Apple enters the streaming fray

[matt49]

Any thoughts on the new Apple music service?

 

[steve_1979]

Music and music videos? I bet Spotify is getting worried by this.

But then again haven't YouTube been doing this for years with their 'VEVO' music videos?

 

[daveh75]

We can now add 'Revolutionary' to the list of words Apple had redefined.

To ignore what Spotify, YT and SoundCloud etc etc have been doing for years is arrogant even for them...

 

[ID.]

I'm grateful. With most of the forum users being UK based it may not have any relevance to you, but outside the US, Europe, and Australia, people don't have access to spotify so personally I'm thrilled (pending a specific list of the 100+ countries they claim).

Really I have to reserve any judgment until I see what the available catalogue is, because I generally find even the iTunes Store catalogue to be a bit limited.

 

[Leeps]

What a wasted opportunity. If you're entering the market this late, you need to come up with SOMETHING your competitors don't have.

Well I suppose the only something it does have is the "Apple" label. And they must be banking its entire success on that name. Why would I want Apple over Spotify when its the same price, already has a great interface particularly where discovering new music is concerned and has the support of so many 3rd party products (Amazon Fire, most new AV receivers, Naim, Yamaha, Marantz and the list goes on).

If I want to use Apple Music on my main system, presumably I'd be restricted to Airplay or perhaps the latest iteration of the Apple TV.

 

[steve_1979]

If the record companies start doing deals with the various streaming services large music catalogues might start vanishing from the other services. I fear that we may end up with a situation where no single streaming service has all the important artists availabe so to be able to listen to what you want you'll need to sign up to two or the different services.

 

[steve_1979]

3 months of Deezer Premium for 99p

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/3-months-unlimited-music-from-deezer-for-99p-june-2220785

 

[wilro15]

I'm generally a fan of most things Apple, but I can't say I particularly bothered about Apple Music. They are not doing anything new, they are not competing on price, they are not competing on features nor are they competing on sound quality. So whats the point?

They just want a share of the streaming pie. It will probably be a success as there are loads of people with iTunes be it on an iPhone, Mac or PC. I'm sticking with Spotify and streaming my own music for now.

 

[matthewpiano]

Apple, the most over-rated and image-focused company of our time. I don't have any of their stuff, and I'm not about to move away from Spotify and Qobuz Hi-Fi towards Apple Music. Their phones are out-classed by the best Android devices, their iPods were always bettered by Sony's equivalent Walkman products for sound quality, and their computers are outrageously expensive for what they are.

 

[cheeseboy]

to be honest, as much as I dislike the idea, I think this will end up being big. Mainly because apple have enough money to wave at the record companies in order to make sure they can get exclusives, and also to basically strongarm the record companies to remove their material from the other services when those contracts run out. It'll take a while, especially with no free tier, but I just think that apple's pockets are waaaay too deep for it to not work.

 

[chebby]

Apple, the most over-rated and image-focused company of our time. I don't have any of their stuff, and I'm not about to move away from Spotify and Qobuz Hi-Fi towards Apple Music. Their phones are out-classed by the best Android devices, their iPods were always bettered by Sony's equivalent Walkman products for sound quality, and their computers are outrageously expensive for what they are.

Then it's a darned good job that I made up for you by buying a brand-new 128GB iPhone 6 last week (to go with my 128GB iPad Mini 3 and the recent 'upstairs' and 'downstairs' Mac Minis).

 

[drummerman]

I don't follow the high tech electronics markets but could it be that apple is loosing foothold everywhere and have to diversify?

 

[Paul.]

I think it will be a success, not because its better than Spotify (who knows, maybe it will be. It will no doubt be slicker than Spotify, their software always seems a bit iffy) but because Apple have more account holders with credit cards logged than even Amazon. People are lazy. Apple have sold over one billion iOS devices, and when the notifications start going out, pop ups when accessing the iTunes store, people are going to say "sure, three months free trial" and then forget to cancel it.

I would like to add that I don't see how Apple phones are outclassed by Android. I have to admit, I have grown to like some of the Android functionality, my previous android experiences were not good ones (with an S3 and several tabs) but now my work phone has been upgraded to a Note 4 I quite like it. My personal phone is an iPhone 6plus, and I have to say there is not much in it, very close. Certain things the iPhone does better (most noticeably the thumb print scanner, it actually works very reliably, even when I mash it in a sleepy stupor) some things the Note does better (I quite like the text schedular feature, iOS has automated texting blocked for alleged security reasons). I still don’t see the point of a stylus on a smart phone. If you don’t like iOS thats cool, but living with both I have realised its now so close it pretty much doesn’t matter.

 

[chebby]

I don't follow the high tech electronics markets but could it be that apple is loosing foothold everywhere and have to diversify?

Yeah, things are pretty dire over there right now ...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/liyanchen/2015/05/11/the-worlds-largest-tech-companies-apple-beats-samsung-microsoft-google/

 

[Paul.]

I don't follow the high tech electronics markets but could it be that apple is loosing foothold everywhere and have to diversify?

If by loosing foothold you mean "biggest quarterly proffit of all time" and "overtaking the gas giants" (and I dont mean Jupiter ;P)

 

[drummerman]

I don't follow the high tech electronics markets but could it be that apple is loosing foothold everywhere and have to diversify?

