All you can eat music
Chris Keall at NBR reports:
In the US, some of the biggest tech buzz of the year has been generated by Spotify, an online music service that lets you stream an unlimited amount of songs via the internet each month, for a set fee, rather than buy tracks or albums individually on the iTunes model.
Last month, a similar service was launched in Australia, called Bandit.fm.
Now, Bandit.fm is set to migrate across the Tasman with a New Zealand launch set for late November.
The new service will let you stream (that is, play but not save) an unlimited number of songs each month for $9.95, payable in advance by credit card.
That is a great move, and the pricing seems very reasonable.
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Tags: copyright
November 1st, 2009 at 2:22 pm
For some this is the way they live their lives, not owning but renting.
The thought was that the Ipod generation with 120Gb of music carried it all with them.
I suppose that you have the flexibility of choice at the time and the option of the choice being unlimited as your moods or tastes change.
Is this an extension of the cloud but with music?
November 1st, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Seems to me that “all you can eat” streaming is going to eat your data cap very quickly. At least with downloading you’re only doing it once.
November 1st, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Quote “The new service will let you stream (that is, play but not save) ” end quote.
If the sound goes to your computer speakers, there are programs that can intercept and save it to files.
Then again, the DRM in Vista and Windows 7 *may* make this more difficult. In that case, stick with XP.
November 1st, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Gess guys there are radio stations that have been doing just this for years. Plenty of choice and who listen to stuff 24/7.
Just have to put up with the adverts. But not to bad on Coast. Good comedy slots as well.
November 1st, 2009 at 3:50 pm
I just luv being on the Coast!!!!
November 1st, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Spotify is a UK company. The service is neat. It’s mind blowing to be able to search almost any song/album ever made and listen immediately.
In the UK you can listen for free, with an ad every 15 minutes (which you can’t skip – if you turn the volume down on the ad it stops and waits until you turn it back up). Or you can pay for ad-free.
Of course it’s a complete abuse of the internet and some record labels are not present. E.g. there’s no Pink Floyd.
November 1st, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Unless you listen to most things only once, downloading clearly beats streaming in network efficiency — and if you only listen to everything once then they are equal.
I’m not too worried about the effect on my internet bill. Streaming 128 kbps AAC 16 hours a day, every day, would only come to about a third of my current internet use. Significant, but not scary. The bigger issue is that it would be 50% more (every month!) than the size of my entire music collection, built up over more than 30 years. I’ve acquired at least 95% of it from ripping CDs that I own, but even downloading it would be less traffic than just one month of streaming.
The thing that I would absolutely detest about streaming is that there is a very good chance that the company will simply go away and I’ll be left with nothing. That’s already happened with Microsoft’s “PlaysForSure” music, a mere four years after it started.
I also kinda like to listen to my music when I’m somewhere without internet or even cellphone coverage. Such as .. oh I don’t know … on a trans-Pacific flight.
November 2nd, 2009 at 9:38 am
spotify is a scam. just do a google search about their royalty payment rates
November 2nd, 2009 at 10:01 am
The trouble with downloadable music, no matter what form it takes, is that if an alternative exists that is free and easily accessible (albeit illegal) then you no longer have a business model, what you have is a charity. Music is no longer something you can sell, whether the music/recording industry accepts this fact or not.
November 2nd, 2009 at 10:19 am
It doesn’t really appeal to me as a model for listening to music.
I’ve got an 8 G player and after I hit about 500 songs (mostly from the alternative genres) I really didn’t want to add anything else. So now, one or two tracks get added every couple of months- and I’m really only in the 2-3 GB of music.
The other issue is generally when I use the player most often, I don’t really have good access to the internet or cell-phone networks (e.g. flying, China, swamps in the NT).
November 2nd, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Pretty much any song imaginable is already possible to stream fore free off youtube, so this isn’t too interesting to me.