On curated streaming music, and speaking of the Apple 3.0 platform
I made a comment about this in a post I made to another SI board a couple weeks ago: And then there's the whole curated streaming music market ... oy.
See, I've been immersed in this sort of experience for more than a decade, since I discovered KPIG and Radio Paradise all the way back on iTunes 1.0. More than 10 years ago I hearkened back to that experience. I'm actually listening to Radio Paradise through iTunes 11.2.2 at this moment ... streaming music remains a compelling feature even now, especially when curated by someone whose taste you appreciate and trust. And even when today's user interface for Internet streaming "stations" in iTunes 11.2 looks almost exactly like it did in iTunes 1.0 thirteen years ago.
When Apple added the ability for its users to publish their own iMix'es, I was on top of that, too. A few months later I also reiterated what sort of benefits an iTunes online platform might offer 3rd party music "curators" like, oh, broadcast DJs. I just rediscovered that Apple listened then or not long after, publishing a how-to for its iTunes Affiliate Program about how to "increase ... affiliate commissions" by publishing static or dynamic playlists using iMix on their own websites.
iMix was apparently deprecated when Ping was introduced in iTunes 10, then dropped entirely (along with Ping, apparently), though at least some iMix capabilities remain with the iTunes Affiliate Program, now renamed The iTunes Store Collection.
Here's an overview of iTunes history, which oddly does not mention iMix:
ARS Technica | iTunes through the ages
Sequeing from history, I should mention that after my stint in the fitness industry, I spent *a lot* of time exploring an iTunes competitor. And in its streaming and social dimensions, that iTunes competitor remains superior to anything that Apple has introduced in the nearly 10 years since, though of course I continued publishing iMixes and buying most of my online music purchases in iTunes. One of the killer features of that competitor’s social dimension was the ability for subscribers to vote on which published playlists they liked or disliked, assigning ratings between 1 and 5 stars (as I recall), with the service updating top 10 lists for each genre (and perhaps for other dimensions) every hour or so. I remember waking up one morning and seeing that 6 of the top 10 playlists for one particular genre were all created by me. By afternoon all had been voted out of the top 10, which to me indicated that fans of one subgenre are awake and active at different times than another subgenre. But one of my jazz playlists stayed in their top 100 for years afterward. I will say that I learned more about current and past music in the 15 months I was spending quality time with that iTunes competitor than I have since college. That was a really cool experience, people.
That iTunes competitor had several editor/curators who as part of their job description wrote reviews, organized content, events, and even concerts (I even saw Ben Harper at one and bought music recorded at another), and created playlists (which were not subject to being voted up or down by the unwashed likes of folks like me). I pestered one of those editors quite frequently, mostly with reports of music or art that was mislabeled. He said they had a special file for me. But they fixed all 150+ issues I asked them to with reasonably good grace. Some of those items were also mislabeled in iTunes, but I never heard back from Apple the few times I reported these issues.
One feature Apple has approached in the past few years is the very feature that made such services as Spotify and Pandora so popular: a “songs like this” button that creates a streaming playlist from music similar to the tune you were listening to when you hit that button. But if that works simply and easily in iTunes even now, then I will need to spend more time figuring out to make it do that.
I wrote four blog posts describing my experiences with iTunes and that competitor in music discovery at the time, but have never gotten ‘round to publishing them. Maybe I’ll find a way to do so here, though of course I would want to redact some identifying information first.
Several ideas for excellent features that Apple+Beats could add to iTunes or a future streaming complement appear in the last four paragraphs. If Apple wants iTunes to be awesome, I think it would do well to listen. Again.
P.S.: My 14-year-old son started his first band yesterday. I’m still all verklempt. =@) |
