GigaOM » Digital Music

iTunes turns 10. What’s in store for the next decade?

Erica Ogg — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:59:58 +0000

One of the first stories I wrote for my college journalism class involved me interviewing people on campus about whether they’d ever even possibly consider paying for music with this — at the time — brand new iTunes service. The story isn’t online, but I recall that most interview subjects laughed, curled up their noses in disgust or said something along the lines of, “Pay 99 cents for a song I can get from free from Napster? Uh, no.”

Ten years later, paying for music — whether through downloads or subscription access — is by now a long-established practice. It’s sort of hard to believe it’s been a decade since iTunes launched, but it’s true: Sunday is the 10th birthday of Apple’s download service that seismically restructured the music industry and how we think of buying and owning music. iTunes’ effect on digital entertainment is a well-worn story, of course. But the occasion of iTunes’ 10-year anniversary is a good one to recall how far it’s come — and how the competition for digital music is fiercer than ever.

Here’s a look at iTunes through the years and how it stacks up today to its chief rivals in music: Google,, Amazon and Spotify.

iTunes is about much more than music today: It’s about mobile apps, movies, TV shows, ebooks, podcasts and even education. And over the years, Apple’s added more cloud services for customers to access their entertainment remotely. It’s not uncommon to hear people complain that the desktop version of the software is unwieldy (though I’ve found it to be fine for my needs). iTunes is a huge download and has many moving parts because so many services are tacked onto it. The common refrain is for Apple to unbundle the desktop software, separating the App Store app from Music and Videos apps, like the way it’s handled within iOS. That, of course, would be a major philosophical change and one that Apple would not confront lightly.

But more than the software itself, it’s music that likely is going to determine what happens to iTunes.

While Apple still has the advantage in overall song titles, as the graph above shows, its competitors have been innovating on ways to offer their comparatively smaller catalog of songs. The pay-for-high-quality download service was innovative a decade ago, but now Apple is the one that will be forced to make some changes in order to keep its lead: subscription music services and web-based streaming are the future, and Apple knows it. And that’s why the company is looking to offer a streaming, web-based music service – dubbed by the press “iRadio.”

As a recent NPD study showed, ownership of music is still important to people. But streaming music discovery services encourage people to find and buy more music, and Apple needs to be a part of that.

iTunes is an important piece of tech history. But as attitudes about music ownership change, iTunes’ next 10 years will likely be more challenging than its last.

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Pandora caps monthly free tunes on mobiles to 40 hours

Kevin C. Tofel — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:52:03 +0000

Pandora users streaming free tunes all month long may find that today is the day the music died: Pandora is limiting its free monthly service to 40 hours. Don’t worry though, the free tunes start up again the following month or you can choose to pay a small fee for to enjoy music for the remainder of the month. Why the cap and fee? Rising per-track royalty rates, Pandora said in a blog post from Wednesday evening:

“Pandora’s per-track royalty rates have increased more than 25% over the last 3 years, including 9% in 2013 alone and are scheduled to increase an additional 16% over the next two years. After a close look at our overall listening, a 40-hour-per-month mobile listening limit allows us to manage these escalating costs with minimal listener disruption.”

According to the company, the impact is limited to just 4 percent of all users, which is surprisingly low. Perhaps more folks use the free streaming on desktops or laptops connected via Wi-Fi as opposed to smartphone and tablet users on costly mobile broadband networks.

Regardless of how people use the music service, pricing is understandably a challenge: Record label fees are negotiated at set royalty rates for a given time, but Pandora has no control over the demand for or growth of its service. The small $0.99 fee to continue music past the 40 hours in a given month seems reasonable to me, and I say that as a paying Pandora subscriber. I pay $36 a year for unlimited, ad-free music through Pandora mainly because I access it through multiple methods: my laptop, phone, tablet and even my television and car, both of which have integrated Pandora apps.

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How to compete with Facebook in 2013

Mark Mulligan — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 17:47:31 +0000

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How consumer media will change in 2013

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 07:55:50 +0000

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Google’s music match in U.S.: Better deal than Apple, Amazon?

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 18:56:51 +0000

Google announced a music matching service in the U.S. through its Google Play store on Tuesday, following the launch of a similar service in Europe in October. With it, consumers will no longer need to upload their digital music collection to Google’s(a goog) servers for storage or streaming playback. Apple and Amazon already have similar services, making Google the last big consumer platform to offer music matching. But Google’s service is free and supports high quality files.

The service will likely appeal to Android smartphone and tablet owners as Google’s music app is native to the devices. Although I use Android, I recently upgraded to a paid Amazon MP3 account for these functions, partially because Google didn’t offer a music matching service and I didn’t want to upload thousands of digital audio files. Perhaps my decision was too hasty, because Google’s service supports higher quality files for streaming:

“Our new music matching feature gets your songs into your online music library on Google Play much faster. We’ll scan your collection and quickly rebuild it in the cloud – all for free. And we’ll stream your music back to you at up to 320 kbps.”

A quick check of Amazon’s bitrate for MP3 files streamed from the cloud shows these are “high quality 256 kbps” files. It’s not likely I’ll notice a vast difference, but I’m paying $25 a year to Amazon for lesser sound quality. That fee allows me to store up to ~~25,000~~ 250,000 music files; Google allows 20,000 files on its servers at no charge. Apple too, charges $25 for its iTunes Match service, making Google’s music match the only free game in town for now.

