July 5 2015: The New Release Day When Everything Changed | Popjustice

Peter Robinson, on the sudden impact of Apple Music streaming on his 'buying' habits:

So why buy anything?

Buying a single now means one of three things, none of which have an immediate impact on our own listening.

A) You want to help the song climb the charts. The Official Charts (and now, it seems, the iTunes chart) are still heavily weighted in favour of purchased songs. The Official Charts count one ‘sale’ for every 100 streams. (To be fair this has long been true of teenagers who wouldn’t dream of actually spending money on music for any other reason – throwing some cash at a download means the same as spending money voting in a TV singing contest.)

B) You want an artist – or a label, or a songwriter, or a producer – to have some money. In this case, buying a song is similar to making a donation. Almost a donation to charity, really.

C) You don’t really trust music streaming – what if a song suddenly disappears one day during some sort of royalties dispute?

I encourage you to read the whole thing, particularly the closing lines.

Pretty much sums up what I've been thinking this week as I experimented with Apple Music.

My views on streaming have changed dramatically over the years (there's some posts on here going years back where I bleat on about fidelity and ownership).

I've been using Rdio of late and Spotify before that. However, these services were always complementary to my music in iTunes, where all my purchases, CD rips and bootlegs belonged. Apple Music changes all that.

Tidal's launch and Jessie J's biscuits. A post about taking the piss. - Popjustice

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Peter Robinson for Popjustice:

One of Tidal’s aims is to give more money to songwriters and producers, which is great because they’re the ones who can’t do a deal with Tuc biscuits. But you do wonder where last night’s a-listers think the a-listers of 2025 will come from if record labels somehow fall out of the equation, because acts who break without big label support are still few and far between.

It’s very nice for Madonna owns some of Tidal, but where’s the next Madonna coming from?

Entitlement Culture

Charlie Brooker, in today's Guardian:

Look at the App Store. Read the reviews of novelty games costing 59p. Lots of slaggings – which is fair enough when you're actively warning other users not to bother shelling out for something substandard. But they often don't stop there. In some cases, people insist the developers should be jailed for fraud, just because there weren't enough levels for their liking. I once read an absolutely scathing one-star review in which the author bitterly complained that a game had only kept them entertained for four hours.

FOUR HOURS? FOR 59P? AND YOU'RE ANGRY ENOUGH TO WRITE AN ESSAY ABOUT IT? ON YOUR EXPENSIVE IPHONE? HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?

It's an excellent article on the internet's entitlement culture, which also mentions the general attitude towards Spotify, a service which as far as I'm concerned doesn't cost enough. Or at least doesn't reward artists enough.

A couple of years ago I whinged about it for 'ownership' reasons. I've changed my mind completely on that bit, ever since I stopped using it exclusively on a computer and hooked it up to my Sonos S5 and my phone.

It's the biggest life changing revolution in how I listen to music. even more than the advent of iTunes. Last week I read about the new Blondie album, and I was then listening to it within seconds, including all the awful reggae tracks. Same with the 2009 Julian Casablancas record, described by someone as their favourite album of the century. I launched the Sonos iOS app and listened (and sadly failed) to hear what the fuss was about. It was better than The Strokes stuff, but then again to me so is Black Lace.

Having so much music available instantly is great for discovery and nostalgia.

Last night I listened to Addams Groove by MC Hammer. Now that is timeless.

Spotify - like DRM never went away

Why am I so energised by the culture of ownership, DRM, and interoperability?  Heaven only knows but every press release or feature I read about Spotify sparks something in my head.

I have issues with the service - a whole raft of them.  Had Spotify launched 10 years ago I suspect my views would be wholly different.  it would have been  the official, legal, alternative to Napster and the music industry's antidote to file sharing. But now, a decade on from Napster in the age of broadband I'm suspicious of motives. 

It doesn't help when Spotify come out with comments like:

"We want to hand out consumer data we have to give to labels so they can target consumers better and communicate better."

