Posts tagged music

Music is a much smaller and less significant part of many people’s lives than 10-20 years ago. There is more competition for our attention and the value of music has declined precipitously. This graphic shows the rise of digital against physical music, and the overall impact of piracy, widespread distribution and digital media on the music industry. The sad story is that overall the music business is shrinking. That is a fact that we all have to face. The silver lining in all of this may be on the horizon, but it cannot come soon enough for me. We have to do something to reverse the trend.

The Sad Truth about the Music Business – Digital Cowboys

Among the bigger-name streaming services are Spotify, which uses a freemium ad-supported, desktop app-based model; Rdio, which takes a tiered, cloud-based approach; and Pandora, whose personalised streaming radio is also available on a freemium ad-supported model. There’s also Wimp, Rara, Napster, We7, Pure, Last.fm, Senzari, Grooveshark, Sony Music Unlimited, Songza, Mog, Samsung Music Hub, and Microsoft’s Xbox Music, to name a few. In total, more than 500 legal music services are operating across the world, together having registered over 13 million paying subscribers - a figure that jumped more than 65 per cent last year, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s (IFPI) Digital Music Report 2012 ….

The music industry insists on being paid. But by doing so in such clumsy and badly implemented ways, they have destroyed any pleasure from listening to music and alienated countless customers. I tried to buy CDs, but Apple can’t copy them properly onto my PC. My PC can’t stream them reliably through my Squeezebox because of Microsoft and Logitech. No music subscription service I can access on the Squeezebox is any good at all.

Crosby, Stills and Nash have released an iPad app developed by Contendis that allows fans to subscribe to exclusive content, updates and premium fan features. Think online fan club without access to concert tickets. The band is calling it the first subscription-based iPad app for a recording artist to be approved for sale in the Apple App Store. The app is free to download. A subscription costs $3.99 per month or $39.99 per year and can be purchased within the app.