I don't quite grok music streaming services. Sure, I understand that I get all the music IN THE WORLD!!!111 while I'm current, which is impressive, but that only works if I accept that I'd get tired of $7-10 of music each month or am happy paying $7-10 a month for life. (Amazon's service runs $7 a month if you have Prime.) Fair enough; there are many albums I'd listen to but regret buying, but would I get $7-10 a month of ever proverbial "joy" from that music?

If your daily playlist churns less and you tend to buy for the long term, wouldn't it be better to own an album a month?

I've made this argument on this site before.

But there are really two issues, aren't there?

1. How to most affordably pay for a license to your music, subscription or "own", and...
2. How to access it when you want to listen.

Spotify has apps for every platform. Apple Music famously even has an Android app. My mp3 files have... well, no great options for my phone or work computers.

How do I get ubiquitous access to music files that I own?

I used to use Amazon Music, which gives Prime users like me access to Amazon Prime Music streaming (the "free" subscription) and all the mp3 tracks you've purchased from Amazon, which lets you get around your favorites that aren't in the Prime Music library by... buying them. Seems fair, but you see the issues -- One, I have to buy all my music from Amazon going forward. Two, I can no longer add my own music files I had pre-Amazon. (I actually have 100 grandfathered tracks from when Amazon let you upload music, but that only goes so far.)

I've also tried Foobar 2000 on iOS (direct app store link), which, wacky dated UI aside, works well, but requires that you have your files on the phone, iPod-style, which Apple makes prohibitively expensive. Thanks, Mr. Cook. Can I have an SD slot, please?

Now, after a few failed experiments, I use Astiga, essentially a web-based third-party interface to music files you have in cloud storage. It's a competent app. It supports playlists, and gives you the normal Albums, Artists, Genres, and Songs lists. And it doesn't downsample afaict.

There are some foibles. My least favorite is that it sometimes splits albums into two for... I don't know. Small changes in id3 information? Different file types? (I have some AAC and mp3 mixes, I'm afraid.) But ultimately quote competent.

For sources, it supports, at a minimum...

• pCloud
• Backblaze
• Dropbox
• FTP
• Google Drive
• OneDrive
• Amazon S3
• SFTP
• WebDAV

I've considered keeping a box running at home and SFTPing into it, but decided against. Instead, I've opened a pCloud account and gotten a little less than 10 gigs for free, I believe. With the exception that this isn't nearly enough space, it's worked great. I've added a throw-away OneDrive account too to get twice the songs, but OneDrive often requires a new login to keep Astiga's access current. pCloud has not. pCloud wins by about a mile.

There's even an official Astiga Android app. There are also serviceable, though not great, pCloud apps for iOS and Android. Right now, I use CloudBeats on my phone. YMMV.

Admittedly, I do use a throw-away email address and there's ­nothing­ on my pCloud other than music. I trust most online services and these apps about as far as I can throw them. I really wish I could give read-only access to specific folders in OneDrive, but for some reason what's there now doesn't quite suit.

So Astiga and pCloud wins -- except for the lack of space. I listen to significantly more than 20 gigs of music regularly.

pCloud has a paid tier of 500 gigs for $175 lifetime or 2 TB for $350, on sale for Black Friday for $122.50 and $245. On its face, this seems ludicrous. $123 to host files I own? Super. $123 is a lot of music (the "opportunity cost" in this equation), maybe 10-12 albums on Amazon (my cloud "alternative"), but it's also a great price for 500 gigs of online storage with plenty of throughput.

I think I'm finally going to bite on the 500 gig plan. Again, I don't think I'd put anything particularly sensitive on pCloud, but I would load it up with music. It looks like I have just under 100 gigs of tracks on my "real" OneDrive account now, so that's lots of room to grow. And it would mean I could stop ripping at 256 and go full FLAC if I wanted, for instance.

Looks like I'm back in the "Rip. Mix. Burn. Cloudify. Stream." crowd.

Labels: amazon music, Apple Music, cloud, music, pCloud, spotify

Ah, what to do about music. I like music. I've joked that different companies I've worked for owe The Black Crowes or The Sounds or Metric or Halestorm -- or, in extreme periods of lethargy, Rob Zombie -- for 30% of my productivity while I worked there. I listen to music while working more often than not, and there's no perceivable detraction from my ability to be "in the zone". Music has been only a positive wrt productivity.