 Their privacy policy appears fine until you get to 7:

"Spotify reserves the right to make changes to this Privacy Policy. If we make any material changes to this policy we will notify you by posting the new version of the policy on the Spotify Website. It is your own responsibility to check the website for such postings from time to time."

I've never liked how they barely mention that it is (partly) supported by p2p - the default is to take up to 10% of your hard drive space (with encrypted / obscured data you can't access). A service that uses your storage and bandwidth should be very explicit about this.

Almost everything the music industry has done since Napster has been 1 step forward and 2 steps back.  They gave us legal downloads but wrapped them in DRM, which meant us consumers never actually 'owned' the music, just a licence to play them.  The brief dalliance with copy protection on compact discs just hammered home the point - we weren't to be trusted.  We would copy and share our music willy if not nilly, all of us, unless we were prevented.  

The downloads we were allowed were initially crappy quality 128 kbps in either DRM wrapped AAC or WMA and we could only play them on specific, licenced devices.

The faith between consumer and industry broke then and I suspect that whatever happens now this cannot be mended, Spotify or no Spotify.

The industry can't adapt now and it is dying.  Too late.  A generation now expects content for free,  That seems to include music.  That's the fault of the music industry as much as individual greed and that other Swedish based service.

I'm a music fan.  I want to reward the artists and the producers financially, not the industry or the labels.   I want to do it fairly but on my terms as part of an appreciative audience not as a consumer.  

The income distribution model for Spotify is (almost certainly - I don't know the breakdown) weighted in similar if not worse distribution of profit to previous industry models, not that there is any sign that Spotify is profitable or will be in the immediate future. 

So when Spotify announce improvements to the service, like this weeks 'offline' mode (for paid subscribers only) I'm still not interested.

I want to own my music.  I don't want a subscription (unless real ownership is an element) - and many don't, even the Pirate Bay generation.  A survey of 14-24 years olds in August 2009 conducted by the University of Hertfordshire revealed:

• 78% do not want to pay for a streaming service. (the vast majority of Spotify users are on the free, ad supported model)
• 87% say the ability to copy tracks across devices is important
• 89% still want to 'own' music. 

Offline support in Spotify doesn't address this, at least for me.  At least it highlights the local cacheing which has always been there.  They've just tweaked the program to allow us to access it.  With limitations of course.  

Charles Arthur in the Guardian has rightly addressed this DRM issue.  As he points out, it may not be DRM as we technically know it, but in effect it is the same.  I accept that a service allowing 3,333 'downloads' on a £10/month subscription is unworkable if you could terminate your subs after a month and have a plethora of music on your computer, but this just highlights the problem of a subscription.  You can't access the offline files without the Spotify client (and presumably even offline mode wouldn't work after a while without being able to check online that your subscription is active).

So, we're still in a subscription model with no ownership element (an element which is  crippled by onerous music industry conditions if eMusic's decline is anything to go by).

I've made the point before that a subscription service is a temporary one.  It's ok for tv and movies if you have no intention (or desire) for repeat viewing but for music my library is too important to me.  It is backed up locally and offsite.  I don't want to lose it. 

In a subscription service I don't have that assurance.  If Spotify closes down, so does my access to 'their' music.  If they change their terms of service (or the price is hiked beyond reason) I'm stranded.  If I decided to go with Spotify for 2 or 3 years my subscription costs would be a significant investment in something that could disappear at any time.

The free streaming element of Spotify is interesting as a different way of accessing music but not compelling for the same reasons and even this is not sustainable.  The (allegedly temporary) suspension of new free accounts on Spotify in the UK to an invite only model is perhaps an early indication that this is not intended to be a freemium service in the long term.  The Register has had a long look at the business model which backs this up.

So what do I want? Lower prices of downloads - of the online stores 7Digital appear to have the most competitive deals with many new albums at £5 each at a reasonable (if not ideal) 320kbps MP3  - but I want similar pricing across ALL music.  Options for interoperable lossless formats.  Assurance that a significant portion of my money is going to the artists and producers.   If there has to be a subscription element to it then some ownership is required.  It is a two way street after all.