The Perfect Music Streaming Service

The perfect music streaming service does not exist. I can, however, create a perfect system from pieces of the existing streaming services. What is the perfect streaming music service? It is a place where you can upload all your music and the site will allow you to stream from any computer or music player device. In addition, the site will throw in new music based on your collection. These features exist, but not as part of one streaming service.

As a digital music collector, it is very important to keep a copy of my collection backed up offsite. I can use a backup service such as Carbonite, but this solution will not allow me to stream my collection. If Carbonite adds this feature, I would signup in a minute. There is no reason for Carbonite to stop with music files. This backup company can offer similar hosting services for peoples backed-up video files, picture files, and text files.

A service that allows me to backup my music collection and stream from any browser or from a wide selection of mobile units is mp3tunes. The same person that brought us mp3.com is now in charge of mp3tunes.com, Michael Robertson. mp3tunes gets really close to the perfect streaming service. Michael Roberton’s company falls short in price, storage limitation, and music discovery. The price for mp3tunes ranges from $39.95/year for 50GB to $139.95/year for 200GB. Music aficionados, like myself, will easily surpass the amount of storage that this site can provide. I own close to 300GB of mp3 tunes. This solution will not be all-inclusive to my collection, even at the highest price point. Let’s put the storage limit aside, the price can seem very deep when compared to Carbonite’s $54.95 for unlimited storage. I am aware that I am comparing two distinct services – mp3tunes offers the added value of streaming our collection. Therefore, a reasonable price for mp3tunes to be used as backup and audio file streaming is at $99.99/year for unlimited storage. At this price, I would gladly subscribe. I suspect many more music aficionados, like myself, would too. The final deficiency in mp3tunes is the music discovery aspect that any music collector needs. The perfect streaming services will play music that I do not own along with the music that is already in my collection. Even better if the user can control the number of recommended songs to get. For example, every fifth song will be a song recommendation. mp3tunes does offer a music discovery feature called the “smart bar”, but these songs do not play along with our music, the user needs to actively select one of these recommendations in order to play it.

I want a backup company such as Carbonite or mp3tunes.com to either support streaming with recommendaion or a streaming company such as Pandora or Slacker to offer the ability to upload my collection. If Pandora needs a killer feature to compete with Slacker or vice-versa, this is it! How great would it be to keep enjoying Pandora or Slacker as we have always done, but with the ability to throw in music from our own collection? Great isn’t? These streaming services will also enjoy the benefit of the added revenue stream. The same price that I was willing to pay mp3tunes, I am willing to pay to Pandora or Slacker – $99.99/year for the added ability to upload all my music collection and stream from their existing interfaces.

I have my wallet out for any company ready to offer me all of these features all wrapped up in one perfect music streaming service. What are your thoughts on this?