With the new growth in streaming subscription services it seems to me the music listener’s consciousness is maturing to being served with music online. However for a reliable constant feed of music with no embarrassing gaps in the playing streams need lower quality music compression formats to be reliable.
Downloads can offer higher qualty music formats but ultimately won’t be able to offer such a massive music base as a stream service. However how much music do you really want?
We can compare these services to the radio which is a mature and well developed way of servicing up music to listeners.
Satelight services offer the quality that radio offers in that it is uninterrupted but it offers higher quality than the radio offers so you could be streaming CD quality via satelight instead of the fm quality radio can offer. Digital radio offers an increase quality here of course.
Safelight offers this but with the increased cost of the service and the increased cost of the equipment required. Start up costs are many hundreds even before you consider your sound system and any wiring and extra speakers you will want to add. If you are a small business it would be hard to justify this cost for your in store background music.
Many small businesses are now digitising their own personal music and bringing their phone or mp3 players in store and into spas for example to simply play the music they have chosen themselves. Simple.
So, since smart phones are becoming popular and within the cost reach of business professionals this could be seen as a sunk cost already, or even provide a dedicated device that is held into when you upgrade your phone. Our services do not require the lasted phones or the fasted processors to work.
Simple music playing solutions are now appearing with some online music libraries now offering a subscription based downloading service. These services download the music to your iPod or phone ready to play leaving your Internet connection (or you may not even have one at work!) clear for other network activities that may affect a streamed service during the busy working day.
The challenge of time to download your tracks as opposed to streaming is only encountered for the first download with any new subscription if the system is designed correctly. The first download will be large and if the system is designed well, it will provide updates to the download that partly replace the music you have each month. You will need to check you have enough space on your device before you download.
If the first download is left to do its work over night the music will not interrupt your dayly work, plus you can download from anywhere that has a good wifi connection so you don’t have to be in the office waiting around for this. Simply download the app, rigister and subscribe, then leave the music to download whilst you chill from your working day.
So whilst streaming is growing for the consumer market it seems to me a little too early for the business market.
