Hacker News Reader

Comment by intopieces | Hacker News Reader

This is true, but the hard-drive music player seems to be on its way out now as well, with the iPod Classic gone and Apple moving toward the streaming market or "cloud" model, where they have ultimate control over the user's access to the content. While I'm not a CD junkie, I find myself clinging to the model you mention, because I am not eager to hand over control to a company that continually required me to pay. For those are a fan of Spotify: you pay $10/month for access to millions(?) of songs, but what happens when Spotify goes under, or gets bought? You've been paying for, let's say, 3 years - $360 - and what do you have to show for it? I much prefer sinking that amount of money into backing up my music collection.

View on HN

> You've been paying for, let's say, 3 years - $360 - and what do you have to show for it?

The answer is 3 years of music enjoyment.

Honestly, this seems like a terrible example - I don't think anybody pays for spotify on the basis that they will have the music forever, it's very explicitly a rental service. Instead, people pay because it's the most convenient (including being cheap) way to access the music they want.

> While I'm not a CD junkie, I find myself clinging to the model you mention, because I am not eager to hand over control to a company that continually required me to pay

This doesn't really make sense either. If you don't like rental services, don't pay for them, buy the albums just like you always did - it's easy to buy DRM free mp3s nowadays.

At $120/year, Spotify is much more expensive than most people's annual music budget.[0] It might be convenient, but it certainly isn't cheap. At least with individual album purchases, you are building 'equity' in a music collection $10 at a time.

[0] https://recode.net/2014/03/18/the-price-of-music/

Then those people probably don't want to pay for spotify. I didn't mean to imply that spotify is automatically a good deal for everyone, obviously it isn't, but I think it's plausibly a good deal for a lot of people.

> but it certainly isn't cheap

I'll admit, I was speaking more from the perspective of listening to a lot of music. For instance, the combined purchase value of all the albums in my spotify playlists far exceeds the total amount I ever spent on spotify, though I haven't used it for a while. I'm sure there are many people for whom this is true, even if they aren't a large proportion of the whole population.

In general you're right of course, 'cheap' is a matter of perspective. Spotify is not cheap for everyone, but it is potentially cheap for plenty of people. I still don't see the problem with this.

>The answer is 3 years of music enjoyment

And, too, the collaborative experience that Spotify brings. I neglected to consider that. While very little money goes to the artists, the "sharing" aspect of Spotify is something that many people value and gladly pay for. Personally, I find that aspect too involved (I'm an albums person, not a playlist person) but from a marketing perspective this might be better for artists than physical media. I'm still too possessive for the rent-a-song method. What happened when I sign on and the music I like it out of license? Much better for me to have it as near to me as possible.

Years ago there was a local used record store in my town that offered a "trial" period on any album purchased. If you "didn't like" the album you could return it for a small "restocking" fee. Unsurprisingly this store also had a good business in the sale of blank cassette tapes.

What prevents someone from doing the same thing with Spotify? Play music on one device, record it on another using audio patch cables if needed. Or maybe it isn't even that hard, just record the audio signal right out of the audio card in your PC. Is this prevented somehow?

It's not prevented. You don't even need to go that far -- there are programs that will get the ogg files directly from Spotify. I'm not going to link to them, but I trust you'll find one with sufficient google-fu.

Isn't the fall of the hard-drive music player just because phones do that? I buy digital tracks rather than streaming (particularly since the whole point of most of my music is to listen while on the Underground), but my MP3 player sits gathering dust, because my phone can do that and more.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com