New Apple Music Service.....

[Guitarplyrjvb]

Man, $10/mo. for 37 million tracks? This might turn me into a subscriber. I guess I'm concerned about the audio quality. Anyone know what the audio quality of the itunes library is? I've had a hard time distinguishing 320kps vs. .wav and can tell maybe 1/3 of the time. Lesser bit rates are more noticeable.

[ronmac]

Since it's streaming, I would expect painfully low bit rate.

[AZProgger]

The iTunes library is 256K VBR AAC+ format. Even at lower bitrates, AAC+ is light years ahead of MP3.

[Guitarplyrjvb]

^^ thanks! I see that the other major competitors are 320kps. I imagine this will improve over time.

[undergroundrailroad]

I kind of doubt that 100% of the currently available music on iTunes will be available to stream. i.e. Beatles. See

http://9to5mac.com/2015/06/09/apple-...tunes-catalog/
http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/8/874...es-apple-music

If the streaming selection is pretty much the same as Spotify, Rhapsody, etc., Apple's only advantage would be marketing muscle.

[NogbadTheBad]

This hold zero interest for me other than it'll probably kill off iTunes.

[ronmac]

If the streaming selection is pretty much the same as Spotify, Rhapsody, etc., Apple's only advantage would be marketing muscle.

Their strength is their inherent user base.

This hold zero interest for me other than it'll probably kill off iTunes.

I don't see that happening at all.

[Guitarplyrjvb]

The Verge article is interesting. The Wall Street Journal reports Apple's service will deliver 37 million tracks. That's 7 million more than Google Play or Spotify. They're letting you try it for 3 months free, so I'm going to try it! Kevin O'Leary on CNBC this morning said it all "The Music Business sucks!"

[NogbadTheBad]

I don't see that happening at all.

I didn't see thew Classic ipod going away either, Apple are pushing a subscription model rather than a buy & own model.

[Jerjo]

Apple's only advantage would be marketing muscle.

Pretty much what they're counting on. Think of how many people will go for the three month trial, forget about it, and the CC continues to get nicked $10 a month.

I was farting around with my iPad this morning and turned on iTunes radio by mistake. Immediately got a commercial for Progressive Insurance with that insufferable Flo character. Fuck you Apple.

[Guitarplyrjvb]

^^ okay, now you've done it! You can't cross Apple, man!

[Sunhillow]

I kind of doubt that 100% of the currently available music on iTunes will be available to stream. i.e. Beatles. See

http://9to5mac.com/2015/06/09/apple-...tunes-catalog/
http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/8/874...es-apple-music

If the streaming selection is pretty much the same as Spotify, Rhapsody, etc., Apple's only advantage would be marketing muscle.

This. It's funny that many people think all of iTunes will automatically stream at Apple Music. They'd wish. I for one hope they fail miserably, for I think Apple is too big anyway, hinders competition anywhere they can, and would become way to powerful. But personally I would maybe subscribe to that 3-months-free period

[Scott Bails]

Kevin O'Leary on CNBC this morning said it all "The Music Business sucks!"

Kevin O'Leary is an asshole

[JKL2000]

TechCrunch mistakenly stated today that users would be able to stream almost any song ever. Such BS!

[spellbound]

Apple has run out of ideas for electronic devices. Evidence: they just came out with a wrist watch, an idea that dates back to the 16th century. So now they offer a "new" music service. The customer gets cheap tunes. The musicians get assraped. Again, not a new idea.

Not interested in singles, downloaded or otherwise.

[KGHofSF]

Apple can win the war by raising the base royalty rate for streaming a song. They have the $$ built up to offer a significant premium over any of the other services. Once they reel in a critical mass of exclusive deals the war is more or less over except for the anti-trust actions.

just sayin'
regards
KGH

[Guitarplyrjvb]

Kevin O'Leary is an asshole

I take it, then, that you disagree with him and think the music business is a great one to be in these days?

[klothos]

Not interested in singles, downloaded or otherwise.

I know this is weird on PE, but I kinda' like that things have gone full circle and singles are once again a commodity, just like in the 60s/70s where certain acts were signed to "singles" contracts ( such as Bubblegum-era The Sweet)....of course, Im a fan of pop (also weird on PE ) where singles makes more sense and we all know that the idea of the concept album isnt really a huge factor in most pop.

[Scott Bails]

I take it, then, that you disagree with him and think the music business is a great one to be in these days?

I'd disagree with him if he said the sky was blue.

[100423]

http://diymag.com/2015/06/10/apple-m...trial-accounts

[NogbadTheBad]

http://diymag.com/2015/06/10/apple-m...trial-accounts

And this surprises anyone how?

[KGHofSF]

http://diymag.com/2015/06/10/apple-m...trial-accounts

Thanks for the data.
regards
KGH

[Steve F.]

And this surprises anyone how?

Yeah.

Investigating, but it seems that you can't opt out of Apple Music and still be represented to be sold via iTunes.

Which surprises me not, either, but it bums me out big time.

[Adrian]

And this surprises anyone how?

Well, you know, poor old Apple is just barely scraping by these days. They have to cut corners somewhere. $178 billion in the bank doesn't go as far as it used to.

[Frumious B]

According to Apple's page something resembling Match is bundled with the Apple Music subscription. However, Match has a limit of 25,000 tracks while Google just raised their limit to 50,000 (for free) and $24.99 per year (same cost as Match) will get you cloud space on Amazon for 250,000 tracks. I've worked with uploading my library on both Amazon and Google over the last few months and Google works the best (as long as you make sure the tracks you send are all ready mp3 or Google will convert them to mp3 for you and shred your cover art.) Amazon was unusable due to them tagging all the discs for multidisc sets as disc one, trashing album continuity, when my tags read perfectly everywhere else.

Right now I am using Google Play and also paying them the $9.99 a month I was previously spending with Spotify and with Mog (Which became Beats) before that. So I'm paying for streaming all ready and have been for some time. It's just a question of who gets my money every month and whose cloud storage can accommodate my big ass collection of 33,000 plus tracks. Since I am a heavy iPhone, iPad, iPod user and I would prefer to maintain just one library that is well integrated with my hardware that would certainly make me a potential subscriber if the new service doesn't have that 25,000 song limit for your personal library. None of the promotional material I've read mentions a limit so maybe they've done away with it for this new service. If that's the case then I'm probably in.