Slashdot Mirror
Young Listeners Opt For Streaming Over Owning
An anonymous reader writes "CNN reports that younger listeners are increasingly opting to stream music rather than own it. If their music is constantly available anywhere on any device, then 'what's the difference?,' ponders the article. The distinction between streaming music and owning music is starting to blur. From the article: 'But Van Buskirk also suggests another reason for streaming, not acquiring music. It's liberating. "There is a certain relief with not having to own music. It is a lot of work," he said. ... Porter says the way people own music is transforming. He believes the cloud model is where the state of music is heading, and for many people ownership is not essential. "I think ownership is access, you don't have to have music on your local hard drive to own it," he said.' Will the concept of ownership of music and software fade as cloud based services become the way people expect to access media and software?"
I wouldn't consider myself young anymore and I certainly prefer streaming over owning.
Foot placed squarely in mouth since 1983.
I can stream music on my phone, and I often listen in the car. I don't stream music while driving because it cuts out due to cell hopping and things. I'd have to get satellite radio for a better solution.
It's still much much easier to just use locally stored music - CDs or on my phone SD card or otherwise.
It's extremely easy and available, there are so many ways and places to stream it, so it doesn't surprise me that it's popular...
We seem to be going in circles with music. Own a phonograph, stream from radio, own an 8 track/cassette/CD, stream from TV (MTV or countless other music channels), own mp3's, stream from the Net
Without ownership, you're giving someone else the ability to take away your access. Once that happens a couple times, I think people will start moving back to an ownership model.
I think the cloud is great as long as it works. The problem is these services sometimes go away. I was personally bitten by the Google Video shutdown. They refunded the money I paid at the end, but I lost the shows I bought. Now I don't buy videos unless they're on DVD or Blu-Ray. At least I have the physical media and player in hand.
I guess it all comes down to how often do you want to pay for it? One time up front, or every single time you want to listen to it. For me it's the former. Also, the biggest fallacy in the article is "If their music is constantly available anywhere on any device, then 'what's the difference?" What happens when the service you're streaming from is no longer available or the RIAA revokes the licenses. What happens then? I guess people will just move on to the next hit and not care.
------
"And may your days be long upon the earth."
Two thoughts come to mind here.
1) It's "liberating" in the same sense that being chemically castrated and color-blinded is "liberating" in Lois Lowry's The Giver. You are "liberated" from the onerous chore of responsibility for your own actions.
2) Oh, you know what, even though you've spent $100 bucks on every album by Blah Artist, he's now a bad influence on society. We, the corporations, will benevolently "liberate" you from such unwholesome thoughts. *287 files deleted*
*pianos*
For me, streaming is the opposite of what I want. Between ISPs wanting apply bandwidth caps and additional costs, or being able to play music in my car or wherever I want it, I definitely prefer to own.
Granted, I'm not covered under the definition of "young" here, so it's probably a generational thing.
I still pretty much exclusively get my music on CD, and transfer it to MP3 so I can play it on whatever device I want to.
I'm definitely in the "own not rent" camp.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Doesn't it get absurdly expensive to "own" the music?
Oh wait, you meant own a copy of the music. Or is it own a license (non-transferable) to a single physical copy...well, there's fair use of course.
I am so glad no one has gotten to the point of trying to build business models around breathing.
-- MarkusQ
I use an Rdio subscription for most of my listening. When I really love something (or like something insanely cheap), I'll pick up the MP3s from Amazon.
One of my favorite sayings is, "The more you own, the more you are owned." It's definitely a liberating feeling to not have to own and manage stuff, physical and virtual.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
If that's the case, then why not just go back to listening to broadcast radio? Isn't HD Radio at least as good?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I still collect music files on my hard drive, but I'm much more liberal about deleting things I don't like than I used to be about throwing away a CD; the collection itself largely amounts to a collection of bookmarks, reminding me of stuff I once liked and may again.
If you rely on a streaming service to listen to your favorite music, it will go away. Music changes in popularity, and if your favorite music isn't popular anymore, they'll drop the license. Now you can't listen to your favorite music anymore.
Rely on streaming if you must, but when it bites you don't expect any sympathy.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I stream stuff because I can get something worth streaming nowadays. Pandora has a surprising collection, and sucks far less than the local radio stations do. I've found a surprising amount of relatively obscure ska there.
That being said, I'm never going to delete my local music collection. I'd prefer my Pink Floyd NOT broken up by track or injected with ads.
