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[imugli]

TBH I can understand them wanting to control the experience.
I'd be happy if they just gave us decent web interfaces, like youtube.com/tv, that can be controlled by remote at 10ft.

[stewart_pk]

We would generally be happy to have a place in playing streamed content (if the conditions are right), but the streaming providers are generally not interested in that, not in music and even much less so in video.
I can only imagine that they view MC as giving you too much freedom and as such doesn't fit into their quite restrictive model on how they want to control your listening.

Yes I understand that; from memory Netflix shut their doors on you.
The WDM driver, ASIO In and WASAPI Loopback are incredible features that allows us to use other software and hardware players.
But it just makes the UX cumbersome and practically impossible for the other half, kids and visitors.

But here's just a bit of a rambling to come about the music and movie industry which the thread is somewhat about, I think.
IMO PC software players have somewhat facilitated illegal consumption of media.
Many of the "MP3 and MKV torrent generation" use them to play their torrents.
If anything streaming services are to the rescue and at the same time providing a level of convenience unparalleled.

[JimH]

I don't think it would be that difficult to capture and record streaming.

Software is just a tool.  Like any other tool, it be used for good or bad purposes.

[stewart_pk]

I don't think it would be that difficult to capture and record streaming.

Software is just a tool.  Like any other tool, it be used for good or bad purposes.

Yeah, but ripping discs or sharing downloaded files can be done much faster and more conveniently then having to wait for each stream capture at real time.
I've never heard of illegal movie or music downloads that have come from streaming services, have you?
If they exist they're surely a drop in the ocean.

[Hendrik]

I've never heard of illegal movie or music downloads that have come from streaming services, have you?

I don't know about music, but for video thats quite common (called "WEB-DL" files typically), because its a better alternative to recording broadcast streams, which has the same "waiting for it to arrive" problem, on top of broadcast typically being lower quality.
Its quite popular for TV shows, because those often get onto Netflix or Amazon only hours after airing, or in some cases even exclusively on streaming.

[JimH]

Roku files for IPO, lost $43M in 2016:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/01/understanding-rokus-ipo-and-its-growing-platform-revenues/

[JimH]

Slacker bought by LiveXLive for a reported $50 million.

LiveXLive lost $14.2 million on $225,000 in sales in 2016.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/15/16310314/livexlive-slacker-radio-aquires-50-million

Not a win for Slacker.  They had $75 million in funding.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/slacker#/entity

[JimH]

Microsoft's Groove Music is going away at the end of the year:

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/10/02/microsoft-to-bring-spotify-to-groove-music-pass-customers/#wZ2it8JWPyqDbHVv.97

[JimH]

Split The Music Business

[jachin99]

What about USTVNow?  They provide streaming options but they are also a content provider to small cable companies.  I'm curious if JRiver could be considered a small cable company.  Has anyone looked into them?  Kodi has a plugin for USTV Now, and it seems like a good way to get cable onto jriver without forking out the big bucks for playready. 

[JimH]

Music Publisher Sues Spotify for $1.6 Billion

http://variety.com/2018/biz/news/spotify-hit-with-1-6-billion-lawsuit-from-publisher-representing-tom-petty-neil-young-others-1202651199/

[tyler69]

Maybe interesting to some:
https://thetrichordist.com/2018/01/15/2017-streaming-price-bible-spotify-per-stream-rates-drop-9-apple-music-gains-marketshare-of-both-plays-and-overall-revenue/

[DJLegba]

Maybe interesting to some:
https://thetrichordist.com/2018/01/15/2017-streaming-price-bible-spotify-per-stream-rates-drop-9-apple-music-gains-marketshare-of-both-plays-and-overall-revenue/

I like the comment from the songwriter who said streaming is legalized theft. If you enjoy listening to music then buy it so you support the people who create and perform.

[JimH]

Spotify filed to go public and revealed just how big their losses are.

From The Verge:

"The filing gives us one of our best looks yet at Spotify’s finances, with the company posting revenue last year of €4,090 million (nearly $5 billion) and a net loss of -€1,235 million (or ~$1.5 billion) for the same period."

In other words, they lose about $30 for every $100 in business.  You could do better by selling $100 bills for $80.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/28/16846064/spotify-ipo-public-offering-announced-music-streaming

[imugli]

And this from Sydney Morning Herald here in Oz...

