Forum - View topicNEWS: Anime Song Streaming Service ANiUTa Launches in U.S. in August
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2450 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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The big question is what it's going to cost here. Spotify and Apple Music(*) are $10/month (and Apple Music has a $5/mo plan for students), so if AniUTa comes in at $5-6/mo (matching their Japan price), I don't know what to think of that -- too much because it uses a much smaller collection of music, or fair because it's an under-served niche? Or, looking at it another way, it AniUTa worth as much to you as a Crunchyroll or HIDIVE subscription?
(* - FWIW, iTunes has a lot of anisongs available for purchase in the West, but I don't subscribe to Apple Music so I don't know how often those songs carry over to the subscription plan.) |
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Kougeru
 Posts: 5529 |
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I doubt I will like this. Streaming services (worldwide) had a tendency to have extremely incorrect tags and that drives me too far up a wall.
But more importantly, I think it's insulting to artists to EXCLUSIVELY listen to their "anime" songs. In fact, a lot of "anime song" CDs have better B sides than As. But most anime fans never know because they only care about the "anime" song. If people truly like the music, they should listen to all of the artists stuff and not just "anime" songs. If this service covers ARTISTS that have played anime songs, cool, but if it's just exclusively songs used in anime, then that's pretty shallow. We'll see. |
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rizuchan
 Posts: 976 Location: Kansas |
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I had a subscription to the Japanese AniUTa until recently when I switched to iPhone (and therefore couldn't get the app easily)
I guess I can see how the price seems high compared directly to Crunchyroll or Spotify, but as someone who loves anime music, it was still worth every penny. For example, they had the new Love Live Solo Lives up as soon as they were released. They were $25 each on iTunes and took days for torrents of all of them to show up, but I was able to listen to all 9 right away for basically $6. They also have some great featured playlists, including ones for all the seasonal anime, and you can listen to TV size versions of OP/ED themes before the full versions are released. I was using it a lot to discover good songs from anime I hadn't watched. My biggest frustration was the lack of web/PC version. Maybe I'm just old, but I mostly listen to music while I'm working so it seems dumb to have to drain my phone battery when I'm already on a computer. They also limit your "library" (which I guess is like a Spotify library where you save songs) to 1000 songs, which sounds like a lot but fills up really fast if you're saving full OSTs, or say, the full discography of an aforementioned idol franchise that has up to 9 solo versions of every song. And they really need to work something out to get Sony (Edit: And King Records, for some reason I was thinking they were a Sony subsidiary too) on board. I think it's going to be a hard sell in the west without music from Naruto, Bleach, Eva, etc. There's enough music that I still thought it was worth the price, but I can't use it exclusively when it's missing so many major titles. Edit: @Kougeru, IIRC the b-sides are usually included. The only time I remember seeing OP/ED without "b-sides" were for songs released on albums/EPs only with no single. As for the track tags, the artist field is tagged with the standard anisong format of "Character Name (CV Seiyuu Name)", Which I personally hate, but it is standard and consistent. You can also browse songs by title, artist or series, but the "series" is frustratingly inconsistent in how it groups seasons. (Like for example, I think all the K-ON! and K-ON!! songs were just under "K-ON!", yet they have Love Live!, Love Live Movie and Love Live! Sunshine!! all separate, which is really frustrating if you want to say, listen to the Love Live discography on shuffle. Last edited by rizuchan on Thu Jul 05, 2018 1:17 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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Яeverse
 Posts: 1140 Location: Indianapolis |
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No Sony? Fail. Naruto has such good musics. I might need to wait for reviews of the service, hopefully ANN covers its launch. |
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IceKirby
Posts: 125 |
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And King Records too. |
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3453 Location: Finland |
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Will this have the full selection of the Japanese one? Good if it does, but that would make it the sole exception among every single streaming/retail/subscription service which has a Japanese parent counterpart...
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WingKing
Posts: 617 |
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No King Records either? Yeah, I'll pass on this then. The biggest gap in my American iTunes collection is the complete lack of Nana Mizuki, and if this isn't going to address that omission then I have no reason to buy it.
Funny how often this is true. Like I bought the ED single for Gourmet Girl Graffiti because I liked the ED song, but then I actually ended up liking the two B-sides that came with it even more. And I've never seen those other two songs uploaded anywhere, so it almost feels like having a little secret that only I know about. But that's why I always liked albums and liked the old music model of buying album CDs over digital singles, because I almost always ended up liking at least three or four of the other songs on the album better than the hit single everyone else was listening to. |
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HoboSoup
Posts: 361 |
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I can agree that including the full album along with b-sides is great because it gives people the option to listen to more music, plus opens the door for the listener to become fans of the musician/band. However I think it's rather absurd to say people are being insulting for only listening to anime music. Some people are simply interested in the music because it's related to the anime and reminds of them of it, there's many reasons to listen to music and even just one particular song, if a musician/band were to take offense to that I'd be honestly flabbergasted. |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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I want more anime related music to be legally available (and easier to find) in the U.S., but not via a subscription-only proprietary niche streaming service! And definitely not one that will only work on a smartphone I don't have.
At least Amazon Digital Store, Itunes and Google Play all still have some anime music. I just wish it was organized better (no, guys, not everyone who likes J-Pop also wants K-Pop...why can't I search by country?!) |
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invalidname
Contributor Posts: 2450 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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It's worse than you think. If you find an anisong you like on iTunes, the breadcrumbs at the top of the page will say "Music > Anime". But, at least in the US, if you click "Anime" to see the entire anime genre, it won't work; that genre only exists in a handful of countries (such as Japan, of course). The only way to really browse anisongs in iTunes is to find one you like and then click through the "related" and "listeners also bought" sections. BTW, I came off pretty hard in questioning the price of ANiUTa in my earlier post, but chances are I'll give it a shot, at least at first. I do like helping stuff get off the ground, even if I don't stick with it long term (I subscribed to J-Novel Club for the first six months, but barely read anything). |
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Aresef
Posts: 911 Location: MD |
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I'm all about this. I just wanna know about price.
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4471 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Ignoring that I'm a physical media guy who still uses a CD Walkman (with no intention of stopping), even if I was interested in paying for streaming anime music, lack of PC support would definitely be a deal breaker for me since I don't like using cell phones for anything other than talk or text and maybe very occasionally as a camera for those rare situations where I'd get in trouble with security if I used my regular pocket Canon cameras. (I'm not paying for a data plan to listen to streams on the bus and I don't trust public WiFi.) |
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