/notayounglistener
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
Call me cynical, but I'm concerned about loss of control without an actual copy of the music I want. Just like with radio right now, I could listen to [insert popular song of the day] just about any time I want, but come a year or two down the road, and that might not be the case. Add 10 - 20 yrs to that, and the song may be virtually impossible to find. I know that was the case with a number of some of my all-time favorite CDs - it took a lot of work to track them down. I'd rather not "hope" that someone else is making them available down the road - I can make sure I always have them by keeping my own copy.
Is this a video news release from the cell phone providers?
If their music is constantly available anywhere on any device, then 'what's the difference?,' ponders the article.
The difference is my bandwidth to my phones SD flash card is free, but my cell provider wants me to pay $50 per gig.
Hmm so I could rip a DVD that I own to my phone for free, or I could pay $ to download it over wifi, or I could pay $$$ in bandwidth charges to stream.
Also service sucks everywhere I go, so if I actually want to listen, rather than listen to buffering and pauses, then I need to download first.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
"There is a certain relief with not having to own music. It is a lot of work," Really? Oh for crying out loud, here`s a razor blade. You`re obviously not ready for existence. What with walking and breathing and on top of all that having to BUY a song?
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
If you own your own fileserver, like files in particular format and tagged in just the right way, owning is the right option. You're trading the work of doing that yourself for the benefit of having your data the way you like it.
For a lot of people who either aren't capable of managing files or just not interested in doing that work, offloading music to "the cloud" or some streaming service makes sense - trading control for convenience.
I prefer the former option, but can understand the appeal of the latter.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Bandwidth and power used by internet infrastructure is a waste of money and energy compared to playing locally off a low power digital device. Streaming only serves to commodify usage similar to how industries have eked their way into every "payable" crevasse of our existence. Its vampiric how our little time here has been turned into being wage slaves for ideas such as this. Even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat.
When you learn to stop looking at record labels for music, you'll find there is high quality music, often made freely available by the artists. There is still challenge, and there is still quality, but the new challenge is in finding the quality amid the swill.
(This may be a thinly veiled "check out my youtube channel", but it isn't because I'm not one of the artists in question. You really don't want to hear my musical abilities.)
As long as I can remember, most people listened to music on the radio -- people who dominantly listened to purchased music have always been the exception.
Our primary source of music was the radio - it seems to me that was somewhat analogous to streaming. But we still bought our favorite records (look that term up on Wikipedia, young'uns) so we could hear them whenever we wanted.
Thing is, that's pretty much the same behavior I see with my daughter and her friends. They still buy music from artists they really like. I realize that's a small sample set; but the linked article doesn't really offer any evidence to support its main tenet other than interviews (which could easily be affected by selection bias) and the same vague statements about "record labels are in trouble" and "fewer people are purchasing music" we've been hearing for years. It just posits a new reason - the availability of streaming media.
As a matter of fact... a cynic might wonder about a pattern, and think this story could possibly have come from the same sources. Have there been any recent new proposals attempting to force streaming music providers to pay more money to the RIAA?
#DeleteChrome
I keep a few favorites on my phone for when I'm driving and stream when I'm looking for something new to listen to. I have enough 3G dead spots around where I drive it's difficult to stream when I'm in my car. I mainly stream from LastFM and Pandora.
What surprises me is how little I miss my collection from my Ipod. I have 1 or 2 gigabytes of music stored on my phone, nowhere near the collection I kept on my 5th gen Ipod (which I have given to a friend)
One advantage of streaming is no more specter of the RIAA. It's somebody else's server, somebody else's problem.
Agreed. And as wireless providers are already starting to phase out unlimited data plans, the party for streaming is about to end, I do believe.
Like you all aren't using Streamripper... http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/
I once spoke to an elder, with a beard of white and an onion on his belt, who spoke of a certain 'amplitude modulation' by means of which he had 'streamed' music rather than owning it on one of the 78rpm vinyl-platter rotational media of the day....
If you ditch the original packaging, there really isn't much bulk to "content" at all.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
A lot of my friends have gone back to vinyl records for their music.
Admittedly, most of them are collector types to begin with. But I think they also like the whole physical/tactile engagement with the record. Also, I think playing your music from records tends to imply you've gone out and bought a record player, an amplifier, and a decent pair of speakers, rather than just playing it through whatever your PC came with.
I've thought about going that route myself. I find I don't have much connection with the music I listen to anymore. It's very rare that I get really excited about a new release.
Breakfast served all day!
Being young means not having been around a long time, so you necessarily won't have memories of failures. And it's a harder to see risks of failures, when your life isn't full of repeated experiences over the decades, of shit breaking all the time, to your disappointment.