Yeah, things are pretty dire over there right now ...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/liyanchen/2015/05/11/the-worlds-largest-tech-companies-apple-beats-samsung-microsoft-google/

Thought I may had a point there

 

[drummerman]

Ok, so it may be their quest for world domination ... ?

Apple cars, Apple houses, Apple banks.

Even Apples may have superficial intelligence one day soon, courtesy of ...

 

[cheeseboy]

Ok, so it may be their quest for world domination ... ?

Apple cars, Apple houses, Apple banks.

Even Apples may have superficial intelligence one day soon, courtesy of ...

actually I wouldn't have said you were too far off with the banks thing. Look at the apple pay system.

Apple is a company wanting to make it's own eco system for everything it provides. Not that there is much wrong with that, but once they are the size they are, things get very sticky fast. Look at what happened to ms with their large antitrust case. The problem is that more and more we see companies (not just apple) trying to lock people in that eco system and not be able to do anything elsewhere.

Apple have already had their knuckles wrapped for price fixing of e-books and I really can't see them doing any different with music and the record companies. Apple are basically trying to replace distributor channels because there's always going to be shed loads of money to be made very easily being the middle man.

The also pulled a fast one with magazines and suchlike saying that all subscriptions had to go through itunes and thus be eligible for apples cut.

So it's things like that, that make it a bit worrying when apple want to make roads in to things such as streaming because lets be honest, it's not going to be about what the customer wants (heck, apple to give them credit are the masters at telling people what they didn't know they wanted!) it's going to be about money.

Another example for the way things are going - look at the apple watch. It's already bloody expensive, but given it's useless without an iphone, it's even more expensive. How long before other apple devices don't work, or don't work properly untill you already have x device?

 

[matthewpiano]

Potentially it could be the worst thing to ever happen to music, even more so than the blasted iPod and iTunes. What we are really talking about is an attempt to corporatise music, for one company to have the aim of controlling the whole consumer relationship with music. All part of the growing power of the big corporations, something which threatens on a very industrial, potentially all-consuming scale in the current poilitical climate.

 

[cheeseboy]

All part of the growing power of the big corporations, something which threatens on a very industrial, potentially all-consuming scale in the current poilitical climate.

it's going to get worse if the tpp goes ahead

 

[gowiththeflow]

Apple have already had their knuckles wrapped for price fixing of e-books

It was the book publishers who initiated and demanded the fixing of e-book prices, before they would licence Apple to sell e-books. They were also found guilty along with Apple.

...Another example for the way things are going - look at the apple watch. It's already bloody expensive, but given it's useless without an iphone,....

Apple have just launched WatchOS, to allow native apps to run without an associated iPhone to do the hard work. This is the first step in making the Watch an autonomous device. It only has WiFi at the present time, but as the Apple Watch develops, they may have plans to put cellular functionality into it.

You are only seeing the beginning of development on this product line.

 

[matthewpiano]

All part of the growing power of the big corporations, something which threatens on a very industrial, potentially all-consuming scale in the current poilitical climate.

it's going to get worse if the tpp goes ahead

Yep, exactly what I was referring to.

 

[gowiththeflow]

To ignore what Spotify, YT and SoundCloud etc etc have been doing for years is arrogant even for them...

Actually, they made reference to the current world of streaming services, both music, video and radio.

The selling point is that streaming is a bit of a muddle, with music streaming on one set of services, videos on another, internet radio elsewhere, some provide content for new bands, others don't and your own music is stored elsewhere on your own PC or device.

The sales pitch is that all these will be brought together under Apple Music to form an ecosystem. They said the streaming service will also be used to manage your own stored content through Music and iTunes becoming integrated into one.

The highlight though was on two other key aspects of Apple Music.

The Beats 1 radio service is a DJ hosted global live radio station, with DJ's in LA, NYC and London transmitting 24/7, rather than a series of curated playlists, like on most internet radio. So that is something different from the likes of Spotify, although to me it sounds like a sort of US led international Radio One, with a lot of UK content. The sort of radio I personally dislike. There are other more typical, genre based internet radio streams too.

Connect is Artist based content, such as blogs, interviews, plus music and video content. Much was made of this and the ability of any new artists to post their latest music on there and expose their material directly to the public; but I wonder how they'll get access to the service and at what cost. Cynically I suspect it will just be a marketting tool for the big labels, but the story implies anyone can apply to post content to Connect. This has to be a more attractive propsition than using the obscure or disjointed routes of Soundcloud, MySpace, Twitter and Facebook.

No mention of sound quality, bit rate etc, (do the general public care?) and the whole lot comes across as being very corporate and mainstream.

In summary, there is much which is different from Spotify, Tidal and the rest, especially the live radio service and the integration of all the different streaming functions. They are aiming for this to be much more mainstream than any streaming offering has been so far and far more artist and label friendly than some of the other streaming offerings.

 

[BigH]

I think its a bad thing, I can see other services disappearing like Deezer, Rdio and maybe Spotify. Deezer you can get 1 year trial, no ads but not on mobile. Apple is full of adverts, one reason why I never use it for WHF. So more choice now, less in future?

Whats the cost in UK?

 

[Paul.]

Whats the cost in UK?

dunno. The six user family pack looks interesting though. Gets you logged in on six devices for 16 dollars instead of 10. I would expect the standard pricing to be the same as spotify premium, so would guess £10 and £16?