Apple working with Beats to develop Streaming Music Service to take on Spotify

Apple had acquired Beats, a company making hip headphones and speaker products as well as offering a streaming music service, back in August 2014 for a sum of $3 billion. There were reports that Apple was planning to refurbish Beats and integrate it with iTunes. It was also rumored that the streaming service would be overhauled by Apple and launched with an entirely new design and concept.

The New York Times reports that Apple is teaming up with Beats executives and engineers to make sweeping changes to its digital music services and launch its own subscription music streaming service that will rival current services such as Spotify, Rdio and Rhapsody. The subscription prices haven’t been announced as yet but Apple won’t keep the prices lower than the rival services.

Apparently, Apple had tried to convince the record labels to reduce their licensing costs but failed. This was disclosed to the New York Times by some music executives on the condition of anonymity. Lower licensing costs would have enabled Apple to offer its streaming service subscriptions for $8 per month instead of $10 that is standard for other similar services.

The Cupertino giant also plans to upgrade its iTunes Radio and tailor it to provide region-specific content to listeners. Apple is trying to get the best new albums on iTunes first before others get them.

The company has made a musician and former chief creative officer Trent Raznor a point man for redesigning iPhone’s music app. Zane Lowe, erstwhile DJ of BBC Radio 1 will be playing a major role in re configuring the iTunes Radio and making it more regionally targeted like the traditional radio stations.

Currently, Apple is the largest music retailer and iTunes has over 800 million customer accounts. However, Apple has lagged behind in offering streaming services where the Swedish company Spotify has got a head start. Apple’s streaming service is not going to offer free music like Spotify, which has made major music labels happy.

Apple’s new streaming service doesn’t have a name yet but the name “Beat Music” is expected to be dropped. The service is likely to be launched sometime this year. Word is that it will be a part of Apple’s next iOS, the iOS 9 and will launch with its next iPhone.

Apple working with Beats to develop Streaming Music Service to take on Spotify

This Raspberry Pi Cassette Player Mixed the Old and New Technology to Play Music

Raspberry Pi is a low-cost computing system that allows you to mess around with all kinds of bespoke gadgets from basic components and teaching novices how to code and create things based on your imagination. A British developer and creator Matt Brailsford has used the DIY system to come out with a media server that streams different playlists when cassette tapes are inserted. He combines Raspberry Pi, Spotify and NFC tags to do this.

How does this work?

Inside the cassette player, all standard components have been removed and replaced by Raspberry Pi and several other helper modules such as NFC tag reader (placed in the metal frame top left), the red printed circuit board (PCB), amplifier (the blue PCB below the red PCB), the original volume potentiometer to control the volume and a custom circuit board to connect the buttons of the cassette player to the Raspberry Pi’s General-purpose input/output (GPIO) via micro switches glued beneath the buttons.

The Raspberry Pi itself is running MusicBox version which already has all the Spotify streaming features built in it. A custom module then was developed to handle the button pressed and read the NFC tags that embedded inside the cassettes to select the playlist to play.

When the device was turned on, MusicBox starts up and load the custom module. It will wait for Spotify to connect and loads a list of Spotify playlists into memory. It beeps while waiting.

After the cassette has loaded into the player, the custom module reads the tag’s ID and look for that playlist associated with the ID.  It supports basic functionalities that a recorder should have like Play, Pause, Stop, Next and Previous. Its just come with a beep noise every time a command has been issued.

Based on this information, it seems quite interesting and we cannot wait to try it for ourselves in case if the product is released in the market.

This Raspberry Pi Cassette Player Mixed the Old and New Technology to Play Music

If Applet Buys Beats, It Will Get 111K Beats Music Subscribers

According to a leaked royalty report, Dr. Dre’s headphones company Beats Electronics’ streaming music subsidiary Beats Music had around 111,000 subscribers by the end of March. Streaming music giant Spotify has over 24 million listener and over 6 million paying subscribers according to its official report. Beats Music stands in austere contrast to Spotify.

Beats Music launched in January 2014, while Spotify launched in October 2008. Beats Music generated a sizable subscriber base quickly than Spotify or any other streaming music company. This ability must be one of the reasons Apple’s interested in acquiring Beats for $3.2 billion.

There is no free, ad-supported tier in Beats Music which makes it difficult to tell the actual number of people who listen to and pay for music on the streaming music service. According to the leaked document, 49,371 individual accounts (each $10 per month) and 61,621 family accounts (each $15 per month) has been registered with the Beats Music since its launch. Up to five people will be accommodated in a family account.

As part of a promotion, the United States’ telecom giant AT&T has been offering three months of free Beats Music. Said that, most probably a decent portion of those subscribers have likely been using the service for free without paying so far.

The leaked royalty document revealed the figures paid for songwriters. Beats Music pays insignificant amount for songwriters per song played: $0.000126 per play.

David Lowery is the musician who posted the leaked royalty document to the Trichordist blog. He wrote in an email, “Traditionally performers and songwriters have been paid about equally.” “But with the advent of streaming and webcasting [accounting], the division flipped about 10-to-1 in favor of the performer.” “Generally divide the label rate by 10 and you end up with the songwriter rate.”

Spotify pays royalties between $0.006 and $0.0084 per song played on their streaming music service. The songwriters end up getting only a very thin slice of the sum.

Awful computation: With the Beats Music royalty rate, a songwriter will get $10 after his song played 80,000 times, and he can get an individual subscription of Beats ($10 per month). There may be pressure on Apple to raise artist compensation once/if the acquisition is complete.

If Applet Buys Beats, It Will Get 111K Beats Music Subscribers