4 ms·

> "That path turns out to be streaming, a neat compromise between letting consumers listen to whatever they want online and collecting just enough money for it

by codexb 2y ago

> "That path turns out to be streaming, a neat compromise between letting consumers listen to whatever they want online and collecting just enough money for it that big record labels are satisfied with their cut." I think it's a bit early to start claiming victory in a paradigm shift to streaming that makes pirating obsolete. The price of video and music streaming has quickly been increasing, and in many cases, we've come full circle to being forced to deal with ads again. It's entirely possible for the music business to price their customers out of the market again to the point that an on-demand pirate streaming service completely overtakes legal streaming. I think we're already approaching that for video streaming.

skydhash 2y ago
I'd love streaming if the client software were actually useful. All of them are disaster in UX if you do more than listening to music in the background. Peak design for me was iTunes 10 and Winamp 2. Which means control/status panel, a queue list and customizable table views for the songs (optional grid view to browse by album). Most streaming clients are click/scroll hell.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  I only see this mentality here. On Spotify, I search for a song I want to hear and I play it. Or I add it to a playlist. What more do you want? For it to sense your mood and queue up what you played last year during Oct-November before 10 am while you were driving? I don't understand how the tech crowd thinks Spotify is so hard to use. My 70 year old parents have no issues navigating it.
  - lucsky 2y ago
    Not "hard" to use, no, nobody's saying that. But painful to use for anything else than scroll/click/play, absolutely yes. Active music discovery is terrible, tracking your "progress" in your weekly releases listening is actively being made impossible (the list is seemingly being re-randomized, at random), the obsessive emphasis on tracks rather than albums or artists is very limiting, UIs are not flexible enough, and I could go on for a while. All streaming clients are currently hot garbage. Again, not hard to use, just extremely user hostile for anything more than click and play.
  - averageRoyalty 2y ago
    I find it frustrating, not difficult. My "offline" songs are sometimes no longer downloaded. Trying to navigate to my saved songs takes me past multiple ads for podcasts I don't care about, and looking up an artist gives me ads for shows they're playing or their new albums. I just want my collection of music and to be able to play it without wading through a sea of garbage.
  - cowboylowrez 2y ago
    Spotify doesn't work on my desktop computer. Linux and firefox. Granted, I'm sure your 70 year old parents aren't running linux lol.
epiccoleman 2y ago
It's not just price and ads either - the user experience on most of the big streaming apps is absolutely dismal. I just recently started using Stremio with a debrid plugin (basically, it's just a nice streaming frontend for watching torrents, without needing to download them to my LAN). It is crazy to see just how good things can be. And Stremio's UX isn't even great, it's just that it's not loading me with ads and bullshit, and the thing I want to watch is just there, and turns on with minimal fuss.
- kelnos 2y ago
  Yep, agreed. I used to think Netflix had great UX (website and Android app), but they've gone downhill so much over the years. Months ago I started seeing recommendations for weird games (some of them seemingly kinda sexual?) showing up in the very top spot of the app. More recently, Netflix has somehow decided that I'm not "home", and I've fallen into their password-sharing trap, even though I'm not sharing the account. I really need to just cancel Netflix; it's just annoying and a waste of time to deal with this crap.
tuetuopay 2y ago
Fortunately the music industry does not seem to go the same way as the video streaming industry: each platform having their exclusives, fragmenting the offer, and making life hard for customers. Music streaming services differentiate through other means. That’s why I’m happily paying for Deezer and not for video services.
hot_gril 2y ago
You could call it a market inefficiency since the media would actually be worth the higher prices to people if they didn't have a way to pirate. So as long as piracy is technically not very hard, it'll always be relevant. Today, you can see this with live sports. Hardest thing to pirate for technical reasons, most expensive thing to legally watch. I get that it costs more to serve, but not that much more.
- codexb 2y ago
  It’s market inefficiency for sure. Besides price, there’s also just a failure to provide a service that people want. This is what happened to games and prime time television. Gamers wanted to be able to download games instead of dealing with physical DRM-riddled fragile media. People wanted to watch TV without ads. Barriers to entry in distribution are very high, and there are lots of exclusivity rights, so it was a virtual monopoly. But monopolies arent stable and the market will still find a way around them, legal or not.
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    Yeah that too, DRM is super onerous.

