Music Streaming to Overtake Downloads 254
Barence writes "Streaming will overtake download services to become the dominant force in the online music industry, according to industry insiders. The claim comes in the wake of the PRS cutting the amount of royalties streaming services have to pay songwriters to about a third. Sites will now pay the PRS 0.085p per track, compared to the 0.22p they paid previously. On-demand streaming services still have to pay the record labels about 1p for every track streamed, however. Steve Purdham, CEO of music service We7, says the move will accelerate the growing trend towards online streaming which has seen newcomers such as his site and Spotify attract millions of users in less than a year. 'Over the next 12-24 months you'll see a move towards listening [online],' Purdham told PC Pro. 'Why do you actually need to have something downloaded on your PC? The streaming idea is really the future.'"
Whats a p? (Score:3, Informative)
Sites will now pay the PRS 0.085p per track, compared to the 0.22p they paid previously.
I assume that one p means 0.01 UK pounds but I could be wrong about that.
Re:Welcome to 1995 (Score:0, Informative)
Spotify is working on a solution for mobiles; they're going to allow "caching" playlists for offline use (see this clip [youtube.com])
Q: How do you steal a stream? A: (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Whats a p? (Score:4, Informative)
Stream is invariably transcoded to match bitrate (Score:2, Informative)
If you like transcoded quality, buy your streams all you want. The quality is very low, unless your hearing is as bad as your sight then you may not notice how bad it is.
This is how it works. Take a mp3. Let's call it 128 kbps. Serve is up as various rate streams: 32, 64, 112, 192, 256, 320. All from the same 128 kbps mp3. That's what is done. And no, a 320 kbps transcoded from 128 kbps mp3 is not better, it's likely much worse: the 128 kbps encode removed 90% of the matrial. The 320 kbps transcode of that will remove another 35%, leaving you with, if you like the math, roughly 3^ of the original material. And that's a 320 kbps transcode, nevermind the others.
Re:You know... (Score:2, Informative)
A train doesn't have to wait for traffic, stop for red lights/stop signs or obey most traffic laws. You can read, play games, sleep or carry a real conversation on a train. You don't have to be sober or alert. You also don't have to circle around city blocks looking for parking for half an hour or pay outrageous fees to park. On top of it all, it doesn't pollute the environment as much as it would if everyone were driving cars.
Welcome to 1997 (Score:2, Informative)
We have a laptop hooked right into the mixer
The club hooked up DSL for 2 nights
Were uploading the stream to our Shoutcast [shoutcast.com] server
Parties in Toronto & Chicago are picking up the stream
by the way... there is a nice little open source app called streamripper that allows you to record the music should it be good enough.
So yeah... good idea recording industry stay ahead of the curve..