This is a person who hasn't had access problems yet, or who hasn't yet noticed existing access problems (limited music selection, limited client software selection, whatever).
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I think a lot of people try to explain these things too rationally. I could be wrong, but in my mind it all comes down to the idea of "collecting".
See, when people used to collect records and VHS tapes and even DVDs, they didn't just want to listen to the music and watch the movies; they were amassing a collection. However you want to explain the psychology of it, it was pleasing to see your collection on a shelf. It was comforting to know that you were happy with your collection. You could say, "I have every Rolling Stones album ever," or whatever, and it was pleasing beyond the sum of the enjoyment you get from listening to each song individually. You even bought that one album you didn't like very much because otherwise, there was a hole in your collection. You'd think, "I have every Rolling Stones album... except that one. Well, I may as well get that one."
And that was part of where the music industry made its money. There were big hits that made a lot of money, but there were also a bunch of collectors amassing very expensive collections.
And then the whole thing went digital, and the idea of collecting has lost some of its luster. First of all, it's not something you can display on your shelf, so you don't get the satisfaction of having your collection also be a design choice in your house. At most, you might be satisfied when you go to sit through your computer, or as you scroll through your iPhone.
Secondly and perhaps just as importantly, the collection has lost its uniqueness. Sure, you may have every Rolling Stones album ever, but you can just copy it and give it to your friend, and now he has all of their albums too. So there's no status in it, and no accomplishment.
Aside from that, there's nothing personal in it. When you had physical copies, you might look at an old record and remember, "This is the first record I bought for myself when I was 16. I bought it with money from my first job. I listened to this exact physical record over and over until it started to wear out. Now there's a scratch in this one part of the song, and I know exactly when it is from memory, because I know this physical object so well." Now a song is some bits that get transferred from device to device, and are effectively identical to everyone else's collection of bits for that song.
So when you take away the aesthetic appeal of an actual collection, and you take away the uniqueness and the personal nature of it, there's nothing left but the listening. That's all people want: to listen to the music conveniently and cheaply.
While I never succeeded in my efforts to learn to memorize who performed what, I did spend a fair bit of time pondering innovative album designs and illustrations (probably a part of why I'm a graphic designer now).
Sad that the faux newspaper of Jethro Tull's album _Thick as a Brick_ was reduced to type sized for a postage stamp for the CD version (and even worse that it retained the cut in the middle which had made it possible to fit on two sides of an album).
Will there be no nifty designs like Alice Cooper's _From the Inside_ (which integrated the album liner w/ the outer jacket via die-cut doors)?
Who will take up the mantle of Frank Frazetta to produce album covers like Molly Hatchett's first three albums?
Even if things like this move on-line (like the liner notes to Jim Croce's _Photographs & Memories_: http://aln2.albumlinernotes.com/Photographs_and_Memories.html ) it's an extra step, so fewer people will do it.
William
(who is still irritated that he had to import the soundtrack CD for _League of Extraordinary Gentlemen_ since in the U.S. it was an Apple Music Store, online-exclusive)
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
My problem with streaming is that things are always in flux. You never know which labels are participating with X streaming service, and even when they do, the contracts are being changed. If you're counting on your favorite song being available online for streaming in 6 years when you want to reminisce, it's a losing battle.
Looking at my YouTube favorites list, a whole bunch of videos are removed due to vauge "terms of use", "copyright claims", or "user deletions". It makes me wish I had been ripping them.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Now... under 200.
Plus the $360 per year that your cellular Internet access provider charges for a data plan, correct?
Hmm... The Cloud as a jukebox?
In the 70s, I had a tiny, portable, wireless music streaming device.
Just sayin'. It had many pre-categorized music data type channels, or "stations".
In fact, the DVD, the Blue Ray, there wasn't none of that crap back in 1970. We didn't know about a World Wide Web -- was a whole different game being played back when I was a kid.
Wanna get down in a cool way? Picture yourself on a beautiful day -- big bell bottoms and groovy long hair, just walkin in style -- with a CD player? No! You would listen to the music on the AM radio!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Why would I bother to buy a small amount music (particularly on physical CD) when I could pay less (either $0 or $36/year) in exchange for essentially unlimited amounts of music any time I want it?
Because I'd first need a data plan, and that costs a lot more than $36 per year.
