Tag: Digital Music
In-Depth Review: Nokia's Comes With Music service
With the news that the Nokia X6 music orientated phone has hit the 3 network, we thought we'd give the X6's Comes With Music service an in depth look. With the iTunes store now reaching the 10 billion download mark,…
HP and Omnifone announce Spotify rival for £8.99 a month
At the Midem conference in Cannes Omnifone and HP announced a partnership to bring digital music to PCs in ten European countries. Preloaded on HP's Pavilion, Presario and Envy PCs, MusicStation will provide access to approximately 6.5 million tracks from…
Volume cap headed to iPod and MP3 players
A new EU restriction may see the volume levels across all iPods and MP3 players capped. EU officials believe that as many as 10 million EU residents risk permanent damage to their hearing from listening to music played too loudly…
Five good reasons why Microsoft will obliterate Spotify
When word came out on Monday that Microsoft will launch a music streaming service by the end of the month, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek must have slumped in his chair with his head in his hands. Spotify was never going to be the only kid on the block – Ek would’ve known that – but for their first direct competitor to be the ‘Soft is pretty bad luck. There’s a lot that Spotify has done right but these are five good reasons why the global immovable object will be too much for music’s current irresistible force:
1) Microsoft will have better content
We’ve all had quite a while to play with Spotify now and I’ll challenge anyone not to have had several disapointments at the depth of their music catalogue. They’ve done a decent job but it just doesn’t compare to any other good music service. Have a quick browse around on iTunes, Last.fm and even Nokia Comes With Music and you’ll realise what a real music library is all about.
It’s all about deals with the record labels and the fact is that Microsoft has a hell of a lot more clout than a Johnny-come-lately start up from Sweden. No offence Mr Ek. You have a fan in me but there’s just no comparison.
Gates, Ballmer & Sons will bowl into all the offices of all the music people and walk out with as many tracks as they like and, at the end of the day, why would you bother with both music services as a consumer when one of them has all the tracks you want and the other doesn’t?
What’s more, there’s a very good chance that they’ll add video too. Now, that might be a paid for service, much in the same way that you can rent TV and films through BT Vision or the Apple Store, but it might also be free, provided the rest of the model proves financially successful.
2) Microsoft will make the model work
There’s quite a few murmurings that Spotify isn’t getting all that many people to sign up to the premium paid for service and I’m not hearing and seeing many different adverts on the player an in the music stream either. It all rather points towards the fact that the business model has yet to become fully viable. Now, I’m sure there’s a long term plan that we’re only seeing the tip of at the moment but those ad spaces now filled with voicemail messages from users aren’t wildly encouraging.
The trouble is that Spotify may never get to the point where there business model starts to reap the dividends with Microsoft wading in as soon as they have. If you’re an advertiser, where are you going to spend your money? Their profile is just too big and Spotify’s only hope here is that Microsoft will be too greedy with their ad price. Still, I can see agencies stumping up the extra cash just to make sure they’re getting the right exposure.
3) Microsoft is already in everyone’s home…
…and Spotify isn’t. This isn’t so much a size issue as one of distribution and exposure. Hang on, that’s basically the definition of size.
Any road, the point is that 90% of the world’s computers are still Windows machines. You and I may have heard of Spotify but you can bet we’re in some tiny percentage that has. Most people are going to hear about Microsoft’s music service first through a million different channels and that’s the one they’ll use because they trust it and it’s like it’s already there. It’s the AOL effect.
Not a lot Spotify can do about that one.
4) Microsoft has Xbox and Zune
Supporting hardware is going to be a big factor here. Spotify has launched an API – limited though it might be – but Microsoft don’t have to wait for people to come and develop apps for them. They’ve already got their own mobile OS. They can slap it straight on the front page of each phone that carries it. They can do the same to every desktop copy of Windows too.
Better still, they’ve got a home music player and mobile one of their very own. They’ve already said that they’re going to get the Xbox involved and they’d be crazy not to get the Zune in on the action too. Not only would it make their music service an obvious universal solution choice ahead of Spotify but it would also start to turn the Xbox into not just a games player but a proper home media centre. £100 says the next iteration is all about integration and HD video streaming.
5) Microsoft will have fewer teething problems
There’s still issues with using Spotify as Duncan pointed out a while back and they’re not the kinds of things that Microsoft is going to get wrong. They won’t have difficulty taking payments, they’re bound to have the kind of code in place to allow the integration of your own music library and anything else that they’ve got a problem with they’ll get sorted quickly. They’ll just throw a team of developers at it. Their platform will be a well oiled machine long before Spotify’s is and that could cost Sweden’s second favourite export.
