6 ms·

Still waiting for competition to affect prices. Eg I would be happy to pay 5$/month for limited, ad free access to Spotify/ whatever, but 10$ seems excessive. G

Still waiting for competition to affect prices. Eg I would be happy to pay 5$/month for limited, ad free access to Spotify/ whatever, but 10$ seems excessive. Given that we may indeed pay this for the rest of our lifes, it's strange nobody seems to mind the cost.

thirdsun 11y ago
As someone who buys a lot of music, this attitude seems very alien to me - 10 bucks for a very large collection? It's an insane deal - so good that hardly any artist can live off it. Don't get me wrong - I'm not a fan of streaming services and prefer to own my music (a large part of which isn't available for streaming anyway) but for most people this is an incredibly fair deal.
- andybak 11y ago
  $10/month when I already own a lot of music. I wasn't spending that on new music before streaming. I've gone with Google Music for this reason - my personal collection is in the cloud for streaming purposes (saved me the hassle of a home media server) - I occasionally buy new music from various sources and upload it to my account.
  - thirdsun 11y ago
    Ok, got it - I use streaming in addition to buying my music, mostly as a preview hub. Maybe you stopped buying music that frequently at some point, but since I easily buy 10 albums a month the price for streaming and comfortable previewing is a fair share of that budget.
    - JonnieCache 11y ago
      Yeah, spotify is not a great deal if you're just using it instead of your CD collection. OTOH you can listen to hundreds of dollars worth of new music in a day if you want to, with no risk. If you pick something on a whim that turns out not to be good, just move on to the next album or artist. It's like going to a record fair with an unlimited budget, and a truck to carry your finds home in. There is a never-ending supply of crazy stuff on there. If you use it like this, it's incredible.
      - ssharp 11y ago
        I was an on and off subscriber to Rhapsody in the mid/late 2000's but was generally turned off by the idea of not owning my music because getting Rhapsody music onto a portable device meant having to pay more per month as well as using whatever terrible devices supported it at the time. Also, you would not get access to all of Rhapsody on the device, just whatever you chose to sync. So even though I would occasionally use Rhapsody, mostly as a radio/discovery tool, I was still buying music the old-fashioned way, either on iTunes, CDs, or pirating via Oink. Once smart phones came around and data plans approached a level where streaming music wouldn't explode your bill, I think streaming became a no-brainer. It still took me two years of having Spotify before I realized I could throw away all my old CD's that were eating up space, but once I reached that point, the value of streaming, at least to me, was pretty clear. Sure, there are gaps in the music, but I think for most people, those gaps don't exist. And even for the layperson replacing their CD collection, having a Spotify/Apple Music/etc. account means having access to their music on any device, anywhere they go. Duplicating that kind of access with a CD collection is difficult.
        andybak 11y ago
        > and data plans approached a level where streaming music wouldn't explode your bill Don't forget much of the world (I'm in the UK) already has generous enough data plans that many people stream without thinking twice. The US is an outlier in this regard.
- f_allwein 11y ago
  yes, but it depends on your listening habits. I am oddly fine just listening to the music I own, and buying some more every now and then, so I spend significantly less than 10$/m now. Would be interesting to try a streaming service, but it would be a good deal more expensive for me. Anyway, maybe I should try one of the free offers. :-)
  - x0x0 11y ago
    I was like this before spotify, but once you can try lots of new music, I bet you'll find a bunch you like.
- diskcat 11y ago
  >and prefer to own my music unless you wrote it and played it you don't 'own' any music.
charlesdm 11y ago
$10 seems like an amazing deal to me. Heck, I'd easily pay $20.
- AJ007 11y ago
  Consider that the previous music "streaming" technology was radio, which was free, and $10 sounds expensive. Except that $10 a month is now the final product, and basically presents a dead end to the music sales funnel outside of concerts/collectibles. I am still paying for my downloads because I like weird artists and I think it is an important vote that I really like their music and want them to continue producing more. That is a luxury few afford anymore.
jasode 11y ago
>Still waiting for competition to affect prices. Eg I would be happy to pay 5$/month for limited, ad free access to Spotify/ whatever, but 10$ seems excessive. No competitor can offer $5/month unless the service is positioned as a loss leader. The overwhelming costs for streaming music is the licensing and royalties of music content. In other words, if Spotify paid their programmers half the market rate salaries to save overhead costs, they still couldn't sell online music for $5/month. If "loss leader" is a legitimate business strategy, it means only the big companies with offsetting non-music revenue like Amazon/Google/Apple can offer cheap streaming music. Companies with music-only revenue like Spotify/Pandora/Tidal would not be able to compete with that.
- dexterdog 11y ago
  Then there's a problem. There is no reason music should cost more our even close to what video costs.
  - ssharp 11y ago
    Are you comparing the price of Spotify to the price of Netflix? If so, it's not a remotely fair comparison. The percent of mainstream music Spotify doesn't have is miniscule to the amount of mainstream video Netflix lacks. Take Netflix and add in the cost of premium movie channels -- HBO, Starz, Showtime, etc. and you start approaching a modern catalog comparable to Spotify. Your monthly fees are now approaching $100 per month. However, you're still left with three gaps -- old movies, recently released DVDs, and movies in theaters. Considering all this, plus Sean Parker's idea to start renting new releases for 24 hours costs $50 per movie, it's pretty fair to say that Spotify is significantly cheaper than the equivalent in videos.
    - dexterdog 11y ago
      But keep in mind that recent video releases are usually paywalled by movie theaters or pay channels while music is available legitimately on the radio and various online outlets. Also keep in mind that the typical cost of production for an hour of music is significantly less than an hour of video, not to mention the storage and bandwidth differences.

