Comment by bcrescimanno | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bcrescimanno | Hacker News Reader

What's always fascinated me about this "universal love" that services like Rdio and Spotify are receiving is what an incredible dichotomy that is with the first generation of streaming music services (the "paid" Napster, MusicMatch, etc). Those services were almost as universally reviled as Spotify is currently lauded.

The truly unfortunate thing, for my listening habits at least, is that finding what I want on Spotify is always a crap shoot. They may have it and they may not. What I end up doing at the moment is paying $10 / mo for Spotify premium (primarily because I hate their ads and genuinely prefer the higher audio quality on my home stereo system). and end up supplementing with another $10 / mo in iTunes bills to buy the songs that aren't available on Spotify.

While I do enjoy the "instant gratification" of Spotify and the ability to get an "all-in-one" package, people's expectations and habits around music consumption are fundamentally different than other forms of media in that music is primarily a passive experience with reading or watching television / film content are both very active experiences. I don't think a precipitous drop-off is coming to the downloading world until those habits change--or until Spotify and it's ilk can cater to them (e.g. full library available offline easily, larger catalogue coverage, etc.)

The passive/active experience angle is an interesting way to look at it. I wrote the blog post, but obviously I'm a music lover who usually consumes in a very proactive way, always looking for new music. But I still think the passive experience type of listener is actually more likely to fall for the subscription/cloud model, in that it's so much more convenient than downloading. The 10 or so seconds it takes to actually download the song and sync into iTunes is going to be more and more unacceptable for the younger and younger kids.

I'm with you in terms of listening, actually (at least partially; I have a large stereo at home on which I do actively listen to a lot of music; but I also have background music while I work during the day). That's why I find the subscription model a bit limiting currently.

I see your point about the more passive listeners leaning more towards the subscription model. My argument has long been that for a more passive experience, you need more complete library coverage because the expectation is that you can "get anything" pumped into your ears in that passive mode. I contrast it with Netflix where the forced active nature of the viewing means that the catalog need not have full coverage--so long as it has enough coverage to keep you actively engaged when you choose to use the service. That thinking (at least for me personally) has been why I've long avoided streaming music services but use Netflix streaming regularly.

Agreed. The catalogue thing is annoying. But I do remember it took a while for iTunes to have a complete catalogue as well. I feel like eventually though that problem should self-correct for subscription based model over time, as it increasingly becomes the de-facto medium to consume music. Either way, I suppose we'll find out the answer in a few years ;-)

As of a few months ago, most of the news I heard was around some labels choosing to pull content from streaming services rather than add more. I'm not going to jump to conclusions as I certainly think it can reverse course; but, for the moment, things aren't trending that way.

Streaming is different from the purchasing model of itunes. Consider Netflix. It will probably never have new releases first and subscription music services will likely go that way, if not already there.

My argument is that model is sustainable for film and television content but not for music content. It's simply impossible to consume the same quantity (in terms of unique pieces of content) of 2 hour movie content (or even 45 minute television content) as 3-4 minute music content. It takes a much larger, and much broader catalogue given the difference in rate of consumption.

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