[flamesbball84]

Been a rash of news here lately on streaming music.

First, Pandora reached an agreement that will allow them to survive in the face of increasing royalty rates. They have worked out anagreement to make the royalty rates lower, but if free listeners listen to more than 40 hours a month, they will have to pay 99 cents to be able to listen for the rest of the month. To compare, the premium Pandora service allows unlimited listening time (amongst other things) for $36 a year.

Second, streaming music is cutting down on piracy.

Music Ally teamed with sister consumer research company The Leading Question and determined that a third of music-loving teenagers in the U.K. have switched tastes from illegal downloads to legitimate streaming sites. Fans are also purchasing songs on iTunes and other online music retailers rather than nabbing them from file-sharing sites. In January 2009, 26 percent of 14- to 18-year-olds shared files compared to 42 percent in December 2007. This is a dramatic dropoff, but one that should be taken with a grain of salt.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/168293/
I'm not buying into the research though. You can easily go to the streaming music websites and record the songs on the computer as they play, which is still piracy. If I were to do it, I would be able to illegally obtain a lot more music than I ever could trying to download it off bittorrent and other file sharing types of services and it would be a heck of a lot easier than looking all over the internet trying to find one song...


Third, Microsoft is introducing a music streaming service similar to Spotify later this month. Since I'm guessing mostly everyone here hasn't used spotify since it isn't available in the US without having to use overseas proxy servers to obtain (which I have, but it only lasted for one week because it detects your IP address when in use), it's a pretty nice free service.

Spotify users can stream music for free in exchange for listening to around a minute of advertising every half hour but for £9.99 a month, the ads will be turned off. It is thought Microsoft’s offering will be ad-supported too as well as having a paid-for premium service.

He also hinted the service could be tied in with Microsoft’s Xbox gaming console, but would not be drawn on the details of how a partnership would work. The addition of a Microsoft-owned music streaming service would tie in with an increasingly consumer focussed strategy from company to make its Xbox 360 console the main “entertainment hub” in the family home. Users are already able to download movies through their console and play games against one another online.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandte ... month.html