The worst thing might be considered closely related: monitoring your “collection,” if we can even refer to it that anymore, considering its fractured nature as we switch between various classes of music service.
MSpot might have the answer to the “silo-ization” of our music experience…
having a first-of-its-kind service that combines an online locker to store music downloads within the cloud; a music subscription that allows stream pretty much whatever you want (with around Ten million tracks at launch and more to come); and a streaming radio service that plays artist stations.
“Instead of flipping from iTunes to Spotify to Pandora, you can find everything in one place,” said Daren Tsui. “This is all about combining three different experiences and becoming something much bigger than the amount of the parts, because the music can expand itself. The service is mobile – with PC, iOS, and other devices added, so all of your music actually is on all devices.
“We thought, let’s put together a service where consumers don’t must pay three different times,” he added. “It’s tough enough to get consumers to pay for music, but imagine paying $9.99 per month for a subscription, another $25 annually for iTunes Match, another [$36 per year] for Pandora without ads. That’s nuts.”
Tsui was cagey about how exactly much mSpot’s 3-in-1 service, currently in a “proof of concept” phase, will cost – apart from saying “essentially, you get three services without more.”
In addition to simplifying pricing, the modern mSpot (codename: Aria) will allow music fans to fill out the gaps caused by artists like the Beatles refusing to license their music to streaming services for example Spotify. In those cases, fans could possibly get that music from iTunes, Amazon, or another sources of downloads, and incorporate it to their music service themselves, simply by uploading it to their mSpot locker.
“There are nevertheless quite a few artists that have elected never to participate in a subscription services, so that you can’t get their songs on, say, Spotify,” said Tsui. “And now their are new artists that don’t need to put their albums up. In those scenarios, you can’t have a cloud experience. With a locker, you can absolutely do that. Also, I’m fairly into music, and have a few DJ friends who put together 30-minute, hour-long mixes. I love them. They’re not really available [from subscription services] because they’re not license-able. Because scenario, the cloud locker works very, well.”
In addition, the 3-in-1 nature of mSpot’s upcoming service allows each plan to inform the others, unlike using three separate companies for the a locker, subscription, and radio.
“Regardless of where you’re playing your music, whether it’s from your locker, from the subscription, or from your radio, we know,” said Tsui. “And then when we recommend songs, it’s going to be relevant to your taste… Let’s say I’m playing a Lady Gaga song from my locker… there’s somewhat lightbulb icon which means discovery and recommendation. You click on that, and it takes the song that you’re currently playing and it will recommend other artists from your ten-million-song catalog. Another category will recommend various internet radio stations.”
For starters, mSpot plans to roll out this proof of concept for trial testing. In the event it does become available to the general public, it will include a free trial and run on Android and the web. Tsui told Evolver.fm this is because mSpot wants to “go where there’s maximum pain” for the consumer, but that iOS and other platforms will follow shortly after that. To draw mainstream consumers, mSpot hopes to partner with wireless carriers and/or device manufacturers to offer a co-branded or white-label version of the service.
Granted, mSpot lacks the mirroring feature that enables Apple iCloud to zap songs onto its servers based on metadata instead of transferring the specific files themselves. But once you will get the bulk of your collection uploaded into its system, keeping that collection updated is reasonably simple. And the simplicity of utilizing one app for a locker, subscription, and radio does sound simpler than using every sort in an isolated fashion.
“The question of ‘rent’ versus ‘buy’ disappears altogether,” added Tsui. “They now coexist. If you’re using one app as opposed to three, it is easier to buy music because you know where to find it. Purchases always reside in the music app, on all devices.”
Up to now, mSpot counts over two million downloads of their iPhone and Android apps – and that’s simply for the 2-in-1 music locker plus radio feature. Now that it plans to add a subscription compared to that mix, it should become far more potent, writes tagza.