In other words, I consume music. Lots of music. Often lots of the same music. I have a "morning" playlist that I play through at least partially a quarter to a third of my working days.

Is a subscription right for me?

The Selfish Caveat

So look, there are lots of reasons not to carry a subscription. One is that the people who make the music don't seem to get as much of the dough from streaming as an outright purchase. That's bad.

You might also like supporting your local record store so that these experts can continue giving you good recommendations. Or maybe you just like 'em as people. Or maybe you really enjoy perusing physical artifacts. It's a particularly relaxing experience for some. Buying music allows your local store and employees to keep some cash too.

But I'm going to be really selfish below, ignoring these "altruistic" sorts of bonuses, for now.

Argument for buying your music

The argument against subscription is my "morning playlist" argument. If the music you listen to doesn't churn a ton, why not buy?

If you're spending less than or equal to a monthly subscription price on new music, it's a no-brainer.

If you buy your music, you're buying an asset... of sorts. Maybe you can't technically share it with anyone, but you have a never-ending license to listen to your music, and if you ever did stop your monthly buying, you still have your entire collection of favorite tunes.

Having a perpetual license for music without any ongoing fee is very good!

Argument for renting/subscribing

But what if you're buying is equal to or greater than a monthly unlimited music subscription every month? Now we've got an issue. If you're spending that much every month and you're absolutely sure you won't stop buying music for your entire life, well, a subscription makes sense.

There are, of course, risks.

What if your streaming service dies off?

Well, as long as any service is in business, you're fine. As long as both services are unlimited and the catalogs are essentially the same, all you really stand to lose are playlists, etc. That stinks, but you don't lose the music.

I guess at some point music subscriptions could go the way of the 8-track. It's a real possibility. That's a Worst Case for this choice, of course. Consider it.

What if the price goes up?

I don't find this super likely. If the services are $10 a month now and you're spending $15 a month on music, I bet both numbers go up at give or take the same rate. But this could happen. Spotify and Apple and friends could go to $35 a month in a cash-grab after feeling they'd killed off music purchases. It's a risk, though I wonder how likely.

What if I stop listening to new music when I'm old?

That's possible, and, like term life insurance, not whole, you don't get that subscription money back. It's burnt. You're not building an asset. You have to be into the subscription whole hog, for life, or you're potentially losing money.

But the counterargument is that you got to listen to so much more music than you would've if you'd purchased a small subset, your life was better for it. ;^) I mean, you have a copy of REM's Automatic for the People, but when's the last time you listened to it? (It's not that bad. Maybe you should. But you get the point.) If you're not going to listen to your old music and a subscription helps you discover new music with no serious opportunity cost (the opportunity cost being REM mp3s gathering dust bits on your cloud drive somewhere), well, who wins? (The subscriber, that's who. Probably.)

Winner?

Oh, okay. Fine. I still buy music. But I cheat. I have Amazon Prime, and hog the single license to stream from there when I'm working, using it to discover new music. This has also suckered me into buying lots of my digital music from Amazon, as their player mixes purchases in well with their subscription service in the player, meaning I don't have any (many?) files on my work box, but can still access playlists via streaming. And I use Spotify with ads to listen to new music to see if I like a new album before buying if the music isn't on Prime.

But I'm probably getting close to wanting to buy three or four albums a month, and, at some point, maybe it's worth trading one album purchase a month to also have adless streaming. (The ads do kill my productivity a bit. And they're annoying.) Though, currently, knowing I have to stay under $10/month to easily justify purchases is probably putting a ceiling on those purchases... that may or may not total a little above $10 a month. I'm also a sucker for releases on cassette for some reason. Ah Bandcamp. You're killing me.

So trick question, I guess. The answer isn't buy or rent for me, it's buy and rent and listen to ads.

But this Circle K ad during a Green Leaf Rustlers album is making me reconsider.

Labels: Apple Music, hats of money, music, spotify

Spotify’s description:

“Spotify Lite was built from the ground up based on user feedback from around the world, allowing millions more to enjoy the world’s best music experience — especially in areas with limited bandwidth and phone storage,” says Kalle Persson, Senior Product Manager at Spotify. Lite can be downloaded separately, both for Free and Spotify Premium users, and used either alongside or independently from the main Spotify app on all Android phones running version 4.3 or higher.