The flip side to all this is that where Microsoft might be quick to develop they’re going to be slower to implement. When you’re going for total music domination, you’ve all those different platforms and devices to consider. Spotify does’t have that problem. It’s smaller and more agile. It’s not a lot to work with but I know enough about guerilla warfare to know that you’ve got to fight with your strengths and attack your enemy’s weaknesses. For example, if Spotify is thinking of getting into video, it might be a good idea to do it now, quickly. Moving into mobile phones yesterday would also be a big help. It’s time to get prolific.
Conclusions
I’m not a fan of any big corporation, so I’d be sorry to see Microsoft squash the competition, particularly when it’s one we’ve come to know and love. It’s the reach of the multi-national leviathan that’ll do for little old Spotify but there is a hope, and quite a good one, that Microsoft will cock it up. They’ve made plenty of mistakes in the past.
Make users pay for the service, add in too many limiting stipulations, throttle the idea in any way and no one’s going to want to bother with what they’ve got, no matter how big their library.
I’m looking forward to seeing which way they take it come the end of the month. If they’re sensible, this could be the change Microsoft has been looking for – a move away from piratable software and into money making services. If it works well enough, maybe even Windows will be free in the future? Nah.
Microsoft to launch free music streaming service in July
Yesterday was a big day for Microsoft. Office 2010 went into trials, they announced a suite of free cloud based applications to rival Google Docs, Zoho et al and the sneaky one that no one was expecting was the launch of a music streaming service to take on Spotify too. I’m surprised they didn’t launch their own social networks to go after Twitter and Facebook.
It’s not clear, as yet, as to how large the catalogue will be or quite how many ads, if any at all, we’ll have to put up with. What has been indicated in an interview with the Telegraph is that you’ll also be able to pay to download the tracks, much like 7Digital do for Spotify, and that the service will link in with the Xbox 360.
They’ll be more details within days, no doubt, as the service is set to launch by the end of the month. Now, why do I have a nagging feeling that Microsoft are going to throttle the whole operation somehow and actually make it rubbish?
Orange Music Store goes DRM-free with 79p music buffet
DRM-free is becoming all the rage, as well it should, and today Orange is the latest portal provider to jump on the digital music band wagon. So far they’ve persuaded EMI, Universal and ” a number of independent labels” to offer up their tracks and doubtless the other two majors will follow at some point.
For now, there’s 700,000 tracks to chose from which you can download over the air or to your PC and do with as you will. You’ll only pay the once and prices start at an iTunes sounding 79p.
You can start your downloading from today and it’ll be interesting to see how this sits alongside services which Orange supports like the DRM-heavy Nokia Comes With Music. Still, always nice to have more options.
Orange (via @recombu)
Spotify to offer more paid for services
Spotify have responded to the news of Virgin Media’s team up with Universal Music by announcing that they are planning a whole bunch of new features to add value to its premium service.
Currently users who pay £9.99 a month (or 99p a day) can have ad-free access to the three million tracks that are available in the UK. The premium side of Spotify will be expanded to include:
- Mobile access, as revealed by this very blog last month
- Recommendations and ticketing
- Bundled downloads
- A social networking aspect to the service
- Better quality audio streams than the current 160kb/s ogg vorbis q5 codec
Spotify’s UK MD Paul Brown said: “The idea is to have a service with more features and functionality that will draw people in.”
It isn’t clear yet whether there will be additional subscription packages or whether the new features will be included within the current £9.99 fee. Either way, along with the Virgin/Universal announcement, it’s an exciting time for digital music.
(via NMA)
People's Music Store adds content from Universal
Make-your-own-download-store service People’s Music Store announced yesterday that it’s managed to convince Universal to part with the licenses necessary to allow people to sell its music for them. It expands the catalogue to include artists such as Amy Winehouse, Girls Aloud, U2, Kanye West, James Morrison.
You would have though major labels would be gagging for other people to start selling their MP3s for them, but it appears not to be the case. Only Universal have so far signed a deal with the revolutionary People’s Music Store service, and that’s led to a slow takeup from users – only 1,000 people have so far created stores, which allow people to keep 10% of the profits earnt.
For digital music services to survive, they really need to concentrate wholly on getting the catalogue present – something that Spotify has excelled with. If People’s Music Store can sign up the other majors quickly, then it has a chance to do well, otherwise it’s likely headed for the internet graveyard – and that won’t be its fault, it’ll be the fault of the major labels.
Top five dream digital music partnerships
This morning, Spotify and 7digital announced a ‘strategic partnership’ that’ll let Spotify users click straight through to buying MP3s on 7digital. Although I’ve awarded both of them an official Tech Digest badge of awesomeness in the past, the tie-up isn’t much more than the sum of its parts. Let’s have a look at five other dream partnerships that could really rock the world of digital music.