I've been streaming music for a long time, since before it was cool. I also don't own any of it. It is very liberating. I have money to spend on other endeavors. I can listen to music in my car, or when I workout. Of course I don't have the freedom to listen to the song I want, but I do get a variety of music. I also get introduced to new songs, from time to time. Sure, they may stop playing a song I like, but since I never paid for it in the first place...
Its called listening to the radio.
If you're finding it difficult you are doing it wrong. Try asking for help from someone more experienced.
... can be saved at the same time. It's only a matter of using the right client software. Everything else, I don't see its significance. If young people think that they don't need to save what they stream, let'em experience streams being pulled or closed. They'll quickly come to their senses. Or what they've been streaming wasn't worth saving in the first place. In which case, nothing of value (to them) was lost. All this is a non-issue, IMHO.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
In *theory* these media are supposed to be copy protected so you can't transfer them from one format to another.
Neither iTunes Store nor Amazon MP3 uses digital restrictions management for "the stuff you own" anymore as long as it's music. iTunes Store still uses DRM for movies and video games, but the article isn't about those.
I have been using Rdio for the last six months or so. For $10 a month, I have all-you-can-eat access to a huge collection of music with an offline feature for mobile devices. I can access the web player from any computer with any OS and modify my collection from all my devices. I also don't have to worry about buying music I find out is crap ex post facto. It also allows me to try out new artists and genres that I might have not even considered if I had to buy an album in order to find out if I like them. I also helps me weed out the crap by looking at what is popular for the kind of music I am looking for.
Could I loose my collection tomorrow? Sure, but considering the price, convenience, and the fact that Rdio has competitors that offer similar services for a similar price, it is not a big deal.
Young listeners also lso have access to silly amounts of bandwidth almost without regard to their location. If there's not a WiFi hotspot, then the kid (or Mom/Dad) are paying for a large bandwidth cap on the smartphone.
They don't bother to learn directions anymore or explore because Google Maps or Yelp tell them exactly where to go. They don't wander what their friends are doing, their friends are desperately advertising their locations and activities on Facebook and "young listeners" hear it.
It's not surprise that Gen Y or Millennials are less likely to have their own copies of music. They understand bandwidth and internet access as ubiquitous. Most of us don't. We grew up with low-speed hardline modems, not always on broadband connections. We see wireless internet access as a luxury. They see it as a given.
Is great, as long as one is in an area that provides sufficient bandwidth. For those of us who tend to travel out beyond the fringes of urban areas, streaming is a non-starter.
I have purchased JimmyH, JanisJ, ZZTop, CCR ... albums from Vinyl to 8Track to Cassette to CD to MP3 to .... I would like stream-devices to have an 8,16, or 24 hour buffer for traveling in areas of poor coverage and/or avoiding roaming charges [I would buy that device, Fyck the RIAA].
Stream@60+, Why? Republicans will cut my SocSec, then will give big tax-cuts that add taxes with increased deduction percentages for health care and everything else. I do not expect to have enough money in retirement too buy a new music media for new audio electronics. Go with the stream (good) Luke, let go of the Media (Bad). Pay for the streams, avoid the corporate enforcer agents and laws of the evil empire.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
After being left disappointed by google music, I found the perfect solution to be streaming music from my own PC via audiogalaxy. it has a nice android app that works much better and allows for favorites and playlists.
Everyone talks about Pandora, but it is Youtube is a major streaming service that you can listen to any music on demand. Why buy the song, when you listen to it for free as many times as you want? It's not perfect, but it is a big factor in young listeners music consuming habits.
It works real well, but my chief complaint is that if your buffer runs out, instead of pausing and refilling, it just aborts and starts the next song.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Streaming works 99.9% of the time but you're totally screwed on that 0.1%.
Not having an internet connection, 3G or otherwise, is still extremely possible even in 2012. It depends where you live, wired vs wireless, etc.
But even if you do have a connection, lag could overcome your streaming buffer and stop your music. Or your monthly data quota could kick in.
So, I mean no disrespect when I say that streaming is for idiots.
Heh. So people are idiots because 0.1% of the time it may not be available? In my local storage days I've had more outages than that just from having a dead iPod battery.
The massive Slashdot Brainstorm on why streaming is bad isn't being terribly fruitful today.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
... to charge people for music based on how much they listen to (e.g. how many minutes they are listening) rather than on the size of the choice available whether actually listening or not.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Over the long haul ownership is the only thing that guarantees you access to the music of your life.
Many of the things that I loved when I was a college student are out of print, or just flat out not available except as rare items.
Streaming? Not available.
People streaming now will eventually own the music that ties into their memories, or lose it.
