A question of value

[andrewducker]

I was chatting to Julie about music recently - and about the changes that things like Last.FM and Spotify make to how value is perceived.

If you have nothing, and £10 will get you an album of music to listen to, then that sounds like a pretty good deal.

If you have a free pseudo-random selection of music you have no control over interspersed with adverts (i.e. radio), and £10 will get you an album of music to listen to, then you might still decide that that's a good deal - depending on how much you like the stuff that you get for free.

If you have total control over the music you listen to, so long as you have broadband access, broken up by only the occasional advert, then how much would you pay to get rid of those ads? £1 a month? £10 a month? £20 a month? How much to have that music on the move? £1 a track? £0.20 a track?

I'd pay a couple of pounds a month to not have ads. £10 is probably too much. The differential between "all the music for free (with the occasional advert)" and "all the music for free (no ads)" isn't _that_ high to me.

Of course, this does nothing to help me have music on the move. But how much am I willing to pay for my own music, rather than radio?

It feels very much like the value proposition is changing.

[Poll #1367528]

Comments

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

[X] I listen to BBC Radio 2.

[andrewducker]

Dammit - I forgot that BBC Radio was ad-free.

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

[x] I listen to BBC Radio 4....

[wychwood]

I have in the past (and probably will in the future) donated to an ad-free Internet radio station I like a lot, but that's a donation to a service which is free-to-listen; if it were an actual subscription model, I don't think I would.

[aliiis.livejournal.com]

[X] Radio and all that stuff aside, if I am going to pay for music, I'd like to think that at least some of my money is going pretty directly to the artist I like, not a third-party service that homogeneously represents 'all music ever'. (note I don't know about Spotify, so may be totally missing the point!)

I also like cover art.

[andrewducker]

They pay to the Performing rights societies, who pay the rights holders. If bands haven't signed away all of their rights then they'll be getting money.

I remember the cover art argument from when CDs first appeared, when vinyl lovers said that nobody would be interested in CDs because the cover art was so tiny :->

You should give Spotify a go, it's the best music listening service I've used so far.

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

That sort of sounds like the music equivalent of the service I want for TV. We download because the other choices in Japan are so totally abysmal, but I would happily pay a global license fee or similar, because I know the programmes cost to get made.

(Although thinking of it almost everything we watch is ad paid for UK TV).

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

I like paying the artists whose music I love. I like cover art. I like little books of lyrics. But more than that, I like possessing music: I like looking at my large CD collection, I like opening my iTunes and seeing '5391 tracks' at the bottom. I like carefully selecting and burning selections of music for other people, I like making playlists for myself for different moods, I like being able to hear whole albums as they were arranged by the artist and being able to listen to the same song over and over and over if I want to. I like knowing that I own everything ever recorded by my very favourite musicians. I like learning all the words.

[andrewducker]

You can do all of those apart from "looking at your CD collection" and the little books of lyrics with MP3s. And all of that except burn it for others with a free online system like Spotify.

I found that the physical bits didn't do much for me after a while (all of my CDs are in crates at the moment). Burning CDs for others is slightly more serious :->

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Adverts on local radio don't really bother me so I would go with the last option. Not that I listen to local radio much, I normally have either Radio 2, 4 or 5 on in the car depending on my mood. But then I'm probably not the target of this sort of service as I have never paid to download music of any sort and very rarely download any music illegally either. I still buy CD's for convenience.

[andrewducker]

I recommend you give Spotify a go. It's changed how I listen to music at home - because I'll stick on things I'd never have paid to listen to, just to see what they're like.

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

Granted, my answer might change if I had more money to spare. But for now, I don't mind putting up with ads.

I sure miss Pandora, though.

[andrewducker]

I'm putting up with the ads because Spotify want to charge £10/month to do without them, and it's not worth that to me.

Pandora was nice because it learned. Shame it's US only nowadays.

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

a) I don't have broadband (don't even have home internet at present.)
b) I find it hard to conceive of much of my collection being covered by any one service. Some of it almost certainly not by ANY service.

[andrewducker]

Your second point is definitely true, especially when it comes to bootlegs and other rarities. Things are getting better, but they're a long way from being "there".

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

'bootlegs'? Are you suggesting i might have any illegal recordings? I'm shocked!

Actually i have a fair few Cds sold by bands out of the van that won't be on the likes of Last and Spotify.

[heyokish.livejournal.com]

I like last, mostly because of the discover-new-things way of listening, via other people. I like spotify because of the instant gratification to deal with the must-listen-to-this-RIGHT-NOW urge (except they failed me utterly when I decided I needed to listen to the Frank Chickens).

But neither really does the trick for me in that I most want to listen to music when I'm not at home--on the bus, on the train, at my desk, in a public space when I don't want other people's sounds eating my head--and so these don't fit that gap very well. I want takeaway music, as well as endlessly cusomisable radio. So, paying for online radio? Not so much.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I'm too cash-strapped to keep paying for the same tunes repeatedly. I'd rather spring for the CD (or DRM-less file, preferably uncompressed) once and get it over with.

-- Steve also doesn't like the lack of personal portability of a lot of the music "services" like satellite radio and subscription streaming audio. If it can't fit in a shirt pocket, not interested.

Re: recurring fees

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

I don't need the latest but what I like is, at times, obscure. So, I prefer to buy my music once on physical media. Backups are handy.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I like buying my music because I don't like ongoing subscriptions, but more because a large proportion of the music I particularly like isn't available on these services. Even when it is, it comes and goes like the wind; perhaps 1/3 of the things I've bought from eMusic aren't there now, and if it were a streaming service, I wouldn't be able to listen to it now.

I don't mind whether I buy MP3s or CDs, though; I'm pretty comfortable with my backup regimes.

[andrewducker]

Yeah - Spotify covers 85-90% of the stuff I like, and is free. The urge to spend lots of cash is therefore small.

If it covered 50% of what I liked then the urge would clearly be higher.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Also, I find that all the 'we'll listen to what you like and recommend you things' services, listen to what I like and then recommmend me things that are less edgy and less challenging versions of the stuff I really like.

[andrewducker]

I never really got a chance to play with Pandora, but I suspect that it's a directed graph, where the majority of people who like edgy things also like less edgy things, whereas the majority of people who like less edgy things don't like edgy things - so any recommendations will tend to slid towards the centre.

I'm probably wrong, but I like my theory anyway :->

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

I already pay for BBC radio, and this greatly more than fulfils my needs (I'd happily pay a lot more for my TV/radio licence - it's wonderful value). Even radio stations with adverts I can cope with if the music is good enough - Planet Rock is as good as it gets for me in this category.

Online stations that play songs from a genre of my choosing where I can veto songs I don't like aren't anywhere near as enjoyable for me; a large part of the pleasure of radio is the unexpectedness of it.

If I was going to pick any option, it would be the one that allowed me to download a certain amount of songs for a regular fee. Possession adds a lot more value for me as well.

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

And another thing, I've never heard an advert on last.fm's streaming service.