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

141–150 of 266 posts

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

#141

Post by qq66 »

caractacus wrote: post #121
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…

Your people in the know are wrong. The labels own a very small part of e.g. Spotify - around 5% - and the rest is VC and the founders. Deezer's IPO documents were clear on where the ownership of that service lies.

It's not that the labels own Spotify -- it's that by issuing limited-term licensing deals, and owning all of the music, they'll be able to charge whatever they want for their music, leaving just a little bit on the table to keep Spotify in business. Spotify reports $100m in profit? Just raise licensing fees by $90m at the next contract. Spotify won't have the leverage to walk away.

Similar to Netflix, Spotify will need to create some reason for consumers to stay with Spotify, likely with some kind of music or music experience that is Spotify-exclusive like Netflix-exclusive TV shows. Also, Spotify has invested a lot of effort into its curated playlists -- this is an attempt to get people to listen to Spotify the way they watch Netflix -- fire it up and watch/listen to "whatever's on," instead of searching Taylor Swift and getting angry when they can't find it.

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

#142

Post by RussianCow »

dan15 wrote: post #136
EduardoBautista wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can use the media keys with Google Play Music in a browser, at least in Chrome. No third-party app required.

I could be wrong, but I don't think those work globally (without an addon). Or has that changed recently?

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

#143

Post by qq66 »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #66
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…

For people who are willing to pay for a music service, it seems pretty hard to beat Google Music's value proposition. Because it's a Google service, it can afford to compete as much as it needs to on price I thought something similar about XBox Music, I figured with Microsoft's money it would never go away and it would have at least as good a selection of music as other music only services. I am right on the former,…

For indie bands, it's not so much Spotify's efforts as the bands' effort themselves that has gotten them on Spotify. If you're an indie band, you're going to take the effort to make sure that your music is showing up correctly on iTunes, Spotify, and other popular services.

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

#144

Post by fredkbloggs »

jeremyrwelch wrote: post #116

Rdio made a mistake by trying to compete directly with Spotify. And Pandora is making a huge mistake by shutting down the service and losing a valuable niche group of users. Everyone I know who actually uses Rdio is DIE HARD (I see evidence of this in the comments too). The users I know are pro audio guys, musicians, programmers, artists, etc who use the app 6+ hours a day across desktop and mobile. Rdio could easily…

Such is the way of the world. 50,000 customers willing to pay $50 a month aren't worth the trouble, especially if they're even slightly demanding. Everyone wants the 50 million users willing to put up with ads that bring in $3 a month or are willing to pay $5 or $10.

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

#145

Post by theGimp »

hobo_mark wrote: post #139

Ctrl+F Soundcloud.. crickets I once made a chrome extension to add global keyboard shortcuts to Soundcloud and now that is literally all I listen to all day (I know, artists aren't getting a penny from me and that is bad, especially for small indies, I would buy much more music off bandcamp if the ux wasn't so atrocious). My point is, surely I'm not the only one here using SC exclusively? Just curious.

Re: global keyboard shortcuts.

I found https://github.com/msfeldstein/chrome-media-keys a while back. It's amazing.

It's not flawless, but it adds global controls to most websites.

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

#147

Post by shinratdr »

Shebanator wrote: post #138
rossng wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, GPM has supported fingerprinting for a really long time.

But absolutely not from inception. iTunes Match had about a six month lead on that. It was a major differentiator at the time.

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

#148

Post by shinratdr »

ryanSrich wrote: post #29
tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #9

that is really unfortunate, I much prefer Rdio's web interface to Spotify's and for all the years I've been a subscriber it's been rock solid, on the other hand I do think I am likely not the typical user (100% on desktop, mostly listens to full albums rather than random songs, a lot of classical music, etc.) When Rdio shuts down I am really not sure where I will be able to go for a comparable experience, Spotify for…

Apple music is not usable with any device. Just to name a few issues I've personally experienced: - Not being able to listen to music because itunes said I wasn't signed in. (of course I was and the only way to fix it was to restart my computer.) This error happens a few times per month. - Songs not playing and getting an alert error with some random code that results in searching countless threads online. This happe…

It's definitely buggy. It's a real shame too, because the service is actually awesome when it works. But tying it to iTunes on Windows and not spending nearly enough time hammering out the backend issues is killing it.

It's worth noting that most of your issues are related to the brutal experience that is iTunes for Windows. Not that's an excuse, just a heads up for those that may not share your experience.

I use Apple Music every day on my iPhone, Mac and work Windows 7 machine, and I experience every issue you list on Windows but not on the Mac or iPhone.

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

#149

Post by Pharaoh2 »

RussianCow wrote: post #142
dan15 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use the media keys with Google Play Music in a browser, at least in Chrome. No third-party app required.

I could be wrong, but I don't think those work globally (without an addon). Or has that changed recently?

It requires a bundled by default, Google Music app. If you disable or delete it, the media keys will stop working. Here is the download link for the app :

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-play-music/...

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

#150

Post by fastball »

ryanSrich wrote: post #29
tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #9

that is really unfortunate, I much prefer Rdio's web interface to Spotify's and for all the years I've been a subscriber it's been rock solid, on the other hand I do think I am likely not the typical user (100% on desktop, mostly listens to full albums rather than random songs, a lot of classical music, etc.) When Rdio shuts down I am really not sure where I will be able to go for a comparable experience, Spotify for…

Apple music is not usable with any device. Just to name a few issues I've personally experienced: - Not being able to listen to music because itunes said I wasn't signed in. (of course I was and the only way to fix it was to restart my computer.) This error happens a few times per month. - Songs not playing and getting an alert error with some random code that results in searching countless threads online. This happe…

Your syncing issue could be related to not "upgrading" all of your devices to iCloud Music Library.
Post reply on HN