ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
I managed to get Deezer to allow me to subscribe to Deezer HIFI and it costs £240 for the privilege of listening to music at CD quality. I can buy 30 or 40 CDs in a year for this sum of money. Considering that the streaming company has to literally transmit from a computer over a stream of 1s and 0s, this seems outrageous and extortionate. I am now reconsidering whether to use a music streaming. Trialling Deezer over the last few weeks has uncovered my underlying listening habits and I tend to gravitate towards things that I’m familiar with or classical artists I love. I’m not sure I really need hundreds of playlists curated by Deezer and other people. In the 1980s and 1990s everyone was quite upset by how much compact discs cost (in the region of £12-15). There was an internal discussion and debate in the Houses of Parliament here in the UK and nothing was done to reign in the costs. I can’t but help think that the streaming services are following the pricing strategy record companies do it in the 1980s and 1990s and making access to music just expensive as it was back then but paradoxically there seems to be less money for the artists who are complaining about streaming of music over physical media. What are your thoughts?
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Present: BL90, Core, BL6000, CD7000, Beogram 7000, Essence Remote.
Past: BL1, BL2, BL8000, BS9000, BL5, BC2, BS5, BV5, BV4-50, Beosystem 3, BL3, DVD1, Beoremote 4, Moment.
My initial thoughts are that the price of streaming services are not so much based on the actual infrastructure and distribution costs of the provider, but rather the licensing costs they have to pay the record companies (and their desire to make a profit.) And I guess their argument would be that their library consists of millions of songs, versus the 30 - 40 CDs you could buy in a year.
That being said, 240 of her Majesty's gold doubloons a year is a hefty sum compared to the 9.99 a month for Spotify premium. My reasoning is also based on the fact that I've never been able to tell the difference between 320 kbps MP3 and their WAV/FLAC/ALAC counterparts in an ABX, so I've never felt the need for a HIFI streaming services.
There is always a risk that you can lose everything when stop subscribing or the service closes down.
Research has shown that people actually listen to a limited range of music and cannot possibly make use of the hundreds of thousands of available downloads. I prefer CD ownership, plus using a select number of web radio broadcasters who suit my taste and do not have annoying DJ's or announcers. If you hear something really interesting then that's the time to pick up the CD version.
Graham
vikinger: There is always a risk that you can lose everything when stop subscribing or the service closes down.
True, and artists/record companies can pull their music from the services if they so choose. So for me streaming is a supplement and inspiration to buying music, not a substitution.
For the past 20 years I've been buying vinyl records instead of CDs, as records were cheaper than CDs here in Norway back then, and being a student that meant more money for beer. I stuck with it because as a product I find them more value for money and a lot more fun and pleasing than CDs. Though as much fun they may be, they're not very practical in the car or whilst jogging, and that's were streaming comes into its own for me.
Not to mention when it comes to checking out new music. I've only got two Ring cycles on vinyl (Solti & Karajan,) spotify lets me compare them to Barenboim. Spotify lets me find out for myself if the newest St Vincent is as good as the previos albums (it is, maybe even better) and warrants a purchase. It also allows me to get completely lost down the rabbit hole and listen to similar artists or music inspired by artists or composers I like.
How come you are paying so much?
I am only paying $120.00 Singapore dollars for 1 year, which approximates to: 67 pounds sterling.
Beolab 5 Final Edition, Beosound Moment
In Sweden I jumped on a deal that gave med 12 months for 149 SEK per month.
That equals to 185 Eur per year.
Regarding cost, the likes of Deezer pay not only license to the content owners. They also pay for the streaming distribution.
That is normally a contract where they pay per GB delivered to a Content Delivery Network ("CDN") like Akamai. This mean that the more consumers play the content, the more it cost for Deezer. Since its a fixed fee per months for "all you can eat" it eats the margins of Deezer. When volumes increase the price per GB normally go down.
So, this mean that streaming high resolution content cost more (more GB per time unit) than streaming eg low res.
Its the same model for the video streaming companies. Netflix have invested in their own CDN to control their costs.
/C
Livingroom: BL3, BL11, BV11-46 Kitchen: Beosound 1 GVA, Beocom 2 Bathroom: M3 Homeoffice: M3, Beocom 2 Library: Beosound Emerge, Beocom 6000 Bedroom: M5, Essence remote Travel: Beoplay E8 2.0, Beoplay EQ, Beoplay Earset
I found I didn't use deezer, spotify, apple music enough to warrant the cost - most of my digital music is on Itunes and I play it from my Mac via a USB DAC using the remote app to control it. It works flawlessly, doesn't cost me a monthly premium and sounds great. Now that my Beogram is working, I find I am listening to vinyl more and more.