With Spotify Lite, you can easily control your data and storage. It’s only 10 MB, so it’s quick to install and load while offering the same great listening experience that lets you discover, play, and enjoy millions of songs. Spotify Lite also comes with the ability to set a data limit and get a notification when you reach it. This way, you’ll be able to focus on finding your next favorite song—not worrying about data.

Now that’s a good idea. For the price of an intelligently written, broad-install base app, Spotify gets two things: More ads served and a foothold in developing areas.

Interesting that it’s Android only. About time the non–10%ers got a major app specialized for their OSes too (not kidding, and this isn’t an Android knock – read the blurb above, again: 4.3 isn’t playing around).

Labels: android, spotify

From Grubes

UPDATE: There are exceptions to the $99 developer fee, for nonprofit organizations in five countries:

You can request to have the 99 USD annual membership fee waived if you’re a nonprofit organization, accredited educational institution, or government entity that will distribute only free apps on the App Store and is based in an eligible country. Apple will review your request and contact you to let you know whether your request is approved.

Eligible countries: Brazil, China, Japan, United Kingdom, United States.

It’d be interesting to know how many of these waivers have been granted.

I've done some app work for a non-profit, and it's the only reason I have a dev account. Looks like I need to start the ball rolling on this, though I'm guessing it'll take long enough I'll still shell out $99 later this month for the upcoming year.

Macrumors:

Facebook's executive team, including Mark Zuckerberg, used the data of Facebook users as leverage over partner companies, according to leaked emails, webchats, presentations, spreadsheets, and more obtained by NBC News.

More than 4,000 pages of leaked documents from 2011 to 2015 provide insight into how Facebook was taking advantage of user data while publicly promising to protect user privacy before and after its 2015 move to end broad access to user data.

I'm shocked.

Grubes again

On a recent Monday night, a dozen marketing companies, research firms and other personal data guzzlers got reports from my iPhone. At 11:43 p.m., a company called Amplitude learned my phone number, email and exact location. At 3:58 a.m., another called Appboy got a digital fingerprint of my phone. At 6:25 a.m., a tracker called Demdex received a way to identify my phone and sent back a list of other trackers to pair up with.

And all night long, there was some startling behavior by a household name: Yelp. It was receiving a message that included my IP address — once every five minutes.

This is all going on via Background App Refresh. You can see which apps have this permission on your iOS device in Settings: General: Background App Refresh (it’s the 8th item in General in iOS 12).

Note to self: Turn off Yelp background refresh. Actually, turn it off for everything that doesn't have a clear reason to have it.

Sign-in with Apple sounds wonderful. It’s interesting to compare it to the original goals of Microsoft Passport.

MacRumors

When Apple has to make a difficult decision regarding an app in the App Store, its fate is determined in a meeting of a group called the Executive Review Board or ERB, led by Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller.

...

The Executive Review Board meets once per week and discusses controversial apps or iPhone apps that might be infringing on App Store guidelines, and it has the final word on whether an app can stay on the store or if it's going to be removed.

Nothing really to say here. It’s a bizarre process that you can’t ever get right.

Macrumors again

Apple has filed a response to Spotify's anticompetitive complaint about the App Store in Europe, noting that Spotify pays Apple a 15 percent commission for only about 0.5 percent of its paying subscribers, according to CNET.

That figure equates to around 680,000 users who subscribed to Spotify through its iOS app, via Apple's in-app purchase system, between 2014 and 2016. This is because Apple only collects a 30 percent commission for the first year of a subscription, at which point the fee drops to 15 percent.

Huh? So what’s the percentage for subscribers paying 30%? What percentage of Spotify subscribers are still on recurring iOS subscriptions?

A quick google says the subscription option for premium was taken out no earlier than mid–2016. Why should this number be higher? What was its height?

What absolutely crap numbers from Apple that have very little to do with Spotify’s current position.

Also interesting: The people who posted in that thread that without an in-iOS option, they couldn’t have access. Do parents have an option for “all you can eat in-app payments” or something this kids can access?

