It’s cloud and streaming mania! We’ll have to wait and see until the latest revenue figures come out, but I’m betting that the RIAA will be eating a healthy serving of a crow in the months and years ahead. The digital transition of music and entertainment generally is now fully underway, with Samsung being one of the latest companies to embrace an expansive digital music service. The only downside: you need a Samsung Galaxy S III phone to use it.
To those of you who own that particular phone, are planning on purchasing one, or are simply curious about the new service (which launched in the US last week), Samsung’s Music Hub takes an “all of the above” approach by including a cloud music locker, unlimited song streaming, a radio player, and a music store, all within a single app. That app costs $10 a month (not including song purchases), which is the same as Spotify’s premium service.
Asked to comment on Music Hub’s confluence of features, Daren Tsui, chief executive of mSpot, a digital music company that Samsung acquired in May in order to create the hub, remarked, “We purposely are trying to blur the line, whether it’s music from radio or catalog or your music… Honestly, where it comes from is less relevant especially if it’s a single plan. What you want is a holistic music experience at the end of the day.”
That sounds reasonable, but Ryan Nakashima at the Associated Press keenly points out the seeming redundancy of having cloud-based music storage, directly alongside millions of streamable tracks. That redundancy seems to be somewhat mitigated by the fact that people don’t always want to keep the music that they listen to; for instance, you have a song stuck in your head, and you stream it to get some quick relief. We all have our guilty pleasures.
Samsung’s Music Hub currently allows for a 30-day trial, in addition to one free album of their choosing. Jump on that, or something.
• Samsung Music Hub: http://www.musichub.com
