Music streaming in 2016?

2 points by Amelen0 ↗ HN
What do you guys think about music streaming in 2016? what would you improve on Spotify or Pandora? Any way it could get better?

2 comments

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I've paid for Spotify, Rdio, Google Play All Access, and Apple Music. I've used Amazon Prime music, Pandora, and a bunch of others I've completely forgotten.

I love Apple Music. I can upload my library of obscure & old stuff to the cloud. There's a good selection. And, most importantly, Apple Music has Trent Reznor, which means I get hand-curated industrial playlists suggested with themes like "Intro to Front 242". It just suits me well.

Spotify was ok. I paid for it for most of a year. But take the industrial group My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult. They changed labels as often as most people change their underwear. So Spotify, Rdio, and the rest only have their newest albums in their catalogs. I have all their older stuff ripped, and I want to listen to it. Apple & Google have me covered there.

I almost feel like there needs to be some laser-focused streaming services. I might pay $5/month for a service that just negotiated the rights to 80s & 90s industrial groups' complete catalogs. And another $5 on top of that for hand-picked ambient playlists and an expansive catalog, including early albums from the genre.

I personally don't use any of them, but I found this bit about Spotify from a survey of 60 teenagers http://www.businessinsider.com/what-teens-are-like-in-2016-2...:

"Teenagers almost universally named Spotify as their preferred music-streaming service — and some teenagers said it was the best app on their phone overall."

Granted, it is not a large-scale study, but I am surprised there isn't a "Snapchat of music" or more contemporary app gaining steam. I expected music would be one of the first categories to be redesigned for today's teens/digital natives. Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, Apple Music are all big incumbents now.