Then don't listen to that Jihadist music from the terrorists.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
It's like complaining that if he wants to listen to it in his car, he needs to buy a car
That's not a good parallel in my opinion. One way to work around a barrier is to take a step back and describe the goal, not the step. If you take a step back from "listening in the car" to "listening during the commute", that can be accomplished just as easily on a bus unless you're specifically talking about a night or Sunday shift. But I don't see how to take a further step back from "listening to streaming audio during a commute" without eliminating the streaming.
I grew up in the 70's and 80's and most of my friends didn't own much music and neither did I. We listened to whatever was on the radio. I had a cassette ready to tape on my "boom box" if a song I really liked came on and I raced to hit the record button so I could listen to it when I wanted. After a couple weeks, I would tire of the song and re-record over it. I would say that's today's equivalent of streaming.
Most of my friends don't have substantial music collections just like most people in my parent's generation didn't either. Yes, there were a few with a substantial collection (I'm talking dozens if not hundreds of albums), but most just listen to what was on the radio. Today most of my friends listen to the radio, some stream it on their PCs, put on a music channel on tv (either video or simple audio streaming). But they still don't buy music on a regular basis.
As I have gotten older, I've turned into one of those with a substantial music collection. I love finding new and different music from artists who work at their craft. That's the music I want to hear over and over again. It may be folk, rock, jazz, blues, classical, etc., but the common theme is that its "good music". Most popular music is not written nor performed by artists. It's churned out by the recording factory for disposable consumption. Why would you hold on to that?
"I think ownership is access, you don't have to have music on your local hard drive to own it," he said.
Also: I think that Freedom is Slavery.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I much rather not have the cost of my music jump due to bandwidth / service costs. I'm sure the RIAA rather than you get into the idea of renting music but fuck that.
So you've got all your streaming music ready to go. You arrive at the office only to find they don't enjoy your use of streaming bandwidth as much as you do. Your music is blocked and you have no local tunes. You cry and listen to white noise and co-workers loud calls.
-Xen
When you don't have all those files on your HD, you avoid getting caught for copyright infringement in certain scenarios. Where I live, you are much more likely to get caught for posessing infringing files on your PC than for streaming them from somewhere (in fact, I haven't heard about any cases of the latter).
Because 100% of the commercial music available, is brought by only few players; shutting out hunderds of (indie-)artists from entering their elite billboard; essentially ignoring a new breed of artists and killing an entire legacy of precious works. All for commercial gain. Music isn't seen for many as permanent culture anymore, but as temporary trend.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
I can hardly wait, for the moment one of these bigger shops goes overhead.
Thousands of people shouting for sound, but no-one will hear them ...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Music is not worth owning any more, but not because it is necessarily bad. My nieces (14 and 15 years old) are so accustomed to the modern ephemeral character of music that they never follow up with any band/artist. They will stream and listen to some music that they find cool on their phones, but will not bother looking up discographies and will certainly not bother picking up the CD (the what you say?) no matter how great the find the music. And that is because they subconsciously know that in a month's time they will be bombarded by the next great thing. They don't know what ripping a CD means (much less how to do it). I'm not even sure if they have a CD player. They don't care about sound quality. They do not collect music (at their age my collection grew exponentially). Even MP3s and cloud services do not make much sense to them any more. They have MP3-players that are collecting dust, because why bother downloading (even illegally), or going through the hassle of buying the music and storing it online when they can listen to it right away (and only once or twice)? We seem to have something like MTV-on-demand with this model. But this fast consumption also means that no songs (and much less records) will ever get the chance of becoming a classic.
Guess you'll just have to sing for the 1.5 minutes in the day when your music isn't available. Music isn't exactly a life necessity, so being without it won't "totally screw" you.
What happens when your HD/iPod/CD dies and you can't listen? TOTALLY SCREWED!
Why do I prefer downloading? Probably because when I was a kid, there wasn't an internet. Sheesh, the first decade of my life there wasn't even BBS's. So when I'm a teenager, we finally got BBS's, but at 300 baud. You didn't rely on "streaming" anything, you downloaded it, and kept a copy if you wanted it, because it would be a big hassle to download it when you want it. Mainly if the BBS's/Phones are out.
Fast Forward a few years, staying at a buddies place. He keeps his phone numbers on his computer (talking the early 90's here). I tell him that is crazy. He disagrees, until the power goes out and he can NOT call the landlord because that phone number is on his computer. Which oddly enough, doesn't work without power.