Pink Floyd and Guitar Hero
Once, not long ago, that would have read “The Beatles”, but the Fab Four’s estates have now given the thumbs up to Beatles Rock Band, so the net has to be cast a little wider. There are still a few digital standouts – most notably Pink Floyd but also Led Zeppelin – that haven’t worked very much with the Guitar Hero or Rock Band developers.
Other holdouts – Metallica, Tool and AC/DC have reneged on their digital hesitancy to get more heftily involved with the series. Tool provided artwork and several songs to Guitar Hero: World Tour, and Metallica are producing their own version of the game.
Top of my list, though, is Pink Floyd. As a massive fan of The Division Bell, I can’t think of anything more awesome than twiddling my way through “Coming Back to Life”. Blasting through ‘Money’ on bass in 7/4 time.
Major labels and Bittorrent
This might be a bit of a contentious one, and it’s probably the least likely of the lot, but it’s also the one that could prove the most fruitful. The major labels have the content cracked – the one thing people don’t say about them is that they have bad taste in bands – and Bittorrent is one of the most efficient distribution systems that there is.
If a major label set up a subscription-based Bittorrent tracker, where for £5 or a month or equivalent people were free to download and share playlists of as much as they like of that label’s content, then there’d be umpteen different benefits for the label.
Firstly, people in the community would emerge as tastemakers, who’d be great for the label working out which acts can sink or swim. Secondly, they’d not have to worry about distribution at all – the more popular an act, the faster everyone’s downloads would be. Lastly, they could easily track the relative popularity of different bands and allocate the revenues accordingly.
Audiosurf and Mobile Phones
Last year, I met with a senior staff member at Namco Mobile over my allegations that ‘mobile games are almost always awful’ – a view that I generally still hold. We had a good chat, and respectfully differed on a few things. But then I told him that he should convert Audiosurf to mobile.
He looked confused – ‘what’s Audiosurf?’. I explained that it’s a game where you load in whatever MP3s you like, and then it generates a track for you based on that song, where fast bits slope downhill, slow bits slope uphill and obstructions appear in time with the beat. You then race along the course, picking up blocks and lining them up in a grid.
It’s basically a bit like iTunes playing Tetris at WipEout. It’s absolutely perfect for mobile – short games, low graphics requirements, and global high scores uploaded via internet connections. Plus that compulsive ‘must beat the high score’ factor that’s seen me listen to far more Girls Aloud songs than anyone ever should.
If you want to see what I’m on about, then the game costs just £6, and there’s a free demo available too. Go check it out, and then think of how cool that’d be to play on the bus.
Ninjam and Freesound
Thanks to @filiphnizdo for the tip on this one, because I wasn’t aware of the awesome-looking Ninjam until this afternoon. It’s crazy collaboration software that lets musicians jam with each other.
Think that’ll result in a latency mess? You’d be right, except that it delays the playback of your tracks to other musicians until the end of a bar. You’re playing along, therefore, with what the other musicians were playing during the last bar. As a result, it doesn’t work so well for pop music, but works brilliantly for more ‘jam’-y genres like jazz and post-rock.
Freesound, on the other hand, is a database of samples with creative commons licenses that anyone can use. A tie-up between the two, therefore, would be fantastic for the creation of sample-laden, gently evolving tracks – a bit like Lemon Jelly or Boards of Canada. It’s got to be moddable into the software, right?
Spotify and Last.fm
But I’ve saved my absolute favourite for last. A tie-up between Spotify and Last.fm, with the former supplying music and the latter supplying the social network and recommendations functionality, would be the best thing since sliced bread.
Spotify knows this, and founder Daniel Ek has publicly stated that he’d love to license Last.fm’s recommendations engine. Last.fm’s weakness is that it doesn’t do much in the way of full-track on-demand streaming. Spotify’s is that it doesn’t do radio very well. Surely, a match made in heaven.
Will we ever see it? Despite Spotify’s advances, Last.fm has been a little tight-lipped on the subject. Part of that is that it’s got its own problems to deal with at the moment. Part of that might also be that it thinks it can replicate Spotify’s functionality itself without their help. Whether that’s true or not, Spotify has the buzz right now – and Last.fm doesn’t. You can’t disregard that factor.
Your turn
What would be your dream matchup? Drop us an email – [email protected] – and tell us, and we’ll showcase the best of your suggestions in a future post.
Last.FM subscription service put on hold – radio still free for now
Last.FM has decided to postpone the obligatory subscription to receive their radio streaming service outside of the UK, US and Germany for now.
According to the company blog, they’re going to add some more features to make the package more palatable including the inclusion of third party APIs, which means that although the service will be limited, radio streaming will continue to mobile phones even outside of the UK, US and Germany.
Payment plans and methods have obviously been an issue as Last.Fm is introducing gift subscriptions and SMS services to make it easier for you to cough up the three euros. So, a reprieve it is but for how long, another question.
(via Last HQ)
