decodering

king editor the grate said:

As a musician of sorts, it's humbling to discover people from around the world streaming "Golf Balls & Condoms." It's disheartening, however, to discover that enjoying or/and enduring it five times in a row generates a whopping .00001 cent for its creator.

That’s one of the reasons I continue to buy music I really like beyond the monthly subscription I have.

I also look for music I want to buy on Bandcamp, where the artists get a fairer share of revenues, before buying it through other services (I only buy CD-quality or better files)).

To me, it’s worth paying more when it comes
down to that.

Since we don’t know what possible changes are being considered, we can only speculate about them and the reasons why Apple is following them.

But if the changes could have a negative impact on Apple’s ability to attract top-quality people, it’s legitimate for the company to ensure that any changes don’t impair its operational competitiveness.

anantksundaram said:

I’d be curious to know the demographics of the typical AppleMusic user. I have feeling that it probably skews much older compared to Spotify, and not the coveted 15- 34 segment. For example, not one of my son’s or daughter’s friends (late teens to early 20s) — to whom I’ve pointedly asked the question about AM v. Spotify — uses AM.

You might say that’s just two data points, but between the two of them, I’ve asked more than a dozen kids. Maybe my sample is atypical, but I doubt it.

A survey came out a few (several?) months ago, and it turns out that young people are actually more likely to subscribe to Apple Music (which only has paid tiers) than pay for Spotify. And then just in the last few days, another survey pointed to the fact that Millenials are very attached to Apple as a platform. After doing a quick search, I found this survey that backs up both of those claims and shows that young people pay for Apple Music more often than they pay for Spotify.

http://www.fluentco.com/insight/disrupting-music-consumption/

But you could be correct that more young people use Spotify because of the free tier it offers.

This particular breach was the breaking point for me, and I just closed my Yahoo! account after it was reported in the news.

I’d had a Yahoo! address for a loooong time — long enough that I could obtain a fairly obvious email address and not even have to use a number to indicate I was the nth person to use that address ! —, but for the past several years I used it as a dummy account when some site wanted me to sign up for something that I wasn’t particularly keen on asking for. But with the data breach, I thought that Yahoo! was just too risky to use even for unimportant stuff.

I wish I had more confidence in companies other than Apple (and, who knows, the day may come when even that is tested...) when it comes to not using my data as currency to make themselves rich. And that extends to other so-called free services. But as Anantksundaram stated above, our collective laissez faire attitude about security and the collection of personal information has really diminished the greatness of the Internet.

sog35 said:

Still can't believe Apple pulled off the free 4k upgrade for 1080p movies.

Awesome.

Actually, I can’t believe Eddy Cue pulled it off... unless he didn’t.