Okay, now we are in the land of internet everywhere, devices that can play music (and hold it also), so you alot of people don't grasp the concept of not being connected. But when it happens, I will be listening to my MP3 player that has music I downloaded, and I will be able to watch movies that I have downloaded, because I do NOT stream anything.
Granted, it don't help me if the power is out, but then it don't help them either. Of course my mp3 player might be charged and playing music, oh,darn, can't stream your music? Sucks that that wifi went out.
Anyways, the youth of today think that playing first person shooters with gamepads is the way to go, so obviously you can't trust their judgement.
You stream, i will download.
Be seeing you...
I don't want to pay for cloud storage or the bandwidth to stream (all phone data plans seem to be moving away from unlimited access). I have a passion for music. I own over 1700 albums, I have them all scanned lossless flac format into a music server running Vortexbox which can stream to many devices in my home. I keep a 2TB backup drive that I can plug into my car stereo and my desktop at work. Network outages do not affect my music. I also don't trust the owners of the rights to recordings will not change access cost or availability in the future. What I own physically, I own.
When was the last time you cracked out a tape from your tape collection? You know the one unorganized in a box or bag shoved in a closet or under a bed.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I lost my entire hard copy music collection in a house fire back in 2008. I took the insurance money for all the CDs and kept it. Fortunately, my computer hard drive survived the fire, so I still had the ripped MP3s, but in the four years since, I've only bought a handful of new albums/songs. Nonetheless, I actually listen to a much wider variety of music, and more often now too - all via streaming.
Pandora is easy, free, and available just about anywhere I go. I really can't rationalize paying for what I can get for free.
Necron69
I didn't see mention of this anywhere, but isn't the lower audio quality of streamed music an issue to anyone? Sure, you probably won't notice a difference in a car or lousy speakers, but what about if you have a decent sound system?
When someone says, "Any fool can see
This is EXACTLY what every media company wants. This is EXACTLY what every corporation wants
Take away the media and use the allure of convenience and simplicity to groom everyone that did not grow up with tapes, records and CD's to feel it is normal to Rent, Lease or never own any content that is distributed by media companies. The generations now are being groomed for a toss away, rent, lease away lifestyle. A lifestyle of everything saved in the cloud so they are protected against data loss without any awareness of privacy issues or even further rights over their data. A generation that has no idea that it is not normal to just rent everything and that the money you work for should be used to purchase real tangible items. The generation coming up now has no understanding of differentiation between tangible and non tangible items.
This everything is rented/leased and never owned model is where everything is heading towards eventually because it ensures a perpetual revenue stream for multimillion dollar corporations.
Senior Living Communities - Pack everyone into a center that offers minimal assistance with the illusion of living independent. You end up surrendering your life savings to live in one of these paying 4x what you would for a rather large home and you don't own it. You don't pay and your out. You build no equity and yet pay out $1,200.00 a month or more...most around here are $2,000.00 a month!
Video Games - Ubisoft is already doing this and others will follow suit, you will have one time use DLC codes that basically make the game worthless without one. Thereby the game disc becomes nothing more then a loader and the actual content is all DRM'd downloads.
New and used home sales are in the dumps still due to the economy - rentals are the future its attractive to investors who form LLP or LLC management companies as it is a consistent revenue stream and rent be adjusted based on economy. Banks would be better insured by providing loans to these then hundreds of individual borrowers.
Streaming Music - Pay a subscription
Data Plan - Pay for a subscription and you need it to be in the "in" group and stay in touch on FB, Twitter etc which are all media advertising platforms. No one would have ever accepted paying $100.00 or more per month for cellular service back 10 years ago before all the smart phones. The funny thing is the more connected by phones and "social networks" people become the more disconnected they become from their family and friends in real life.
Pay Per View - Eventually all major sports go to blackouts and you will have to have a subscription or Pay Per View as they make more direct money this way then through advertisers. They then offer special discounts on NFL, NHL, MLB, NBA merchandise for being a subscriber.
Movies won't be on DVD or Blu Ray everything will be streaming media
It will be just like in the movie Vendetta owning anything on physical media will be a crime as all recording devices will be DRM'd with licenses burned into the discs making the useless.
itunes doesnt use its proprietary aac format for tracks anymore?
iTunes Store uses the published but patented MPEG-4 AAC format. Amazon uses the published but patented MP3 format. Very few people demand Ogg formats.
It doesn't obscuificate the names of the tracks on the file level so that they are random alphanumeric characters?
iTunes for Mac OS X and iTunes for Windows do not perform such obfuscation on purchases.
I can take tracks from an ipod and copy them to another device and have them work?
