All About Streaming Music Services

[CliveHebdenBr]

Re: Apple Music
Correction to my earlier posting: Apple Music does have the Linn label as I've now been able to listen to the excellent Dunedin Consort perform the Mozart Requiem.
Other thoughts:
Up to date Chandos releases appear few if any, but there are older ones.
Most of the June chamber music releases reviewed in Gramophone were on Apple Music, but there were much fewer orchestral releases. That might be just specific to the June edition. I'll see what the July one has.
The absence of ECM and Hyperion is undoubtedly a great pity, but there's much more than I ever would have bought through other means yet would love to have access to, so at the moment I will stay with Apple Music. It'll be ECM's and Hyperion's loss. I will only rarely buy their releases, but it also means sadly not hearing Stephen Hough and missing out on Andras Schiff's recent fortepiano performances of Schubert and the ones due to follow. Call me a cheapskate!

[Wakefield]

Re: Apple Music
Correction to my earlier posting: Apple Music does have the Linn label as I've now been able to listen to the excellent Dunedin Consort perform the Mozart Requiem.
Other thoughts:
Up to date Chandos releases appear few if any, but there are older ones.
Most of the June chamber music releases reviewed in Gramophone were on Apple Music, but there were much fewer orchestral releases. That might be just specific to the June edition. I'll see what the July one has.
The absence of ECM and Hyperion is undoubtedly a great pity, but there's much more than I ever would have bought through other means yet would love to have access to, so at the moment I will stay with Apple Music. It'll be ECM's and Hyperion's loss. I will only rarely buy their releases, but it also means sadly not hearing Stephen Hough and missing out on Andras Schiff's recent fortepiano performances of Schubert and the ones due to follow. Call me a cheapskate!

In addition, if Hyperion and ECM don't want their releases on streaming media is a commercial decision. Other thing is if it will be a successful comercial decision. Just time will say. 

So far, I find the sound quality of Apple Music very good and compared to Spotify, whatever the technical reason.

It has also suggested me some interesting disks to listen; but this is not very mysterious, as Apple knows extensively my library.

[MishaK]

Worth reading: http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/staff-editorials/12136/spotify-royalty-payment-model/

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

I have this one on my list, after plenty of shopping. I think it will pretty well blow an old Classic out of the water. Even plays FLAC! 

I just bought an X1 ($100) with a 64 GB card and am very happy with it. In terms of sound quality, it would nuke the iPod (plays lossless files, better electronics, better output). In terms of UI, I like it better because you don't need any media player to manage it; just copy files from your HD onto the card and keep using any folder system you want! Very straightforward and painless! The build quality is impressive, it is all metal, and it has some very nice external buttons for volume, track advance, pause, etc--mostly lacking on my iPod Touch. Buy a 128 GB card, and it will hold approx 500 CDs worth of lossless music. Buy the X5 (next on my list) and outfit it with two of these cards and you have 1000 CDs worth of lossless music in the palm of your hand.

This is amazing to me, because I remember, even ten years ago traveling with a portable CD player, and trying to decide which 20-30 CDs I was going to take along!

I stopped using iTunes years ago after it did a number of inexplicable and infuriating things to the small collection of MP3s I allowed it to manage (I have vastly larger stash of FLAC files). The idea that you must have a media player to manage a portable device is stupid anyway, and iTunes is particularly pernicious in a number of respects (for one, it locks you into their walled garden). I refuse to download it onto either of our new windows machines (PC or laptop).

My iPod Touch developed a problem years ago with the output, but I still keep it around because I like the alarm clock, timer and such. But when it goes Tango Uniform, I will not replace it with another one, and will be completely Apple-free! 

[Karl Henning]

Well, and Apple is all about managing the little consumers . . . .

