Thanks for the link, @danny. Of particular interest to me was the quote of Enno stating that streaming services like Pandora, Spotify, etc. are concerned about becoming too easy to integrate for fear that they will all be seen as offering the same product (approximately 30 million tracks). I don’t subscribe to any such services, so maybe it is irresponsible to ask these questions: what DOES differentiate the various services? For us, a tiny fraction of the business (I assume), it is integration with Roon. What makes people choose Spotify over AppleMusic, whatever Google offers, etc.? Are those differentiating factors dominant in the market, or do they simply draw lines around very small sectors of the market as a whole?
I am inclined to believe that none of those differentiating factors are all that special. Also, it seems that if Tidal were to die, another streaming service (don’t more now offer lossless?) would be happy to integrate with Roon under some exclusivity deal. If none of the differentiating factors are really of any real significance, isn’t the brand dilution that is of concern to streaming services an inevitability?
Again, I don’t stream, so maybe this is a worthless post, but it seems like Pandora does bring something of significant value to the market: the Music Genome Project data/algorithms. If Pandora were to allow itself to be easily integrated, especially with a user’s local collection, it would be like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This raises more questions for me: would Pandora be able to apply its algorithms to a user’s local collection downloaded using a different service, such as Spotify? Why doesn’t Pandora offer a service where you can download individual tracks/albums from them (do they allow that now?)?
In short, and given my potentially deep ignorance, it seems like Pandora is well-poised to destroy the competition by offering a value that no others can. If they were to collaborate with Roon so as to integrate Roon’s meta-metadata (the historical data that makes Roon so awesome), it seems like Pandora could dominate the market in beast mode. Seems like a no-brainer, no?
If Tidal dies, @danny, please consider approaching Pandora yet again. What a bunch of knuckleheads…
P.S. - If Roon were to join with a streaming service in such a was as to expose Roon to a large sector of the market, I would buy a lifetime license immediately, in the hopes that it would get grandfathered when Roon goes streaming-only.