Macrumors

While the current Mac Pro has been manufactured in Texas since it was released in 2013, The Wall Street Journal reports that the new Mac Pro unveiled earlier this month will be assembled by Quanta Computer in China.

It’s a shame Apple can’t find a way to eat enough profit to manufacture at least some Mac Pros, an item starting at $7k, in the US.

Labels: apple, apple fail, business, facebook, spotify

From recode.net:

The big labels provide Spotify with the music that makes up 87 percent of the company’s streams. Spotify provides the labels with billions in revenue, which is starting to replace the vanishing money the labels used to make from CD sales and digital downloads.*

But Spotify’s plans for the future do involve changing that relationship in the long run.

The idea, according to people familiar with the company’s plans, isn’t to cut out the big music labels, or compete directly with them by signing acts to recording deals.

Spotify does imagine, however, that over time, a growing tier of music acts, or small independent labels, won’t use the big labels for distribution. Instead they’ll work directly with the streaming service.

(Let's take a second to note that that last sentence really does say, "Compete directly with them by signing acts to recording streaming deals." Though obviously what they're trying to avoid is what recode mentions further down... "If Spotify goes after our big acts, we’ll go nuclear. Good luck running a streaming service without our songs — not just the new ones, but our old catalog, which accounts for the majority of our streams." And there's the anachronism that explains why we have striated music services today.)

I'm waaaay late to the bandcamp party, but I finally mainlined it a bit a few weeks ago. It's not knock-down, drag-out great music, but there's a lot to discover in there. The search interface is exceptionally limiting, for some reason, not allowing complete freedom to pick from what's a pretty nice set of music types, but once you invest some time, you'll pull out a few good bands, seemingly whatever your preference.

And if Spotify could be the music recommendation service I wish Apple Music was, it'd be on to something.

This really is a Reese's Cup commercial. All the parts are out there, and working well. More important than bandcamp is what it represents: indie music has the tools to release high-quality music to the web with hundreds of dollars worth of gear. No longer do they need radio and labels. And there are services that do a good job with music discovery.

Somebody just needs to get that last barrier to entry -- having "all the musics" on the same competent discovery service -- out of the way so that they can move on to Step 3. Profit.

Labels: Apple Music, bandcamp, business, music, spolsky, spotify

I realize I'm old, but I still haven't swapped from buying music to streaming all of it.

Seems like folks like me are being underserved. It's not that we don't like to buy music. In many cases, it's the opposite. I buy more albums & tracks each year than I'd like to count.

Why don't any of these music cloud services provide good, ad-free recommendation services for music buyers, not renters, like me? They're sitting on millions of people's listening habits. Why not convince me to buy more with spot-on suggestions?

For Apple, Spotify paid, and Amazon Unlimited, I've yet to find that I need to pay $10 a month or so to listen to everything. That's about ten new albums a year plus a few guerilla tracks, which seems enough, so far.

These are closed ecosystems. I can't easily get just the recommendations. I hear Spotify has great recommendation playlists, but ads are too annoying to listen to when I use my music (and I do, mostly to give myself a little more energy when coding). I'm not going to pay for recommendations if I don't know they'll be pretty good, and I'm not excited about listening to music with ads. I'd rather buy the good stuff. Nor do I want to pay so much for recommendations that I can't afford to own anything new. I'm not a fan of subscriptions in general... Enjoying music shouldn't be a capital addiction, just an emotional one.

And why don't I trust recommendations? I used & enjoyed Pandora for a while, and it was initially great for giving me suggestions for new music, but once good suggestions ran dry (and they did dry up -- at first the suggestions were great, but then they became repetitive and/or reaches that didn't quite fit), the honeymoon, as they say, was over.

Ads plus the same rotation of songs, plus a few new misses when I sign back in every few months? No thanks. If they were as good as they once were, I'd consider $5 a month for "personalized radio with no ads". But I'm afraid that because they're doing this with "curation" (human and algorithmic) rather than actual listeners' habits, the recommendations simply aren't as good as they should be.

Here's an easy example: For the most part, I like hard rock with female front'men. Why do they give me so many whiny dudes? NO WHINY DUDES, PANDORA, KK? THX. Apparently the music genome has no concept of XX.

