What I love about Spotify is it is not algorithm based. I play what I want when I want. I can listen to what friends are listening to or check out suggested lists or artists if I am in the mood, but I like being in control. Music is too personal to hand it off to any algorithm. I find them infinitely frustrating.
I didn't know how much I hated Pandoras algorithm based service until I tried Spotify. Ditto Beats.
What I love about Spotify is it is not algorithm based. I play what I want when I want. I can listen to what friends are listening to or check out suggested lists or artists if I am in the mood, but I like being in control. Music is too personal to hand it off to any algorithm. I find them infinitely frustrating.
I didn't know how much I hated Pandoras algorithm based service until I tried Spotify. Ditto Beats.
You realize Beats allows you to play what you want too, right?
Spotify is backed by the major record labels. They might not have the resources of Apple but they have the right partners to get music licensed quickly and cheaply.
I can't understand why, since Spotify pays the label some crazily tiny amount of cash for each song played.
The trouble with iTunes Radio is that you cannot say if you like or don't like a song currently playing playing, like you can with Pandora. It's like Eddie Cue is tone deaf…don't they ever look at their competition?
The trouble with iTunes Radio is that you cannot say if you like or don't like a song currently playing playing, like you can with Pandora. It's like Eddie Cue is tone deaf…don't they ever look at their competition?
Yes you can. You click the star which gives you the option of choosing to "Play more like this" or "Never play this song again"
oh gosh so I've been reading AI for almost ten years now and never made an account, I LOVE this site and I love everyone's comments I recognize so many of you lol
ANYWAY
Spotify is amazing. I've been a paid subscriber with Spotify for almost two years now and there's nothing even remotely competitive to it, IMO.
Apple can do what they want with Beats, it obvious that they bought Beats because they were one of three companies who had rights to stream music, but unless they rebrand Beats I don't see it ever going anywhere.
Spotify is going to be impossible to beat, the streaming music train left almost four years ago now. It's a big industry with lots of growth, but the only way Apple could really take it would be drastic measures(like giving a Beats subscription to every iPhone/Mac user)
Tells me you didn't do a good job responding to your preferred music. And it's not like it's supposed to magically guess everything from a few introductory questions. You're supposed to continue liking things you find, so it keeps building a database.
Honestly, this reads like someone who really didn't want to change, they just subbed briefly so they could post anecdotes like this and claim they'd tried other things.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheWhiteFalcon
You realize Beats allows you to play what you want too, right?
You realize you are insufferably condescending right?
I agree. Although I prefer to own my music, I did give Beats and Spotify a try. I overwhelmingly preferred Beats. I think Apple needs to push Beats more.
He is an employee of Apple. Hopefully he's working on things behind the scenes because as it is now, Beats subscriber numbers are pathetic. I think they need a longer trial and a free plan like Spotify has.
He is an employee of Apple. Hopefully he's working on things behind the scenes because as it is now, Beats subscriber numbers are pathetic. I think they need a longer trial and a free plan like Spotify has.
And they eventually may have those things. The Spotify free plan is terrible anyway.
Love spotify, great for consumers and anyone who loves music, but can see how it's not the best scenario for artists.
I'll have to agree. Although all of the figures aren't fully disclosed, it does appear that a typical artist earns around $1 for a retail CD sale and earns around $.00043 per track played on Spotify. Source: http://mashable.com/2010/04/15/music-artists-earn-online-infographic/
The only service I've even considered subscribing to is Beats Music, and not because Apple owns it. It was genuinely a good product.
Ultimately, I prefer to own the music, but BM is top notch.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Boltsfan17
I agree. Although I prefer to own my music, I did give Beats and Spotify a try. I overwhelmingly preferred Beats. I think Apple needs to push Beats more.
I'm pretty pleased with iTunes Radio - even though I'm not quite sure how it works, i.e., is it two things - Apple stations and the ones you make - or more?. Are their "stations" human curated? Are the ones I "create" and "tune" purely algorithmic? (Note: the slider that allows you to choose the degree of straying my chosen artist/album/song on my stations is way cool.) Also, they do play a fair amount of the actual artists I use to create them and also surface new groups and tunes that seem to fit in fairly well with the mood/style I'm into at the time and also act as a decent means of discovery.
In any event, they certainly don't seem to pushing iTR (or Beats) in any place I get to.
PS: What's Apple getting out of the deal with iTR if I don't buy music? There's so much unique and new music to sample (and I've loaded up my library in terms of my faves from yesteryear with 100GB from my CD-buying days) that I haven't purchased more than 5-6 songs in the last few years.
I was going to say, well, it keeps me in the Mac fold, but I imagine iTunes Radio works on iTunes for Windows, yes/no? There are the ads, but they're really infrequent and short enough to not be a huge bother (nor because of that likely a huge revenue generator).