Spotify claims 71 million subscribers -  about double that of its biggest competitor, Apple Music.
The difference is that Apple Music is merely a loss leader for Apple's juggernaut devices business. Apple, which is sitting on a veritable mountain of cash, doesn't need to make money from streaming - it's a service designed  to keep people buying iPhones.
Spotify has no such luxury.
Yet there is an even more troubling flaw in Spotify's business model. It has almost no leverage with its key suppliers.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/investments/spotify-s-symbolic-non-ipo-and-why-it-s-no-netflix-for-music-20180301-p4z2ad.html

In the end, I still think we'll see Apple, Google, and a third option offered by the combined might of the studios. There was a fake story a couple of years back that Google bought Spotify. I still think that will play out to be the case and I think Tidal will be bought by Apple.

[stewart_pk]

The most important thing is and it's seemingly lost in this thread is that current streaming services don't struggle to provide a good money for money service.
It may be that the big players Apple, Google, Microsoft end up buying out all the major services.
I'm just shrugging my shoulders right now.

[tyler69]

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/did-tidal-falsify-streams-to-bulk-up-kanye-west-and-beyonce-numbers/

[JimH]

Thanks for that.  Sprint (Tidal investor) isn't going to like it.

Quote from the article:

"In March 2016, the firm claimed that Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo, a six-week exclusive on its platform, had been streamed 250m times in just 10 days.

"At the same time, TIDAL claimed that its platform had surpassed 3m subscribers.

"These numbers meant that, on average, every single TIDAL subscriber would have had to be playing the Kanye album over eight times a day.

"Similar suspicions were triggered by the success of Beyonce’s record-breaking Lemonade a couple of months later.

"TIDAL claimed that Lemonade was streamed 306m times on its platform in its first 15 days post-release.

"Stats like this led Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv to investigate in January 2017 – and uncover documents which, it said, suggested that TIDAL had been deliberately inflating its subscriber figures.

"This report was lend credence by data from trusted music industry research firm Midia in the same month, which estimated that TIDAL’s subscriber base actually only included 1m people worldwide."

[Awesome Donkey]

Oooh, ouch.

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/05/16/tidal-behind-on-royalty-payments/

[JimH]

Thanks.  More details are in the article that macrumors cited:

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/now-tidal-is-accused-of-failing-to-pay-record-labels-on-time/

[JimH]

More Tidal numbers, reported by Engadget:

https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/13/tidal-jay-z-financial-trouble/

[JimH]

More bad news for Tidal at Gizmodo.

[JimH]

Streaming numbers:

https://9to5mac.com/2018/09/17/apple-music-us-subscribers/

[KingSparta]

SiriusXM buys Pandora for $3.5 billion

SiriusXM is acquiring Pandora for $3.5 billion. The satellite radio company says it intends to maintain the Pandora service and brand, along with its roughly 70 million monthly active users (5.6 million of which are paying members), which stands at double that of SiriusXM’s existing 36 million subscribers.

how do you get 70 million customers, and only 5.6 million are paying?

[JimH]

Sirius's stock dropped 10% on the day they announced the Pandora acquisition.  Investors don't like the deal.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-24/sirius-steps-into-lion-s-den-of-silicon-valley-with-pandora-deal

[JimH]

Spotify has lost about half a billion dollars in the three quarters since it went public.  Symbol is SPOT

[JimH]

Pandora has lost $285 million in the last three quarters.  Symbol:  P

[JimH]

Tidal hasn't released any information.  They were expected to run out of cash in 2018.

[Hilton]

They havent run out of cash yet because Sprint just bought 33% share.

https://www.techspot.com/news/67883-sprint-acquires-33-tidal-offer-exclusive-music-content.html

[JimH]

They havent run out of cash yet because Sprint just bought 33% share.

https://www.techspot.com/news/67883-sprint-acquires-33-tidal-offer-exclusive-music-content.html

That was two years ago now, and the word "cash" doesn't appear in the article.  I think the financing was "creative" to make something of a splash.

Here's a more recent article:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/13/tidal-jay-z-financial-trouble/

They can delay a collapse by not paying record labels, but they can't get around the fact that they don't earn a profit.  Not even close.  Their only hope is that someone will buy them, and I don't think it's likely or it would have happened by now.

