Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 266 posts

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#101

Post by shavenwarthog2 »

ssivark wrote: post #45
disposition2 wrote: post #31

As someone who switched to Rdio from Spotify because the former has not terrible music discovery, this is unfortunate. Looks like I'll be switching again...it would be nice to find a streaming service that was about music discovery rather than forcing the latest garbage down your throat. Although who knows, maybe Spotify's radio now plays more than 10 songs...

A shout out for 8tracks! I can search among human-curated playlists by themes/tags, and I often discover songs I like. 8tracks does the discovery part wonderfully for me. I mostly care more about the mood of the music rather than the exact songs, and that use-case is also served perfectly.

Very commonly I'll find an artist I like with 8tracks, then switch to Rdio to listen to the rest of their catalog.

RIP Rdio, you were awesome!

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#102

Post by tiglionabbit »

matart wrote: post #41
bsimpson wrote: post #8

I've been told by people in the position to know that the 2010-era streaming services (Rdio, Spotify, Mog) were all effectively the same company: owned mostly by the music studios (in exchange for licenses) with a minority stake for each's particular founders/investors. As Dalton Caldwell cautioned in 2011, licensing costs make music startups are nigh impossible [1]. For people who are willing to pay for a music serv…

I really like spotify because I can use it on my phone, PS3, laptop, etc. My phone can be the remote to my sound system in another room. I also have a small data plan on my phone so I do not stream music. Spotify allows me to download their songs for playing offline. Does Google Music provide these or similar?

And they just added this awesome jogging feature that finds songs that match a specific BPM.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#103

Post by cookiecaper »

autarch wrote: post #58
narrator wrote: post #50

Music is a dying industry because there's too much good free music floating around. Look at labels like http://www.ektoplazm.com/ . The music is 100% free. There's not even a buy button anywhere. Long distance phone calls and music are a glimpse of our future where things are too cheap to meter. The dying industries are trying to find ways to create artificial scarcity to go back to the old way of doing things.

It makes sense that there'd be free options for a genre like trance or other electronica that can be made by one person on a computer. However, if you enjoy music that features live instruments I just don't see how it could be free. There's too many people involved who need to eat.

Whether you want it to be free or not, it's effectively impossible to enforce scarcity over resources that can be trivially digitized. People don't pay for music anymore because it's very easy and low-risk to get it without paying for it, and the internet guarantees it's going to stay that way. Even if you can get everyone to pay for Google Music, that's $10/mo from someone who used to spend $20/CD and potentially bought several of those each month.

The fact is that it's now much harder to collect money for musical recordings. I don't think anything is going to change about that.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#104

Post by criley2 »

rossng wrote: post #84
threeseed wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No uploading your offline library was not unique when it came out nor unique now. Initially Apple's implementation was much better since it fingerprinted the song and linked it to their library so you only had to upload songs not in their library. And actually the services are quite different if you spend a lot of time with them. I switched from Spotify to Apple Music and now considering buying both.

Google Music has definitely used fingerprinting for some time - I think from its inception. I haven't used Spotify for a long time, so I'm not sure how it works.

Spotify does not allow you to upload your music or anything like that. You simply have access to their full catalog, and can choose to download any part of it for offline consumption.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#105

Post by brlewis »

matart wrote: post #41
bsimpson wrote: post #8

I've been told by people in the position to know that the 2010-era streaming services (Rdio, Spotify, Mog) were all effectively the same company: owned mostly by the music studios (in exchange for licenses) with a minority stake for each's particular founders/investors. As Dalton Caldwell cautioned in 2011, licensing costs make music startups are nigh impossible [1]. For people who are willing to pay for a music serv…

I really like spotify because I can use it on my phone, PS3, laptop, etc. My phone can be the remote to my sound system in another room. I also have a small data plan on my phone so I do not stream music. Spotify allows me to download their songs for playing offline. Does Google Music provide these or similar?

I was also interested in whether Google Music supported offline music playing since I have rdio and rely on that feature. It looks like it does: https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/1250232?hl=en

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#106

Post by zw »

archagon wrote: post #79
matart wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like spotify because I can use it on my phone, PS3, laptop, etc. My phone can be the remote to my sound system in another room. I also have a small data plan on my phone so I do not stream music. Spotify allows me to download their songs for playing offline. Does Google Music provide these or similar?

Spotify also has a native(-ish) OSX client (can you use Google Music outside the browser?) and excellent playlist drag/drop and sharing support. Plus, I love their iOS user interface. No other service has come close in either area. I just wish they had better local file support.

Forget the "-ish". Actually, forget the "native". Their app is no more or less native than Rdio's was.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#107

Post by criley2 »

mbrock wrote: post #100

I subscribe to Spotify. If they would just let me view "My Albums" (which is basically all I'm ever interested in) as an alphabetical list instead of a canvas of enormous pictures (4x2 fit on my screen), that would make me so happy. Every time they continuously deploy one of those "please upgrade" popups, which is nearly every day (pretty annoying BTW, can't you just upgrade silently? I've never even noticed anything…

In Spotify, instead of "saving album to My Music" I choose to create a playlist of the album. It's just drag and drop to create the playlist on desktop.

I choose to sort those into folders based on genre/artist/album, which works well for me.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#108

Post by mbrock »

coldtea wrote: post #59
6stringmerc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As little as I actually count on the service, and have yet to update my files with tracks since about 2013, Radio Reddit is one of the few I know of that legitimately side-steps the licensing issue. It's more of a discovery service than streaming service, so to speak. Niche market. Heck, if ReverbNation or BandCamp wanted to get into the 'stand-alone, broadcast/streaming, exposure and small payment per play' market,…

> Heck, if ReverbNation or BandCamp wanted to get into the 'stand-alone, broadcast/streaming, exposure and small payment per play' market, they could have a distinct advantage in that their content sources are, predominately, unsigned and able to negotiate in good faith (in theory). Yeah, but also the very big disadvantage that nobody cares for those artists [1], even for the better ones among them. This kind of "lon…

Maybe nobody cares yet because nobody has made a sufficiently compelling alternative.

Almost everyone I know has at least some bands they like that aren't one of the few acts at the top. Local bands, side projects, anti-establishment punk bands, whatever.

My little working class town is a miniature hotbed for small bands. They don't all make weird punk or whatever, tons of them make music that would be really nice for café ambience.

But from visiting cafés around here, it does seem like the only music that exists is the repeating top 20. I don't think anyone actually likes this, though. I certainly don't.

Somebody could make it fun and easy for cafés and friends and whoever to play that music. That would have a very real value.

Re: Pandora to Buy Rdio Assets for $75M, Rdio Files Ch.11, Will Shutter Service

#109

Post by EduardoBautista »

archagon wrote: post #79
matart wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like spotify because I can use it on my phone, PS3, laptop, etc. My phone can be the remote to my sound system in another room. I also have a small data plan on my phone so I do not stream music. Spotify allows me to download their songs for playing offline. Does Google Music provide these or similar?

Spotify also has a native(-ish) OSX client (can you use Google Music outside the browser?) and excellent playlist drag/drop and sharing support. Plus, I love their iOS user interface. No other service has come close in either area. I just wish they had better local file support.

You have to use 3rd party apps to get Google Music outside the browser, but it's still essentially just using the regular web page with the addition of being able to use the media keys.
Post reply on HN