Why would you be taking tracks from an iPod instead of taking tracks from the PC where you bought them?
There are three business models: streaming, rental, and ownership. You are correct that rental works well on mobile devices without cellular data. It's just that the article didn't mention rental or offline or Rhapsody.
my daughter, 12, for years has listened to the songs she likes on youtube, last.fm, pandora, and goodness-knows-where-else. she's lost 2 itunes cards (free money for apple) and overspent her account once, then never touched any of the 4 cards she's gotten since. I'd say that buying music is a foreign concept to her.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
I don't want to own physical media.
I don't want to own digital media that I have to backup and maintain.
Actually, I don't really want to own anything...but that's a bigger philosophy.
WRT music, I just want simple, high quality access with local caching on demand.
I get that with $10/month from Spotify and free from Pandora/Youtube.
I get nearly all the music in the world.
I recently tossed all my CDs after ripping them to my computer. There's no point in storing them anymore.
Movies are next. I haven't bought a physical media movie in several yrs.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
The more you own....the less you own of yourself.
The less I own, the freer I am from responsibilities to the material world.
I can focus on more important things like spending time with my family/friends, bettering myself, etc.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
spotify has local caching. you mark the stuff you like and it stores it locally. no limit on how much you can store locally. no cell service / wifi / broadband required.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Like if you live in an area with no cell coverage and you want to listen to music while mowing the grass...which happened to me yesterday.
Lazy ass people.
It will be funny when you cant get your music anymore since some suit got a wild burr and decided you have to pay more, or just drop off-line and head to an island.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Apparently buying a CD doesn't mean you own it. You have only purchased a license to play it in the format you bought it on. (except if that media is damaged you can't purchase "media only" copies...)
I have the impression that it was a 2-phase progress, as various means of mass production have reached the respective 10% and 90% parts.
Over the past 2-3 decade, media companies are shovelling more and more shit. I can name very few good music dating back in the 80's and 90's although I grew up during this period.
I don't mean that said decade didn't actually produce less works of quality than the past. But since the 80's, media company have ramped up their production capability, have gone through consolidation and vertical integration (media production, radio, and music outlets ending up being owned by the same mega-corp), and have started to use as much marketing as possible to push their latest crap in the hope of artificially creating the big next hit out of their latest auto-tuned phtogenic idiot.
It's not that suddenly there is less good work, it's the fact that the good work is suddenly completely submerged by the rest of the crap. Teh "90%" part has grown bigger (say 99%) and became louder.
Now for the latest decade, new technologies like internet and cheap software tools has enabled gifted and hard-working people to better express themselves and easier to reach an audience while staying outside of the classic channels. Indie, self-publishing, social networks, streaming media...
Now it's the turn of the 10%-turned-1% to grow back (thanks to ease of production) and get louder too (thanks to easier online propagation).
well, of course, you find a lot of crappy video of kittens on youtube too.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
My daughter does this. From my perspective I've spending $60 / yr on Spotify for a teenager for all the music she wants. So I'm happy. Building a music collection costs a lot more.
I also pay for Pandora for myself since it has done a wonderful job of introducing me to new music I like and commercials are just painful. since Amazon's selection is better than Spotify' I still end up buying CDs, of the groups Pandora turns me onto. But I could see switching.
I'm 27, but I'm not sure if I fit into the "young listeners" category of the article. Certainly man here would yell at me to vacate their lawn.
I have a decent CD collection, about 100 albums if you include the few albums I've bought in full off iTunes and other digital sources. When I'm at driving, I will listen to ripped MP3s of those CDs. However, at home and work I listen to Pandora. I listen to Pandora for literally 60-70 hours a week, as I have it on all day at work. The reason I do this instead of listen to my own songs is two-fold:
1) Discovery. About half of my CD collection was purchased after learning about the band through Pandora. By continually listening and tuning my music preferences, I can discover even more (and eventually buy CDs from those bands, as well).
2) "Side" music. That is, music that I like, but not enough to really purchase.
That second reason is the big one--listening to my own music that often would invariably repeat a few songs and make me tired of it. Pandora is less likely to, because it also plays a lot of songs that I like but not enough to want to own. I would have at least twice as many CDs if I bought every CD containing every song I've thumbed-up. For instance, I like a lot of System of a Down songs, but not to the point of ever buying the CD. I get more variety than my own collection offers, with the added bonus of not wearing down the interest in my current collection.