by codexb 2y ago

skydhash 2y ago

I'd love streaming if the client software were actually useful. All of them are disaster in UX if you do more than listening to music in the background. Peak design for me was iTunes 10 and Winamp 2. Which means control/status panel, a queue list and customizable table views for the songs (optional grid view to browse by album). Most streaming clients are click/scroll hell.

bongodongobob 2y ago
I only see this mentality here. On Spotify, I search for a song I want to hear and I play it. Or I add it to a playlist. What more do you want? For it to sense your mood and queue up what you played last year during Oct-November before 10 am while you were driving? I don't understand how the tech crowd thinks Spotify is so hard to use. My 70 year old parents have no issues navigating it.
- lucsky 2y ago
  Not "hard" to use, no, nobody's saying that. But painful to use for anything else than scroll/click/play, absolutely yes. Active music discovery is terrible, tracking your "progress" in your weekly releases listening is actively being made impossible (the list is seemingly being re-randomized, at random), the obsessive emphasis on tracks rather than albums or artists is very limiting, UIs are not flexible enough, and I could go on for a while. All streaming clients are currently hot garbage. Again, not hard to use, just extremely user hostile for anything more than click and play.
- averageRoyalty 2y ago
  I find it frustrating, not difficult. My "offline" songs are sometimes no longer downloaded. Trying to navigate to my saved songs takes me past multiple ads for podcasts I don't care about, and looking up an artist gives me ads for shows they're playing or their new albums. I just want my collection of music and to be able to play it without wading through a sea of garbage.
- cowboylowrez 2y ago
  Spotify doesn't work on my desktop computer. Linux and firefox. Granted, I'm sure your 70 year old parents aren't running linux lol.

epiccoleman 2y ago

It's not just price and ads either - the user experience on most of the big streaming apps is absolutely dismal. I just recently started using Stremio with a debrid plugin (basically, it's just a nice streaming frontend for watching torrents, without needing to download them to my LAN). It is crazy to see just how good things can be. And Stremio's UX isn't even great, it's just that it's not loading me with ads and bullshit, and the thing I want to watch is just there, and turns on with minimal fuss.

kelnos 2y ago
Yep, agreed. I used to think Netflix had great UX (website and Android app), but they've gone downhill so much over the years. Months ago I started seeing recommendations for weird games (some of them seemingly kinda sexual?) showing up in the very top spot of the app. More recently, Netflix has somehow decided that I'm not "home", and I've fallen into their password-sharing trap, even though I'm not sharing the account. I really need to just cancel Netflix; it's just annoying and a waste of time to deal with this crap.

tuetuopay 2y ago

Fortunately the music industry does not seem to go the same way as the video streaming industry: each platform having their exclusives, fragmenting the offer, and making life hard for customers. Music streaming services differentiate through other means. That’s why I’m happily paying for Deezer and not for video services.

hot_gril 2y ago

You could call it a market inefficiency since the media would actually be worth the higher prices to people if they didn't have a way to pirate. So as long as piracy is technically not very hard, it'll always be relevant. Today, you can see this with live sports. Hardest thing to pirate for technical reasons, most expensive thing to legally watch. I get that it costs more to serve, but not that much more.

codexb 2y ago
It’s market inefficiency for sure. Besides price, there’s also just a failure to provide a service that people want. This is what happened to games and prime time television. Gamers wanted to be able to download games instead of dealing with physical DRM-riddled fragile media. People wanted to watch TV without ads. Barriers to entry in distribution are very high, and there are lots of exclusivity rights, so it was a virtual monopoly. But monopolies arent stable and the market will still find a way around them, legal or not.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  Yeah that too, DRM is super onerous.