[Wakefield]

I stopped using iTunes years ago after it did a number of inexplicable and infuriating things to the small collection of MP3s I allowed it to manage (I have vastly larger stash of FLAC files). The idea that you must have a media player to manage a portable device is stupid anyway, and iTunes is particularly pernicious in a number of respects (for one, it locks you into their walled garden). I refuse to download it onto either of our new windows machines (PC or laptop).

My iPod Touch developed a problem years ago with the output, but I still keep it around because I like the alarm clock, timer and such. But when it goes Tango Uniform, I will not replace it with another one, and will be completely Apple-free! 

I became an Apple consumer over the years. Actually, they have sold me almost any device that they have wanted: iPhone, MacBook, iMac, iPad, iPod Classic and even an Apple Watch. 

But I have accepted the basic premise of this company: they have developed a sort of closed garden, where their different devices and softwares are designed to (mainly) operate with devices and softwares of the same company. So when some of these products also work out, for instance, on Windows, almost always the experience isn't complete. For instance, talking about iTunes, it doesn't support FLAC archives what is a pain in the ass for many people, but I'm perfectly happy with AIFF files developed by Apple.

That said, I think Apple Music is the first attempt authentically "universal" faced for Apple; but it's hard to teach new tricks an old dog. 

[Karl Henning]

[...] But I have accepted the basic premise of [Apple]: they have developed a sort of closed garden, where their different devices and softwares are designed to (mainly) operate with devices and softwares of the same company. So when some of these products also work out, for instance, on Windows, almost always the experience isn't complete.

Now, why am I thinking of Charles Wallace and Meg on Camazotz? . . .

[Wakefield]

Now, why am I thinking of Charles Wallace and Meg on Camazotz? . . .

I will do some research, but your reference simply eludes me by now.   

[Karl Henning]

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle 

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

And the "Beats" headphones by "Dr. Dre" are possibly the shallowest money-grab yet from the company. I knew when I first heard of these that they must be crap--and of course, it's easy to sell crap to sheep if you stamp some BIG CELEBRITY's name on it.

There was an article on Gizmodo or somewhere where they actually disassembled a pair of those $200 headphones, and they found...$15 worth of parts. I find it interesting that the Walkman--in its current guises (MP3 players and High Resolution media player) will likely outlive the iPod. (Just as the LP will likely outlive the CD.)

[Wakefield]

And the "Beats" headphones by "Dr. Dre" are possibly the shallowest money-grab yet from the company. I knew when I first heard of these that they must be crap--and of course, it's easy to sell crap to sheep if you stamp some BIG CELEBRITY's name on it.

I don't think it's so easy. As I said before, I'm an usual consumer of Apple devices, but I have never considered (even remotely) to purchase one of those headphones. I would like to see some statistics, but I would bet that Apple consumers aren't not buying those headphones, even because of design issues. Apparently, the Apple's target weren't exactly those devices when decided to acquire that company...

[Wakefield]

The Beats service bought MOG, a competitor to Spotify, and then was bought itself by Apple.  Apple now uses it for its Radio feature since it had a decent algorithm for detecting your potential likes..

Yes, that was the target.

[Madiel]

From what I understand from reading this article Apple will add DRM to all your music tracks during the importing process to iCloud making it impossible to play them unless you continue buying Apple tunes:

This isn't entirely accurate, and that article is a heck of a lot less precise about it than some others I read last week.

It's been happening to some people, on some tracks, some of the time. It was a bug, most definitely not an intentional feature as you suggested in another post (getting a few other anti-Apple comments from others for good measure). And reportedly a new release from Apple today fixes it.

PS I'm not using Apple Music. The whole streaming idea is something I'm just not very interested in using as my main service. A free service with ads suits my needs (and for what it's worth, I find Rdio way easier to manage than Spotify).

[Karl Henning]

Well, anyone who would deny the benign nature of Apple's tyranny must certainly just be a disaffected individual 

[Wakefield]

... I find Apple Music to be, by far, the best streaming service I've used, with the added benefit now of having access to your entire iTunes library.