On the other hand, if you rely on the "nomad" approach of moving to new providers after each previous end-of-life of a online service, you'll have the tedious task of again hunting down all your favourite, and hoping the new streaming provider has an agreement with the IP-owner of your favourite music.
Maybe some of the tracks you like won't be available in this successor.
Meanwhile you can format shift your music collection. .WAV then FLACs then whatever the future holds on your server.
- Specially since digital has made a way to make virtually identical copies without risk of degrading quality with each successive generation copy (unlike when trying to copy an 8-track collection to something newer) a file is a file no matter how often you copy it.
- Also lossless formats have made it possible to also avoid degradation due to successive generations of lossy transcoding (unlike minidisc's ATRAC to portable music player's MP3 - even over a digital optical link) - just keep
- Similarly the audio quality has hit a ceiling. Increasing the sample rate from 22Khz to 32Khz to 44.1Khz has show progress in quality. Moving from 16bit stereo 44-48Khz to 24-32bits 98-192Khz is at best well... "contested" (outside the case of studios needing the extra headroom to avoid rounding/clipping and other loss in the intermediate processing steps). And despite numerous advance in channels topology (7.1 and above are easily available at home), most music is still stereo because the returns of putting more channels for your hearing experience is mostly "marginal". (That also explains why DVD-Audio and SACD failed to gain any important support - CDs were good enough). So going for 44-48Khz stereo audio today is going to be good enough for a long time.
- Also the availability of opensource software will help opening format for a rather long time.
- Storage is getting cheap. Technologies to avoid bit-rot (raid-6 and/or checksummed file systems like BTRFS or ZFS, etc.) too. All this is even available on cheap consumer hardware (Macs, cheap home NAS, etc.). Also storage tend to use rather standard multi-platform connections (SATA, USB, Firewire, easier to plug into newer devices than, say C64 floppy disks).
So, in the recent year, owned music is less sensitive to obsolescence.
So if today, in 2012, you store your music collection as a bunch of 48Khz stereo FLAC files on your home server, you're going to be ok for a rather long time.
To become 100% future proof:
Keep in mind to periodically shift to newer data media (replace disks over time, or move to newer forms of storage), once in a while, mass-convert everything to newer formats (once FLAC falls into disuse, switch to the next lossless format. As everything is lossless, no degradation in quality). Drop-in BTRFS snapshots (or automate it with Mac OSX Time capsule if you prefer the idiot proof) for timed backups (the "fuck, I erased something! Quick, roll back to last week's state" situation). Activate RAID-6 and/or checksumming (or RAID-Z if your on ZFS - did finally Apple put support for it in their OS ?) for bitrot resistance or at least periodically update the data media (to avoid the "sorry this piece of data that you haven't read over the past 10 years has silently commited suicide in the meantime. You now wish you had read it before" situation). Eventually add a stacked eCryptFS + DropBox (no idae what's the Apple prefered equivalent. Probably iCloud? And is there anything like an "iEncrypt layer") for offsite duplication (for the "Ow, shit! My house got burned in a fire / destroyed in a flood / smashed by a meteorite" situation).
That might sound complicated on the first read, but if you pay close attention, it all boils down to a few commands in Linux (or a few clicks for the drooling iPlaySkool fans). And doing a bit of maintenance every 2-3 years (or bringing the machine to the next Apple Genius Bar ?). With that, your music (and the rest of your data) is completely future proofed.
What you own today will still be yours tomorrow and in a few decade (albeit not exactly the same form.Maybe moving from FLAC on a cheap home Linux server to the legacy PCM stream transport on the data-cube of your bio-plug-personnal computer in the future).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
...and I say that as an Apple Fanboy.
Seriously, Steve Jobs was wrong (something I don't say lightly) when he said "people don't want to 'rent' their music, they want to own it". Well, close...sorta. People don't necessarily want to own their music, but they are definitely NOT above the concept of paying for access to things. With Spotify, there's no difference between me owning a song versus pulling it down from a server, on a practical level (why do I need the file on my local device?). Yeah, yeah I know, what if Spotify goes out of business...then oh well, I didn't lose something I paid to to own, I simply lost access to which there will be several alternatives for.
Now if you want to own your music, nothing wrong with that, but to assert that NOBODY would go for a monthly service fee for access to iTunes is bull-headed hubris. I've played hundreds of hours of Spotify music for free, which is something I would have gladly paid for before this free and easy alternative came around. Just think of all the years I would have gladly paid for iTunes "rentals" on my music...le sigh.
Herp a durp...Why would I not think a greater than symbol would not show up in my title :-(
So as I was saying: Spotify is greater than iTunes...