iTunes Radio Is Now "Apple Music" (and You Need a Subscription)

New submitter Kevin by the Beach writes: If you haven't noticed... If you try to play iTunes radio on your devices it is now paywalled (you can get a free three month trial at apple.com/music). The only reason I noticed is that I have an Apple TV which at one time had an iTunes Radio App. That app is no longer. Same is true if you select Music on your iOS devices, if you get to the iTunes Radio menu, you are redirected to sign up for the free trial. This reminds me of why I am forever reluctant to trade the music I have locally (on CDs, hard drives, and a few bits of vinyl I've been unwilling to jettison) for any kind of streaming service, whether it promises perpetuity or good-until-next-payment.

Comments

Re:Physical media is king

[BitZtream]

Absolutely. Yes, it can be a pain to store physical media. Yes, it can be a pain when media formats change over time. Yes, it can be a pain when one makes the wrong choice when new competing formats come out and the one chosen ends up being the loser.

Or you could rip it to a lossless format and then none of that matters and you can put it on any physical media you want without degradation of the original. This is what normal people do to turn that physical media into digital media, maybe you've heard of it?

On the other hand all of the media that I own, across vinyl, cassette tape, compact disc, VHS, Laserdisc, DVD, and Blu-Ray can be played at any time and so long as my machines continue to work, will always be playable, and given that I still find good used machines for all of these formats I don't expect to be in the situation of not being able to find a functional player in my lifetime.

Actually, no, they won't. They already are probably not playing the same as when you bought them. Yes, even your blu-ray and DVDs probably already have bitrot that you just haven't noticed.

All of those things degrade over time. Your VHS and Cassettes were shit long ago. DVD and Blu-Ray will have a few more years before the bitrot starts to make them have errors, and your vinyl is absolutely fucked if you leave it in a car with the windows rolled up on pretty much any sunny day anywhere on the planet, including inside the antarctic and arctic circles!

Every copy of them you make is different than the original, and degraded along the way. Let me guess, you think that makes them sound better because you're an audiophile? And you know how its supposed to sound with your Monster brand HDMI cable thanks to its superior signal quality for those digital bits.

Both you and the person you're responding to are making silly arguments that aren't even actually true justifying the fact that you're holding onto degraded and living in a fantasy world where that doesn't happen because ... well. cause you said so?

Your post points out all these 'benefits' to your physical media ... and every single one of them is exactly the opposite of reality.

Do you even own a cassette or mp3?