thirdsun 11y ago

As someone who buys a lot of music, this attitude seems very alien to me - 10 bucks for a very large collection? It's an insane deal - so good that hardly any artist can live off it. Don't get me wrong - I'm not a fan of streaming services and prefer to own my music (a large part of which isn't available for streaming anyway) but for most people this is an incredibly fair deal.

andybak 11y ago
$10/month when I already own a lot of music. I wasn't spending that on new music before streaming. I've gone with Google Music for this reason - my personal collection is in the cloud for streaming purposes (saved me the hassle of a home media server) - I occasionally buy new music from various sources and upload it to my account.
- thirdsun 11y ago
  Ok, got it - I use streaming in addition to buying my music, mostly as a preview hub. Maybe you stopped buying music that frequently at some point, but since I easily buy 10 albums a month the price for streaming and comfortable previewing is a fair share of that budget.
  - JonnieCache 11y ago
    Yeah, spotify is not a great deal if you're just using it instead of your CD collection. OTOH you can listen to hundreds of dollars worth of new music in a day if you want to, with no risk. If you pick something on a whim that turns out not to be good, just move on to the next album or artist. It's like going to a record fair with an unlimited budget, and a truck to carry your finds home in. There is a never-ending supply of crazy stuff on there. If you use it like this, it's incredible.
    - ssharp 11y ago
      I was an on and off subscriber to Rhapsody in the mid/late 2000's but was generally turned off by the idea of not owning my music because getting Rhapsody music onto a portable device meant having to pay more per month as well as using whatever terrible devices supported it at the time. Also, you would not get access to all of Rhapsody on the device, just whatever you chose to sync. So even though I would occasionally use Rhapsody, mostly as a radio/discovery tool, I was still buying music the old-fashioned way, either on iTunes, CDs, or pirating via Oink. Once smart phones came around and data plans approached a level where streaming music wouldn't explode your bill, I think streaming became a no-brainer. It still took me two years of having Spotify before I realized I could throw away all my old CD's that were eating up space, but once I reached that point, the value of streaming, at least to me, was pretty clear. Sure, there are gaps in the music, but I think for most people, those gaps don't exist. And even for the layperson replacing their CD collection, having a Spotify/Apple Music/etc. account means having access to their music on any device, anywhere they go. Duplicating that kind of access with a CD collection is difficult.
      - andybak 11y ago
        > and data plans approached a level where streaming music wouldn't explode your bill Don't forget much of the world (I'm in the UK) already has generous enough data plans that many people stream without thinking twice. The US is an outlier in this regard.
f_allwein 11y ago
yes, but it depends on your listening habits. I am oddly fine just listening to the music I own, and buying some more every now and then, so I spend significantly less than 10$/m now. Would be interesting to try a streaming service, but it would be a good deal more expensive for me. Anyway, maybe I should try one of the free offers. :-)
- x0x0 11y ago
  I was like this before spotify, but once you can try lots of new music, I bet you'll find a bunch you like.
diskcat 11y ago
>and prefer to own my music unless you wrote it and played it you don't 'own' any music.

charlesdm 11y ago

$10 seems like an amazing deal to me. Heck, I'd easily pay $20.

AJ007 11y ago
Consider that the previous music "streaming" technology was radio, which was free, and $10 sounds expensive. Except that $10 a month is now the final product, and basically presents a dead end to the music sales funnel outside of concerts/collectibles. I am still paying for my downloads because I like weird artists and I think it is an important vote that I really like their music and want them to continue producing more. That is a luxury few afford anymore.

jasode 11y ago

>Still waiting for competition to affect prices. Eg I would be happy to pay 5$/month for limited, ad free access to Spotify/ whatever, but 10$ seems excessive. No competitor can offer $5/month unless the service is positioned as a loss leader. The overwhelming costs for streaming music is the licensing and royalties of music content. In other words, if Spotify paid their programmers half the market rate salaries to save overhead costs, they still couldn't sell online music for $5/month. If "loss leader" is a legitimate business strategy, it means only the big companies with offsetting non-music revenue like Amazon/Google/Apple can offer cheap streaming music. Companies with music-only revenue like Spotify/Pandora/Tidal would not be able to compete with that.

dexterdog 11y ago
Then there's a problem. There is no reason music should cost more our even close to what video costs.
- ssharp 11y ago
  Are you comparing the price of Spotify to the price of Netflix? If so, it's not a remotely fair comparison. The percent of mainstream music Spotify doesn't have is miniscule to the amount of mainstream video Netflix lacks. Take Netflix and add in the cost of premium movie channels -- HBO, Starz, Showtime, etc. and you start approaching a modern catalog comparable to Spotify. Your monthly fees are now approaching $100 per month. However, you're still left with three gaps -- old movies, recently released DVDs, and movies in theaters. Considering all this, plus Sean Parker's idea to start renting new releases for 24 hours costs $50 per movie, it's pretty fair to say that Spotify is significantly cheaper than the equivalent in videos.
  - dexterdog 11y ago
    But keep in mind that recent video releases are usually paywalled by movie theaters or pay channels while music is available legitimately on the radio and various online outlets. Also keep in mind that the typical cost of production for an hour of music is significantly less than an hour of video, not to mention the storage and bandwidth differences.