Three services I actually use

Amazon Prime hits a sweet spot. In one app, I can listen to all of my own music that I've uploaded, and its catalog is just big enough and its recommendations are just good enough for me to occasionally discover new artists without ads when my ear starts wanting to wander. This is sort of how the radio used to work, but adless.

(It's worth mentioning that I listened to a lot of cassettes when I started driving. I don't like ads. And that means I've known a few albums -- Knowledge is Power, Pump, Aftermath -- really well for decades.)

Occasionally, I hear of something new that's not on Prime or an artist that I've "discovered" on Prime doesn't have their entire discography there, and that's where Spotify's free tier pops in.

Yesterday, I bumped into Samantha Fish on Prime (a follow-on from listening to Halestorm, I think), but the most recent record, Chills and Fever, that was on Prime, wasn't nearly as good as Black Wind Howlin' from a few years back, at least not for a Halestorm fan.

A little sleuthing later determined that she has two albums from last year, and that the Chills & Fever one was a little experimental. Belle of the West is a little more like her earlier stuff.

Spotify lets me take a quick listen with minimal ads to see if this I'm buying a track or two or the whole CD.

And where did I do this research? The last of the three services I use: YouTube. I really thought this one was "just for the kids", but, newsflash, it's MTV. This is not new, no matter what the internets are telling you.

I hate the ads (hello Grammarly and Wix. I code native javascript, dangit, and host my own servers! Stop advertising to me!), but I really enjoy the videos. I realize this dates me again, but I could deal with an adless YouTube streaming related music videos in the background while I worked, but I'd need a third or fourth monitor (depending on the office) to host it. ;^)

And YouTube's related videos list is a pretty good place for discovery too.

What can Apple learn?

As a stockholder, this pains me a little. Probably the coolest picture of Steve Jobs is the one when he's sitting, cross-legged on the floor, at home, with his albums, hifi on the floor behind him, fancy-pants light over his head, drinking tea. Minimalist. Relaxed. Big honkin' speakers. Good sound. Good albums.

^{(image from geeksandbeats.com)}

You know what's most important to folks listening to music? Good music. Knowing which albums to buy. Why do I use Amazon streaming? Because it's all of my music plus more, and that more is curated for me in a way that's not annoying to access.

But, like Jobs, at least in 2007, said, [some] folks prefer to own music.

Why can't folks who are stuck in 2007 get good recommendations from Apple Music? Why can't I play even the stuff I've purchased from Apple on the Android Apple Music app? Why doesn't Apple try to sell and sell me good music? Why does Apple Music feel like a closed system, and the iTunes Music Store feel a little like Tower a month or two before they started discounting for clearance?

Good recommendations are out there. Apple has them. Why can't I hear the recommendations without ads or a monthly access charge?

And if you hooked me on enough recommendations, enough that it'd far exceed my album budget to keep up? I wonder what I might finally do...

That's all.

Aside: Why do gal blues guitarists feel the need to dress so, um, not relaxed? It's not everyone, but let's just say B.B. King didn't wear an analogous wardrobe. It's a little embarrassing when I'm recommendation-rabbit-holing and pop up some of these NSFH[ome] album covers.

The worst part for me is that it's not even clear self-aware [and therefore often self-]exploitation like, say, Maria Brink in In This Moment, which is easier to ignore, because you know she's in on the game: This is not her. This is simply and obviously a brand. (That said, they made their best album before the brand went, well, over the edge with "branding".)

I was going to include some samples, but if I pixelate them at the same time, it kinda kills the point. Maybe folks are more comfortable making images with less on, which is fine, natch, but, eg, Ana Popovic doesn't seem to want to wear anything while she poses for covers. I know, I know, it's anti-feminist and Puritanical to suggest someone should put clothes on, but here's one vote to please wear whatever makes you most comfortable when you jam, and slap that on the cover -- if you want yourself on the cover.

I'm buying the music, not your picture. Like, literally, if streaming has done nothing else, it's given us the ability to hear everything we're considering buying. I'm just buying the music.

Painfully, I've ironically spoken too soon.

Labels: algos, apple, Apple Music, iTunes, music, pandora, spotify

Labels: ads, amazon, business, music, spotify

Labels: hats of money, spotify