Trent Reznor Working on Daisy, a New Streaming Service to Compete with Spotify

There’s a big feature on Trent Reznor in this week’s issue of The New Yorker, and while I haven’t gotten to read it yet, Metal Insider has now revealed the two biggest pieces of news contained in the piece:

1. There’s going to be a new Nine Inch Nails greatest hits collection with two new NIN songs on it.
2. Reznor is working with Beats Electronics (the makers of those Beats by Dre headphones that are all the rage right now) on a new music streaming service, tentatively called “Daisy,” which will be different from Spotify in that it will provide ” a layer of intelligent curation.” In other words, it will not only allow you to stream pretty much whatever you want, but it will also recommend new music to you based on your listening habits.

It’s this second bit of news that really interests me. Because it’s a cool idea. Spotify definitely sucks at recommending new music, and it’s a shortcoming I’ve often wished they address.

Only thing is, as Vince reported just last week, they are addressing it:

“The new Spotify featureset includes 1) a new ‘Discover’ tab that improves upon Spotify’s existing recommendation engine and makes finding new music much easier, 2) a ‘Follow’ tab that greatly expands how you can keep track of and interact with what your friends are listening to. Both are designed to address one of the biggest knocks on Spotify, that it’s great if you know what you’re looking for but not so great if you’re looking to discover something new (an area Pandora has Spotify roundly beat).”

This new interface will launch long, long before Reznor’s Daisy, so he’s going to have to think of some other way to lure over customers who are already on the Spotify Train; otherwise, Daisy will just be to Spotify as Every Service Isn’t iTunes has been to iTunes.

Also worth noting: Beats Electronics recently purchased the on-demand music service MOG. So it’s possible that Daisy will just be be a revamped version of that service, or, at least, run on its technology. Which, again, begs the questions, “Why is this better than Spotify?” and “How does it intend to compete?”

Of course, that’s assuming any of this even comes to pass. Much as I love Reznor’s work, he does have a tendency to announce that he’s working on projects that never seem to materialize (e.g., his collaborative album with Dr. Dre, the Year Zero television series, etc.).  We’ll see if this one actually comes to fruition or not.