"Apple’s new iTunes Radio service is a nice addition to the company’s portfolio, but it really doesn’t offer anything novel compared to rival services. It’s Pandora. Meanwhile, All Access is Pandora, Spotify and iTunes rolled up into one."
I would like to mention that the only thing that All Access is missing is an ad-supported free version. Spotify, for example, gets the majority of it's premium users from it's pool of free users who have tired of the commercials. Apple sees this and is offering the freemium model for their version of Pandora.
Julian Bond - 2013-06-12 07:00:18+0000 - Updated: 2013-06-13 06:48:03+0000
Oh, I think there's quite a lot of other things missing. ;) I want to see G-Music become a competitor for the full last.fm + discogs functionality. Not holding my breath though.
At the moment, G-Music looks like an unfinished but very corporate product that is aimed at consumers rather than participants. There's precious little in the way of functionality for sharing or contributing information. So even though consumption of music generates huge quantities of metadata that look like a classic Google sized big data problem, Google doesn't seem to want to play with it. Or at least not solicit contributions beyond simply subscribing, buying and playing.
So there's a big question for me here about philosophy and goals. I'm obviously stretching a bit by asking for last.fm + Discogs but that's the direction I'd like to see G-Music move in. Because I think CBS is slowly destroying last.fm and deserves a proper competitor. And I see the process of documenting music's (audio) metadata as being a task worth doing on the scale of Google Books. It's not something that you simply buy in from a US back office supplier.
I wholeheartedly agree with +Julian Bond I would love Google to buy +Last.fm and get it out of the CBS deathgrip. The only issue would be that Google would be more likely to absorb it instead of simply improving it.
Keep in mind that Google Music is relatively new and "All Access" hasn't even gone home from the maternity ward yet. I am sure a year from now we will have a very different product from what we have today. With all the new "Big Guys" getting into this arena the entire online music landscape is sure to make big changes. I am hoping that the consumer is the winner.
http://bgr.com/2013/06/11/itunes-radio-analysis-google-music/
So there's a big question for me here about philosophy and goals. I'm obviously stretching a bit by asking for last.fm + Discogs but that's the direction I'd like to see G-Music move in. Because I think CBS is slowly destroying last.fm and deserves a proper competitor. And I see the process of documenting music's (audio) metadata as being a task worth doing on the scale of Google Books. It's not something that you simply buy in from a US back office supplier.