Alternatively, YouTube's new autoplay seems to also serve those same features for me, plus I get "pitchurs," and sometimes moving ones, not to mention alternate takes, live versions and other oddities.... ....although it starts to drift far from the original theme after awhile... ...and the ad-age you experience depends on what genres, release dates and artists you're listening to. I run towards the less trod spaces so I sometimes go hours without a YT ad....
....plus while downloading some promo stuff on Google Play, I took a flyer and uploaded a big slug of library there and like the "instant mixes" it creates from my own stuff, which I've found more specific to my interests at a given moment than Genius mixes in iTunes. Especially when I start off with an off the wall genre and get a somewhat crazy quilt mix of all my stuff.
I was all about Spotify when I first discovered it.... ...enjoying drilling down to nearly cut I was looking for and liked getting the recc's of playlists created by my friends.... ...and the ability to intermingle my own iTunes library and playlist... ...but not that compelling (for me) in the long run, so haven't started it in over 6 months - which I'm guessing is the case for many of those free accounts they claim. Anyway, or reasons I don't get, not part of my music listening these days - and Pandora fell by the wayside for me years ago. Felt like work and too much music I found not interesting in the least.
There are also sites like TuneIn.com for both terrestrial and a lot of pod-casted and web stations (I guess the much more advertised I(heart)Radio is similar?) - cool for various reasons, e.g., I've lived in (and still relate to) multiple states, so fun to "tune in" to various local news and even local ads for nabes left behind). And new services like the NBA's free "All Access audio" that lets you listen to every NBA game (choosing which team's audio feed you want during the game and pairing with their TV companion website which gives you minute by minute stats, a written play by play crawl, game summaries, video clips, etc.)....
...plus an infinitude of ways to access NPR, various BBC and other feeds, live and/or archived...
....AND iTunes still has all those world-wide radio streams which are not part of iTunes radio.
So many ways to get free and/or low cost music (and infinite non-music content), so little time to fully wring the diff's between 'em out. More first world conundrums.
And I guess the artist royalties suck in nearly all of the above.... ...really putting the screws to non-touring/retired from performing artists and to the heirs of those passed away.
Spotify have teamed up with Vodafone (in various countries) to offer free premium subscriptions with certain phone plans.
Win/win as it promotes more data usage.
I'm in the middle of a free 6 months and it's not too bad, I don't think it is worth the $A144 per year it costs in Australia, I'll probably go back to the free version then delete it if it's no good.
AC/DC is one of the bands that doesn't exist in Spotify, although I already have all their music in iTunes anyway.
Comments
Or the U.K.
You don't need to subscribe to Spotlight.
It's provided free by Apple as part of Yosemite.
It's skewed to whatever you want it to be
I didn't know how much I hated Pandoras algorithm based service until I tried Spotify. Ditto Beats.
What I love about Spotify is it is not algorithm based. I play what I want when I want. I can listen to what friends are listening to or check out suggested lists or artists if I am in the mood, but I like being in control. Music is too personal to hand it off to any algorithm. I find them infinitely frustrating.
I didn't know how much I hated Pandoras algorithm based service until I tried Spotify. Ditto Beats.
You realize Beats allows you to play what you want too, right?
I can't understand why, since Spotify pays the label some crazily tiny amount of cash for each song played.
Yes you can. You click the star which gives you the option of choosing to "Play more like this" or "Never play this song again"
oh gosh so I've been reading AI for almost ten years now and never made an account, I LOVE this site and I love everyone's comments I recognize so many of you lol
ANYWAY
Spotify is amazing. I've been a paid subscriber with Spotify for almost two years now and there's nothing even remotely competitive to it, IMO.
Apple can do what they want with Beats, it obvious that they bought Beats because they were one of three companies who had rights to stream music, but unless they rebrand Beats I don't see it ever going anywhere.
Spotify is going to be impossible to beat, the streaming music train left almost four years ago now. It's a big industry with lots of growth, but the only way Apple could really take it would be drastic measures(like giving a Beats subscription to every iPhone/Mac user)
You thought Apple was going to include headphones that typically retail for $149 or higher as a freebie with their flagship phone?
Yes, I think Apple should include Beats headphones in its flagship phones. HTC has done, I don't see why?
Tells me you didn't do a good job responding to your preferred music. And it's not like it's supposed to magically guess everything from a few introductory questions. You're supposed to continue liking things you find, so it keeps building a database.
Honestly, this reads like someone who really didn't want to change, they just subbed briefly so they could post anecdotes like this and claim they'd tried other things.
Quote:
You realize Beats allows you to play what you want too, right?
You realize you are insufferably condescending right?
Hopefully when/if Apple takes full control of Beats design they'll get rid of these embarrassments:
I thought that was Iovine's job?
I thought that was Iovine's job?
