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why doesn't any music service come up with a less expensive price plan? I would like to try one, but am pretty sure I would not use it so much as to justify pay

why doesn't any music service come up with a less expensive price plan? I would like to try one, but am pretty sure I would not use it so much as to justify paying 10$ (or £) per month. How about a less expensive plan with limited features (e.g. only n hours of music per month)?

toxican 11y ago
Spotify, Pandora, etc. all have free versions. If you listen so little that you can't justify $10/mo, why not use those? There are ads, but still.
kevando 11y ago
$10/month is extremely affordable if you enjoy music.
JoshGlazebrook 11y ago
I honestly don't see how the $10 price point can be considered anything but affordable. When individual songs are over $1 each on iTunes and other digital music stores, and one album bought digitally or physically is more than a single month of renting 30+ million songs for a month, the thought of considering $10 to be expensive seems crazy to me. I still have my student discount with Spotify so I only pay $5+tax, but even when I lose the discount, $10 is not expensive to me. Especially for what I get.
lotso 11y ago
Rdio tried this. >That $3.99 will buy you only so much. Rdio says the service, called Rdio Select, will include two components: 1) Pandora-like streaming radio stations, without ads, and with the ability to skip ahead as often as you want, and 2) daily access to 25 songs of your choosing. Subscribers will be able to download the 25 songs and replace some or all (or none) of them each day, so long as the number doesn’t exceed 25. http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/rdio-to-launch-cheaper-streaming-service http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/rdio-to-launch-cheaper-...
sjburt 11y ago
The real reason is the deals they have with the record labels. There's only 4 record labels, plus a block of indies that make a 5th, and they don't have any interest in picking a winner between the services, so everyone basically pays the same price. The actual deals are quite complex, but under the pricing model that is most advantageous to the streaming service it basically comes down to the labels get about $6.50 a month per subscriber, and then a cut above that. So that's a hard floor, and with the cut and other costs it's hard to make a business on anything less than $10/month. And obviously you can't go above $10. This is also why everyone charges more for Apple customers, if they gave 30% to Apple, there would be no revenue at all.

toxican 11y ago

Spotify, Pandora, etc. all have free versions. If you listen so little that you can't justify $10/mo, why not use those? There are ads, but still.

kevando 11y ago

$10/month is extremely affordable if you enjoy music.

JoshGlazebrook 11y ago

I honestly don't see how the $10 price point can be considered anything but affordable. When individual songs are over $1 each on iTunes and other digital music stores, and one album bought digitally or physically is more than a single month of renting 30+ million songs for a month, the thought of considering $10 to be expensive seems crazy to me. I still have my student discount with Spotify so I only pay $5+tax, but even when I lose the discount, $10 is not expensive to me. Especially for what I get.

lotso 11y ago

Rdio tried this. >That $3.99 will buy you only so much. Rdio says the service, called Rdio Select, will include two components: 1) Pandora-like streaming radio stations, without ads, and with the ability to skip ahead as often as you want, and 2) daily access to 25 songs of your choosing. Subscribers will be able to download the 25 songs and replace some or all (or none) of them each day, so long as the number doesn’t exceed 25. http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/rdio-to-launch-cheaper-streaming-service http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/rdio-to-launch-cheaper-...

sjburt 11y ago

The real reason is the deals they have with the record labels. There's only 4 record labels, plus a block of indies that make a 5th, and they don't have any interest in picking a winner between the services, so everyone basically pays the same price. The actual deals are quite complex, but under the pricing model that is most advantageous to the streaming service it basically comes down to the labels get about $6.50 a month per subscriber, and then a cut above that. So that's a hard floor, and with the cut and other costs it's hard to make a business on anything less than $10/month. And obviously you can't go above $10. This is also why everyone charges more for Apple customers, if they gave 30% to Apple, there would be no revenue at all.