

Free ("The iTunes Store is a failure.") - mikecane
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2010/08/07/free/

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kolektiv
_Spotify’s got it right. A perfect interface with free streaming and a paid
for mobile app that allows thousands of tracks to live on your handset as if
you owned them._

Wrong. As if I owned something isn't good enough for many people. It's the
same problem as streaming. If I stop paying you a monthly fee I don't own them
anymore.

Spotify does allow you to buy DRM free downloads. But there's not a huge
difference in price between that and any other service as far as I'm aware.
Spotify hasn't really changed the long term situation. Music is still seen as
more financially valuable by sellers than by buyers. While the difference in
price between legal and free (illegitimately) is still perceived as too high,
"piracy" will continue.

(And yes, the quote marks there are a mark of disdain for that term. If I were
to call parking infringements "illegal land invasions" I'd be a laughing
stock. If you can't make your case with emotive terminology, improve your
case)

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ugh
(Stupid anecdote but since the linked article provided no data, only opinion,
I have no bad feelings about telling it here:) I like iTunes because it lets
me actually own music and build my collection. Sure, I will head over to
YouTube if someone tells me about an awesome song but if that song really is
awesome I will just buy it. Free music I cannot own and which would be
reliably available would be awesome but I still would buy music from iTunes.
It wouldn’t matter.

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Qz
The problem with 'music I own' is that then you have to organize and manage
it. I have many multiple gigabytes of music on my hard drives, but I rarely
bother with that anymore when I can just click open Pandora and it plays music
I like without me having to think about it.

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ugh
I buy about three to five albums per month. Organizing that is no big deal. I
just name it consistently (I have my own capitalization rules ;) after it
finished downloading. That’s what, maybe two minutes per album? Doesn’t seem
like work.

~~~
Qz
My issue isn't with the process of cataloging, but with deciding what music to
play when it comes time to listen to music. Sure you can just pick some random
albums from your collection and throw them on, but if you have a nontrivial
number of albums, or a large collection of individual songs, then you quickly
end up managing multiple playlists, skipping tracks you don't want to hear not
because you don't like them but because you're just not in the mood, etc.

Alternatively, I can just turn on Pandora and it plays music I like. It's
literally a one click solution.

It makes better playlists than I could if I spent 2 hours a day perfecting my
own. It also goes out and finds new music that I haven't even heard yet, but
because Pandora knows more about the music I like than I do, there's a pretty
damn good chance it will be right.

In the time since I've started using Pandora I've discovered more new music
that I like than I ever did when I was buying individual albums or songs off
of iTunes or whatever. Not only that, but I actually buy more CDs because I've
heard all the songs on Pandora and I can buy the CDs with confidence, rather
than wonder whether I'm going to waste another $15 on crappy music. Although,
I was mostly buying CDs to play in my car, but soon I'll be getting a Droid,
and then I can just play Pandora directly in my car so CDs might get
obsoleted.

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jsz0
_"Why on earth should anybody pay for it?"_

Because you don't want to deal with ads. You want to listen to music away from
your computer. You don't want to use up your Internet cap re-streaming the
same content over and over again. Maybe you occasionally have some times in
your life where you don't have Internet access 24x7. Maybe you want higher
quality audio. Maybe you like albums and don't want to live in a single
shuffle world. Maybe you have exotic tastes in music and these services don't
offer you the content you like.

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troygoode
Wait, what? iTunes is a "failure", and YouTube is the "go-to platform" for
"listening to music?" _Citation needed_.

~~~
derefr
If I tell you "play me [X song you've never heard of] within the next five
seconds", what will you open?

~~~
troygoode
Grooveshark.

Also, there is a difference between on-demand playing a song that I have never
heard of within 5 seconds and typical listening patterns (at least for me -
YMMV).

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taylorlb
I'm enjoying the comments about the lack of data in the linked article. As a
tech person who works in the music industry, I've stopped reading most music
business centric news as there always seems to be a lack of data driven
analysis. So much of the music business is driven by a "vibe" or a "feeling"
which can be great for deciding which artists to be in business with, but
pretty terrible for most other important decisions.

Considering how many iPods the iTunes Music Store helped sell, I'm not sure it
can be referred to as a failure. Perhaps it's a failure for the major music
companies in terms of the revenue it drives for THEM (and I assume this is
what Lefsetz is saying), but that wasn't the reason for creating the ITMS any
more than the reason Apple launched the App Store was to drive revenue for App
Developers.

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mjcohen
My current source of choice for finding music I like is Time-Warner cable's
music channels. I usually have something like "Singers and Swing", "Jazz",
"Blues", or "Classical" playing. When I hear something I really like, I look
it up in Google or in Amazon and see where it is and what people think.

I prefer to buy a CD from Amazon and rip it (at 256 kb) unless the MP3 is
significantly cheaper. It then it in iTunes (on my MacBook Pro) and then onto
my iPod Classic (160 GB is nice).

I sometimes but rarely buy from the iTunes store. I do subscribe to more
podcasts than I can keep up with, but WTH.

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mikecane
Is there anyone here who gets Spotify where it's available? I wonder if you
could relate your experience and if it's changed your attitude towards music
and particularly iTunes and downloading music.

I ask because people don't seem to have a problem borrowing books from a
public library but never buying them after reading. So why is music different?

~~~
hackermom
I've been using a normal, free account on Spotify for about a year. The quick
summary:

The upsides: fast, and free - and I don't mind the occasional "radio ad" being
played. The downsides: not everything I like can be found there as the
assortment is heavily geared towards contemporary popular mainstream music,
and there is no guarantee that something you find will stay - it has happened
plenty of times that a single track has been pulled from an album on Spotify,
as well as an entire album being pulled from a represented artist's selection.

I consider the product genial, but as long as the assortment isn't complete
(nor guaranteed), I will keep downloading (as well as buying).

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napierzaza
Since when was pirating music hard at all? With today's bandwidth and
bittorrent you can have an entire popular album in minutes.

