Samsung To Close Milk Music Service

Don't feel bad if you haven't heard of Samsung's Milk Music service - not many people have. Even though the company launched Milk Music to great fanfare a couple of years ago, the service managed to gain little traction since.

That's why Samsung has decided to shutter the service, according to various reports.

Milk Music was originally meant to be a competitor to Pandora that would play exclusively on Samsung mobile phones. When phone users mostly ignored it, Samsung then opened it up online, then brought it to their smart televisions as well.

In 2014 the company launched the Milk Video version of the service specializing in short form videos as part of a greater media strategy that included sports and an advertising platform. Needless to say, that failed to gain traction as well.

Actually Milk Music did gain some users on the free tier, but the company wasn't able to upsell them to the paid premium tier, which is a continuing problem with many other platforms as well.

This just goes to show that just having deep pockets doesn't guarantee success of a music streaming service. Look for more smaller services to either shutter or be acquired soon.

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Tidal's In Big Trouble

When Jay-Z bought the music streaming service Tidal last year the purchase was met with a lot of hope and controversy.

Hope because he was an artist and successful businessman who could steer the company in the right direction. Controversy because of the initial tone-deaf press conference where a who's who of artists were trotted out, all saying that they'd finally be getting their financial due now that Tidal was here.

Since then it's been all downhill. Just in the last 30 days:

• Tidal exclusively released Kanye West's latest album The Life of Pablo, which gained no traction on the Billboard charts since Tidal refused to release any of the user data to Nielsen. A total embarrassment for all.

• Yesterday Tidal was served with a class-action lawsuit for $5 million for failing to register and pay mechanical royalties to an artist in the U.S. This is exactly the same type of lawsuit currently pending with Spotify, and one that an "artist's company" would be expected to avoid.

• Today it's being reported that Tidal fired both its COO and CFO, after having fired it's CEO late last year. At this point, the company is left without any experienced leadership.

Jay-Z has reportedly been in talks with Samsung to buy Tidal, but one wonders why that company would even want it, since it already has a failing music service in Milk Music.

Tidal could have been an innovator and leader in the streaming sector, but instead it's just a mess. It's lead in hi-res music streaming was never exploited and even acknowledged once Jay-Z took over, and every month there's a new mis-step. Maybe Jay-Z isn't the businessman he's cracked up to be after all.

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Samsung Milk Music Streaming Service Now On The Web

Samsung's Milk Music service has been a distant also-ran in the streaming market, so the company took a step to alter that perception recently by letting users access it via the web. Until now, it was only available via Samsung smart phones, tablets and TVs.

It's now available to anyone who creates an account at samsung.com.

Milk Music features 200 curated stations, and lets you customize them by favoriting artists and fine tuning the songs you want to hear by their popularity or timeliness.

You can also create your own station, as an interactive radio function allows you to select and customize what you want to hear.

Samsung didn't create Milk Music from the ground up, as it wisely partnered with Slacker for its content. As a result, the catalog is pretty wide at 13 million songs, and includes music from artists including The Beatles, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin.

Still, it's doubtful that just making the service available online will boost its attractiveness much, although it is free. A premium version at $3.99 allows you to listen to music ad-free, skip as many songs as you want, and play music on your mobile device without being online.

Somehow I don't think that Spotify or Pandora are shaking in their boots over this though. Let's see how long the service keeps going before they shut it down.

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Samsung Spills The Milk With Its New Streaming Service

Just what the world needs, another streaming service. Samsung recently announced that it launched a free online streaming music service that's only available in the US and on its Galaxy phones. The service is called Milk Music, and offers over 200 curated streaming channels free of charge to Samsung customers.

Milk Music is certainly a curious name (although it does bring the widely known “Got Milk?” campaign by the American Dairy Association to mind), but you have to wonder why Samsung would even dream of entering a space with such low margins and high competition. Okay, I can think of some.

First of all, Samsung didn’t have to build the infrastructure for the service, relying instead on Slacker Radio to provide the backbone. This is actually a good strategic move for both parties in that it moves Slacker closer to its major competitor Pandora while Samsung gets Milk users to stay within the controlled Galaxy environment, at least at first. Being powered by Slacker also takes Samsung off the hook for any expensive licensing deals with the labels. That much makes sense.

But that’s where it also gets curious. One of the things about non-interactive radio-style streaming services is that you’re not supposed to be able to skip a song, rewind it, or choose what you want. Milk Music is somewhat of a hybrid in that you get six skips per hour, can choose to “Never Play” a particular song, and can listen to a previously played song from a list of the last 500 aired. This obviously straddles the line between interactive and non-interactive, with each paying a different royalty rate. Are we seeing yet another streaming category emerging? Read more on Forbes.

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