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For those about to rock, AC/DC is now on iTunes

Erica Ogg — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 17:00:47 +0000

I suppose congratulations are in order for AC/DC who, after almost everyone else, have finally seen the wisdom of selling their music to the masses via one of the world’s most popular music stores: Apple’s iTunes. Apple made the announcement on Monday morning that the Australian rock band’s entire catalog — that’s 23 albums — is now for sale in Apple’s online music store.

Sure, for some people this announcement is not quite as exciting as the Beatles finally cutting a deal with Apple in November 2010 to bring its back catalog to iTunes. But AC/DC had famously resisted iTunes’ siren call for a long time. The band joins a list of other acts who only recently gave in and started selling digital tracks on Apple’s service, which include Kid Rock, Metallica and Led Zepellin. The other notable anti-iTunes acts are Garth Brooks and Tool.

Apple’s iTunes turns 10 years old next April, and sells 28 million songs. But the bigger draw for these artists finally getting on board is Apple’s customer base: iTunes has 400 million credit cards hooked up to it that can buy a song or album at a single tap.

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Connected consumer third-quarter 2012

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 06:55:33 +0000

The third quarter saw many parts of the traditional media business in flux. New digital platforms that once had confined themselves to user-generated content began to invest in creating professional-quality content. At the same time, TV programmers began to wrestle with both the threat and the opportunity presented by second-screen and social-TV platforms. The period also saw the rollout of new device-based content ecosystems, red flags and red ink for traditional consumer electronics makers, and a resurgence of consumer purchases of movies. This quarterly wrap-up discusses these developments as well as offers trends and topics to watch for the remainder of 2012 and beyond.

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Listen up Pandora: Nokia Music now playing in U.S. for free

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 12:13:45 +0000

After shutting down its Ovi Music subscription service in early 2011, Nokia is re-playing the tune. On Tuesday, the Espoo, Finland company announced Nokia Music for Lumia devices in the United States, a free music streaming service with no registration required. Owners of the Microsoft Windows Phone Lumia handsets simply download the Nokia Music app from the Windows Phone Marketplace to start streaming.

Nokia says that 150 playlists “that are curated and kept up to date by an expert team of US based musicologists” are available, comprised of a wide variety of music genres, from classical to house dance music. Additionally, playlists created by Lana Del Rey, Lady Gaga and Rihanna, as well as other well-known performers, are available. But Nokia Music isn’t just made up of the service-provided playlists. Personalized playlists can be built using the “create” function, which access millions of songs in Nokia’s music library.

The free service should appeal to music lovers that own a Lumia device in the US. Nokia Music doesn’t contain any advertising, so music will be uninterrupted. And the playlists can be accessed offline, so tunes can be enjoyed without using up precious mobile broadband. A “gig finder” feature also offers information on local music events and the app ties in to Nokia’s digital music store where users can purchase MP3 songs or albums.

Nokia Music is likely the first of many new announcements coming from the company. Tomorrow, Nokia has a scheduled press event in New York City, where it is widely expected to debut handsets designed to run Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8.

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Android HiFi app turns Android devices into AirPlay speakers

Kevin C. Tofel — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 18:38:18 +0000

Using so many mobile devices has caused me to stop syncing and start streaming whenever I can, particularly with music. I don’t want to carry the same audio files on every device nor worry about if I even have them stored locally. And with the limited amount of storage space on some phones and tablets, I’d prefer to use the internal storage for applications. That’s why this new Android app — new to me anyway — found by Pocketables, is a must-have.

Called Android HiFi, the free software uses Apple’s AirPlay technology to pipe audio files from an iOS device or a Mac that supports AirPlay to an Android device. I’m now using this software, for example, to stream songs, albums and playlists from my iTunes library to my new Nexus 7 tablet.

Granted the small speakers on my Android tablet and phones aren’t the best quality, but a pair of headphones solves that problem nicely. And there’s no need for me to sync and carry my iTunes library on my Android devices; at least not when using them on the same Wi-Fi network as my Mac.

It’s not perfect: The app is essentially a server app, so there’s not much to look at and it doesn’t support video. You can’t control music playback either. Still, it works as advertised and extends an iTunes library.

Last year, I looked a similar product, but it was in reverse. DoubleTwist added AirPlay support for Android phones and tablets to pipe audio and video to an Apple TV. I still use DoubleTwist for that purpose and now I’m adding Android HiFi to my bag of streaming media tools as well. It should come in handy to listen to my iTunes music while surfing the web, reading e-books or using other Android apps.

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Move over Amazon MP3 store, Spotify hits Kindle Fire

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 17:36:22 +0000

Hope you have room for another music app on that Kindle Fire: Spotify is now available in the Amazon Appstore for the small slate. The software is free and provides ad-supported access to the millions of tracks in Spotify’s digital music library. While Kindle Fire owners can play music from the native Amazon MP3 app, those tracks must be purchased or uploaded; Spotify is more akin to a custom online radio station.

Like its native Android counterpart, the Spotify app for Kindle Fire offers a free two-day trial to Spotify’s Premium service. That removes the advertisements, but more importantly, includes support for offline playback. This feature is key for the Kindle Fire as it’s a Wi-Fi-only device. If you’re out of the range of a hotspot or home network, the Spotify app will go silent without a connection for the free version of the service.

Spotify for Kindle Fire also includes support for playlist creation — the average Spotify playlist is 170 songs, by the way — which can be shared with other Spotify users. Again, you’ll need a connection to initiate such sharing. Other features include a new slide-out navigation method, high-resolution album art, related artists and 320 kbps sound quality.

Sounds good; if we weren’t an Rdio family, I’d already have installed Spotify on my wife’s Kindle Fire. Maybe when Spotify Premium offers a family plan with discounts, I’ll reconsider!

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