+1

Over the years I have paid subscriptions on Naxos Music Library, Deezer, Spotify, Rdio and ClassicsOnLine HD; but Apple Music is setting a new standard.

Things I would like to see improved? I would like an app or feature with the lyrics of the music (as Spotty and other streaming services), and a view of the booklet (ClassicsOnLine and NML have this feature).   

[mc ukrneal]

Well, anyone who would deny the benign nature of Apple's tyranny must certainly just be a disaffected individual 

If Apple is benign, then Microsoft must really care about its customers! 

[Madiel]

with the added benefit now of having access to your entire iTunes library.

See, this is the bit of advertising from all the streaming services I find truly bizarre. I already have access to my entire iTunes library. In a program called iTunes.

Rdio occasionally gives me ads where a slightly excited girl declares how good it is that now she can listen to music offline. I've been listening to music offline for most of my life.

It reminds me of the ads for the Visa Paywave system (where you just tap your credit card against a reader, not sure what the more generic worldwide name for this is). The ads drove me crazy by saying "look how fast this is, if you don't use it you'll hold up the lunchtime queue", because I already had a system that was way faster than a credit card when buying my lunch: it's called cash.

[Madiel]

Yes, I do to - when I am at home.  However, when I am not home I don't unless I take a hard drive with me.  That is inconvenient compared to having all the tracks in iCloud.  And having them dovetailed into the entire Apple Music library, even more convenient.

Well, I do take a hard drive with me. It's called an iPhone... And yes, I can't fit absolutely everything on it, but then I used to only be able to carry around a limited number of CDs before that. I don't need hundreds of albums available each day because I can't listen to hundreds of albums each day.

I just don't get that there's much added value. You can listen to everything they already have without having a copy that's labelled "yours", if it's "yours" in the cloud then you still have to download it in exactly the same way as if it's "theirs", and if you can already put your stuff in iCloud then you don't need their new streaming service to have it there!

[Madiel]

My iTunes library is well over 1T

Yikes.

Well, I don't know how big mine would be if I actually loaded all my CDs onto the computer, and the 300 Tori Amos concerts probably take a lot of room (hmm, apparently 283 Gb) , but...

Oh hang on, iTunes can tell me how much stuff it has... yeah, I've only got 47 Gigabytes in there right now.

I do own a lot more music than that. I guess I just don't feel the need to have access to it all everywhere I go. The only time I'd think I was going to run out of material to listen to is if I travelled, and I actually tend to listen to less music when I travel because I'm doing other things.

[Mandryka]

While I can't give a definite yes to all your questions I can give a qualified one given that I know how the system works.

The Kaiser Baas Soundshift is a wireless receiver that operates via your homes wireless network. If you don't have a wireless network it can also act as a wireless hotspot. It will pick up wireless streams from Apple devices via the already installed AirPlay available on iDevices (iPad, iPhone, etc) and Macs. For PCs and tablets it uses DLNA to connect wirelessly. I've used both so I know  it works. In other words it is controlled by the apps on your device so I think that's a Yes to all four questions (assuming your server runs and is controlled by a PC and/or a software media player)

Via my iPad I've streamed YouTube, Spotify, my music library to my Hifi setup, basically anything that produces sound on my device. The sound quality is very good. I used the work tablet to play my sound library via WMPlayer. I also have JRiver which would also work. I haven't got around to streaming from my PC yet as I don't need to. The range is quoted as 30m.

The Soundshift is a small cube that fits easily into the palm of my hand. It is powered from the wall via a 5v mini USB and connects to my amp via RCA leads. It was given to me as a thank you gift and has to be one of the best gifts I've had. From what I can gather it costs about $US100.

Logitech make a similar device but it uses Bluetooth to connect and sometimes pairing can be an issue with Bluetooth. I imagine that there are other devices as well.

The only issue I had was the initial set up connecting it to my home network. There was one instruction missing in the manual. A quick call to the help desk solved the problem.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for this, which I only just saw.