He is an employee of Apple. Hopefully he's working on things behind the scenes because as it is now, Beats subscriber numbers are pathetic. I think they need a longer trial and a free plan like Spotify has.
He is an employee of Apple. Hopefully he's working on things behind the scenes because as it is now, Beats subscriber numbers are pathetic. I think they need a longer trial and a free plan like Spotify has.
And they eventually may have those things. The Spotify free plan is terrible anyway.
And they eventually may have those things. The Spotify free plan is terrible anyway.
The desktop/tablet free account is not that bad. Only thing you don't get is offline listening and uninterrupted listening.
Love spotify, great for consumers and anyone who loves music, but can see how it's not the best scenario for artists.
I'll have to agree. Although all of the figures aren't fully disclosed, it does appear that a typical artist earns around $1 for a retail CD sale and earns around $.00043 per track played on Spotify. Source: http://mashable.com/2010/04/15/music-artists-earn-online-infographic/
The only service I've even considered subscribing to is Beats Music, and not because Apple owns it. It was genuinely a good product.
Ultimately, I prefer to own the music, but BM is top notch.
I agree. Although I prefer to own my music, I did give Beats and Spotify a try. I overwhelmingly preferred Beats. I think Apple needs to push Beats more.
I'm pretty pleased with iTunes Radio - even though I'm not quite sure how it works, i.e., is it two things - Apple stations and the ones you make - or more?. Are their "stations" human curated? Are the ones I "create" and "tune" purely algorithmic? (Note: the slider that allows you to choose the degree of straying my chosen artist/album/song on my stations is way cool.) Also, they do play a fair amount of the actual artists I use to create them and also surface new groups and tunes that seem to fit in fairly well with the mood/style I'm into at the time and also act as a decent means of discovery.
In any event, they certainly don't seem to pushing iTR (or Beats) in any place I get to.
PS: What's Apple getting out of the deal with iTR if I don't buy music? There's so much unique and new music to sample (and I've loaded up my library in terms of my faves from yesteryear with 100GB from my CD-buying days) that I haven't purchased more than 5-6 songs in the last few years.
I was going to say, well, it keeps me in the Mac fold, but I imagine iTunes Radio works on iTunes for Windows, yes/no? There are the ads, but they're really infrequent and short enough to not be a huge bother (nor because of that likely a huge revenue generator).
Alternatively, YouTube's new autoplay seems to also serve those same features for me, plus I get "pitchurs," and sometimes moving ones, not to mention alternate takes, live versions and other oddities.... ....although it starts to drift far from the original theme after awhile... ...and the ad-age you experience depends on what genres, release dates and artists you're listening to. I run towards the less trod spaces so I sometimes go hours without a YT ad....
....plus while downloading some promo stuff on Google Play, I took a flyer and uploaded a big slug of library there and like the "instant mixes" it creates from my own stuff, which I've found more specific to my interests at a given moment than Genius mixes in iTunes. Especially when I start off with an off the wall genre and get a somewhat crazy quilt mix of all my stuff.
I was all about Spotify when I first discovered it.... ...enjoying drilling down to nearly cut I was looking for and liked getting the recc's of playlists created by my friends.... ...and the ability to intermingle my own iTunes library and playlist... ...but not that compelling (for me) in the long run, so haven't started it in over 6 months - which I'm guessing is the case for many of those free accounts they claim. Anyway, or reasons I don't get, not part of my music listening these days - and Pandora fell by the wayside for me years ago. Felt like work and too much music I found not interesting in the least.
There are also sites like TuneIn.com for both terrestrial and a lot of pod-casted and web stations (I guess the much more advertised I(heart)Radio is similar?) - cool for various reasons, e.g., I've lived in (and still relate to) multiple states, so fun to "tune in" to various local news and even local ads for nabes left behind). And new services like the NBA's free "All Access audio" that lets you listen to every NBA game (choosing which team's audio feed you want during the game and pairing with their TV companion website which gives you minute by minute stats, a written play by play crawl, game summaries, video clips, etc.)....
...plus an infinitude of ways to access NPR, various BBC and other feeds, live and/or archived...
....AND iTunes still has all those world-wide radio streams which are not part of iTunes radio.
So many ways to get free and/or low cost music (and infinite non-music content), so little time to fully wring the diff's between 'em out. More first world conundrums.
And I guess the artist royalties suck in nearly all of the above.... ...really putting the screws to non-touring/retired from performing artists and to the heirs of those passed away.
Spotify have teamed up with Vodafone (in various countries) to offer free premium subscriptions with certain phone plans.
Win/win as it promotes more data usage.
I'm in the middle of a free 6 months and it's not too bad, I don't think it is worth the $A144 per year it costs in Australia, I'll probably go back to the free version then delete it if it's no good.
AC/DC is one of the bands that doesn't exist in Spotify, although I already have all their music in iTunes anyway.