RadioTimes:

“Right now, music streaming is a utility,” Iovine says. “All the services are exactly the same, they do the same trick. If one of them lowered their price the rest are toast, because there’s no unique offering.”

He suggests that Apple Music will have to look at the frontrunner in the film and TV streaming game, Netflix, and try to replicate its model in order to scale in any meaningful way.

And:

“Netflix has tons of original catalogue, six billion dollars worth of original content every year. That’s a value. All of the [music] streaming services have exactly the same catalogue and exactly the same music. And that’s partially due to the labels; they want it that way. But it’s not smart, and it will show in the end. Unless the streaming services become platforms and have something unique about them, they will not scale. Period.”

And:

“When Shawn Fanning started [music sharing site] Napster, he said, ‘I want to trade songs’,” Iovine says. “He didn’t say, ‘I want to destroy the record business’. So, right now, what engineers are saying – because I work with a lot of them – they’re saying, ‘This bit of communication between artist and audience is still flawed.”

Reading this article, I felt a great sense of deja vu. The reference to The Defiant Ones as new had me searching for a date, sure that this was an old interview. But this was posted yesterday, and Jimmy does point out moving to a consulting gig at Apple, which is certainly current news.

No matter, I thought Iovine’s comments are insightful. Apple clearly sees the value in a music business social network, having tried any number of kicks at the can with no big wins. But I’d like to see them try this again, both because I would love a more powerful way to share music, and because I know if Apple finally gets social right, that solution will respect my privacy.