Deezer HiFi is expensive - I didn't think it was that much though - I did the month free trial and found I kept looking to see if it was indeed streaming in CD quality or normal - spent more time obsessing with that than actually listening to music.
Like Vikinger I listen to Internet Radio a lot and buy something if I like it.
seethroughyou:...but paradoxically there seems to be less money for the artists who are complaining about streaming of music over physical media. What are your thoughts?
As an amateur artist I lose money self releasing physical media, which I justify as a sort advertising.
Last decades between your label, distributor and now download/streaming like itunes, spotify, etc. It's a far worse deal than in the 'old days'. Thinking you're 'supporting the artist' by buying legit on downloads, in reality is just enriching Apple and so on. This in my opinion loops a descending spiral of banal 'new' music which is considered safe and sells.
One of the only real way to support is a more direct transaction, like buying their merch off their private site or direct shop like bandcamp.
People aren't buying music like in the past and small scale artists aren't making money, plain and simple.
I don't find £10 a month for Deezer or Spotify to be expensive at all. I use Spotify all the time in the house, car and gym.
I definitely would not have a problem paying £20 for Deezer Hifi if it is possible to hear an improvement in sound quality particularly at home. I think it would be worth every penny. I wouldn't necessarily compare it to the cost of buying 30 CDs a year. Its a different product and its cheap when compared to the cost of say a Sky Sports subscription.
What else can you do with £20 a month? Buy a bottle of wine or two. Virtually unlimited CD quality music on tap sounds like a bargain to me.
Duels: I don't find £10 a month for Deezer or Spotify to be expensive at all. I use Spotify all the time in the house, car and gym. I definitely would not have a problem paying £20 for Deezer Hifi if it is possible to hear an improvement in sound quality particularly at home. I think it would be worth every penny. I wouldn't necessarily compare it to the cost of buying 30 CDs a year. Its a different product and its cheap when compared to the cost of say a Sky Sports subscription. What else can you do with £20 a month? Buy a bottle of wine or two. Virtually unlimited CD quality music on tap sounds like a bargain to me.
I agree about the cost, to me it's not much, and I enjoy Spotify Premium, well worth it, as it Netflix. I think streaming in many ways takes the place formerly held by FM. It's like a radio station you own, and can alter the playlist at any time, as if you could call the station and order the DJ around. I also like the ability to search and listen to things I don't own, for example I recently got into the old TV show "Peter Gunn" and the music was great, composed by Henry Mancini, I found the music on Spotify, and also an album by the actress/singer who played his jazz singer girlfriend in the show, Lola Albright. In seconds. I stream far more than I listen to even my iTunes library.
But I have a question related to Deezer I hope someone can answer. This thing about Deezer HiFi being CD quality, wasn't that always Deezer's claim to fame compared to like Spotify? I remember people here talking about that, how Deezer allegedly sounded better (maybe, but these kinds of comparisons are very difficult to make in a controlled testing manner, as is if there is a difference, what causes it). So, what was the original difference in Deezer and Spotify? Thanks for any answers!
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
vikinger: Research has shown that people actually listen to a limited range of music and cannot possibly make use of the hundreds of thousands of available downloads. Graham
Research has shown that people actually listen to a limited range of music and cannot possibly make use of the hundreds of thousands of available downloads.
Where is this research cited and available to read. I’ve been trialling Deezer for a month or so and I seem to be gravitating to the same composers and performers and although I did listen to quite a few Deezer playlists but chopping up 20 different albums doesn’t seem to work as well for classical music. This quote about people actually listening to a limited range despite having millions at the touch of their finger tips might be me. I’m also missing my CD physical media and the anticipation of it in the post arriving to be unwrapped by me before dropped into the hr CD tray (never thought I’d hear myself say that - I’m more old fashioned than I thought....
seethroughyou:In the 1980s and 1990s everyone was quite upset by how much compact discs cost (in the region of £12-15). There was an internal discussion and debate in the Houses of Parliament here in the UK and nothing was done to reign in the costs.
This makes me smile when I think back to my childhood. In the U.S. in the late 60's an album cost $3.99 ($4.15 with tax). I remember being excited when I could buy another Moody Blues album! On Amazon.com the typical price for a CD is about $10 to $12. I found an inflation calculator and found out that $4.15 in 1968 dollars is over $30 today. At least in the U.S. CD prices have remained relatively the same, probably a little cheaper today. But then I buy all my CDs from Amazon Japan so I am paying the adjusted-for-inflation price of what I used to pay for albums!
CDs went up in price early on, to where they were 20 bucks or more, but have gone back down over the years. Like you I remember the big record store in town in the late 70s selling LPs for 4.99 to 5.99, whereas while working in the record store/stereo store I could get them for 3.99 or even 2.99 depending on supplier and how hot the album was. Even those prices were, however, at times too rich for my college budget, you had to balance music vs. beer, and dating.