When Jay-Z bought Tidal, it looked like he thought he could flip it, like Dr Dre did with Beats when he sold it to Apple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beats_Electronics

[JimH]

Watch AT&T buy them next week for $1 B.

[Awesome Donkey]

Wasted money, in my opinion. Honestly Apple should just buy them so they can use Tidal's infrastructure to offer lossless downloads and lossless streaming through the iTunes Store and Apple Music. That actually might come in useful because there's some iTunes-exclusive albums and EPs I'd like to get in lossless.

[Hendrik]

Honestly at this point one of the "big" streaming services should just go under, very publicly and terribly, to demonstrate the problem with that entire industry. If they keep being bought out and probably getting rich in the process, then its not going to help fix the streaming industry.

Unfortunately user accounts alone are valued so much more then anything else, that its probably easy to find someone to buy you.

[tyler69]

https://www.techradar.com/news/apple-music-hits-50-million-subscribers

[tyler69]

https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/RIAA-2018-Year-End-Music-Industry-Revenue-Report.pdf

[JimH]

"Tidal, a subscription-based music and video streaming service owned by rapper Jay-Z, is being investigated in Norway over allegations of falsely inflating listening numbers."

http://fortune.com/2019/01/14/tidal-streaming-fraud/

[JimH]

I ran across this 1999 article on the public offerings of Liquid Audio and Musicmaker.

https://money.cnn.com/1999/07/09/technology/liquid/

mp3.com raised $370 million in 1999, and blew it all.  Vivendi acquired the company in 2001 for 20% of their IPO value, then dismantled it in 2003, selling the carcass to CNET.

Heady days!

[tij]

Just curious ... why this works for video (like Netflix) and doesn’t for music?

[Hendrik]

Netflix is also quite in debt, and it'll get worse for them as more and more streaming services jump onto their own platforms like Disney.
The video streaming industry is currently killing itself by splintering into a multitude of services. People are not going to be happy to pay 5 streaming platforms instead of one or two which they had in the past.

Disney will of course also lose a lot of money on their Streaming Service, but they are a huge company and will just funnel the money from their other income.

[JimH]

Netflix is OK.

March 19 quarter profit was $344 miillion.

Cash on hand was $3.35 billion.

The services that I'm tracking here just don't turn a profit.  That, as a business plan, has a limited life.

[JimH]

Somehow this 1984 Wendy's commercial symbolizes the difficulty of finding the money in the streaming haystack.

Where's the Beef?

[drmimosa]

https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20869526/amazon-music-hd-lossless-flac-tier-spotify-apple

Amazon can probably sell quarters for 10¢ and still come out ahead...

[RoderickGI]

Ooo. That could make a difference. It will certainly put the cat among the pigeons!

[JimH]

I think it probably spells the end of Tidal and MQA.  Maybe Qobuz.

[Absinthe]

https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20869526/amazon-music-hd-lossless-flac-tier-spotify-apple

Amazon can probably sell quarters for 10¢ and still come out ahead...

Would be interesting if Amazon would partner (or buy out) one of the lossless / high-def vendors like HDTracks? 

Sadly, I'm still not convinced the "Average American" understands audio compression, lossless or even high definition audio at this point.  Most of my peers can't hear the difference between a 320 MP3 file and a lossless flac file much less a standard 16 bit/44.1KHz CD versus a 88.2 kHz/24-bit recording.  Then on the other hand, one of the guys I worked with would swear that his $300 USB cables sounded better than my $15.00 ones  so it seems media quality is verrrrrrryyyyyyyy subjective

 

[jmone]

I wonder if Amazon offers a 3rd party friendly API for the likes of JRiver?

[JimH]

We'll look at it if they do.

[JimH]

I just found this year-old Billboard article about Tidal.  Lots of information.

https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8459694/why-music-industry-rooting-tidal-despite-chronic-payment-issues

[jaynyc]

I am curious if the traditional, long standing JRiver PoV on streaming would be different for Amazon HD streaming since it is financed by a larger entity.   It's already available via BlueOS, so presumably an integration API exists etc.

[Awesome Donkey]

It would help if there was a public API available or at the very least some sort of open-source project that supports it but it looks like Amazon has to approach and choose you (the company) to support it within an app.