
Why Spotify Will Kill iTunes - jjhageman
http://www.businessweek.com/management/why-spotify-will-kill-itunes-07222011.html
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kylec
I think his argument is pretty weak. Sure, for tech-savvy people that buy a
lot of music, going with the flat pricing of Spotify makes sense, as does the
convenience of not having to manage and sync your music files between devices.

However, a very large number of people spend less than $10/month on music, or
don't have the desire to completely switch over to a new music service.
There's also the hesitation to spend the effort switching to the new service
that will disappear once you stop paying them whatever they demand. Netflix
has recently demonstrated that the pricing for media streaming has the ability
to change rapidly and sharply, leaving you no recourse other than to either
pay or lose access to the music and your playlists.

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tzs
No Beatles.

No Bob Dylan.

No Pink Floyd.

I'm certainly enjoying Spotify, but it has some big gaps that need to be
closed.

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pinko
Wow, really? MOG has Dylan and Floyd (but obviously no Beatles). I assumed
their catalogs (and anyone's other than Apple's) would be pretty similar.

What explains the very different licensing these different streaming music
apps are able to get? Is it just their negotiating (in)ability?

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gallerytungsten
The article seemed a bit tedious and overwrought. All that aside, for me it
raised the question, "how do the musicians get paid?"

As a musician, this is a matter of great interest. The answer: "Spotify shares
it 50/50" according to the first article I found that answered the question.

Last time I checked, Apple was paying 70%; however, if you're not on a major
label, you'll likely get to iTunes through a third party such as CDbaby; they
pay 91% of that 70%. Even so, 63.7% is better than 50%.

Addendum: as the article I mentioned describes, it may actually be worse than
that, because payments aren't on a track basis, but rather more like the
airplay payments that BMI and ASCAP pay (in which you only get paid if you
have lot of spins).

[http://gramtone.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/spotify-a-loss-
for-...](http://gramtone.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/spotify-a-loss-for-
musicians/)

~~~
lurch_mojoff
How much do musicians get paid for Spotify streaming? Well, this much:
[http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-
music...](http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-
artists-earn-online/)

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shoota
If that is the case why hasn't rhapsody which has been around for a long
period of time already killed iTunes?

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bentruyman
Sort of off-topic, but does anyone know why the hype around Spotify is so
great?

A few years ago, I started using Napster's streaming service. Then moved to
Rhapsody for a slightly better interface/collection and mobile offline
caching. Then to MOG, and eventually Rdio.

Now Spotify comes out, and while I also moved to it, about 30 of my
coworkers/friends are now on it using it as their first streaming service.

Maybe the invite-only access and alleged legal troubles helped in their favor?
I don't get it.

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programminggeek
Spotify has slowly been building buzz in Europe for a long time and they also
did a huge PR push all at once.

Also, they are artificially limiting supply of invites to make more people
sign up for the paid service. Scarcity creates value. People want what they
can't have.

The other thing is unlike Mog or Rdio, since Spotify came to the US after
years of development, it already has loads of polish and solid mobile apps.
AKA, their v1 product is actually more of a v2 or v3, so when people use it,
it feels more impressive.

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wccrawford
Hogwash. iTunes isn't just a place to listen to music. It's a place to buy it,
retrieve it, find it, and more. It has better selection and is backed by a
bigger company, with more weight to throw around when record companies try to
get pushy.

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roc
iTunes is used, overwhelmingly, to deliver music _to mobile devices_. And
streaming is facing a number of serious barriers for that kind of mobile use:
battery drain, network coverage, bandwidth caps and the high price of data
plans (with sufficient caps).

So, almost regardless of individual quality, streaming services are not
replacing iTunes any time soon. Almost certainly not in the US and likely not
anywhere else.

They definitely have a market, particularly in competing with terrestrial and
satellite radio. But streaming is simply not a good fit to do what iTunes is
used to do.

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Hyena
Spotify lets you download songs into iPods and phones for offline streaming.
This is an obsolete complaint.

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lurch_mojoff
"Offline streaming", right. You can synch only music you have bought from
Spotify. It does not work with the "all you can eat" subscription. So it is
very much not an obsolete complaint.

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Hyena
"Offline streaming" is kind of a kludge term. To me, if I don't own the songs
and they're not immediately accessible to my other software, "syncing" seems
slightly inaccurate connotatively. So I went with "offline streaming" because
it seems to connote what is going on: localizing my stream, very local.

I haven't had a problem with the Premium service, so I'm not sure which one
you're describing as AYCE.

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joejohnson
I don't know if I believe that Spotify will really be able to kill iTunes, but
perhaps it will force iTunes to lower their prices or to offer streaming
subscriptions?

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aberkowitz
Apple can enter the streaming music market whenever they want to; that's why
they bought Lala.

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programminggeek
iTunes isn't going anywhere because it's tied to iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, iPad,
Mac and it's where you buy Music, Videos, Books, Apps, Audiobooks, Podcasts,
and um....yeah.

Also, I love music and Spotify is pretty great, but so was Mog, Pandora,
Napster, Zune, and many other music services, but none of them have dented
iTunes, if anything quite the opposite.

Spotify is great relatively cheap way to sample lots of music you may or may
not like, but if I want to keep a song or album, I'm going to buy it on iTunes
or Amazon MP3 so I have a backup copy of that music "forever".

Spotify is likely a bigger competitor to Pandora and traditional radio than it
is to buying music in general. People like owning things more than they like
renting things.

Hoarding is human nature.

~~~
Hyena
That's probably why Spotify looks almost precisely like iTunes and syncs to
un-networked mobile devices.

