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FIANNA FÁIL AND Fine Gael have parked government formation talks for Christmas, planning to meet again in the New Year after making “progress” in meetings today.
The two parties, which secured 48 and 38 seats in November’s election respectively, are angling to get back into Government together with the support of Independents or a smaller party.
After a series of talks over the weeks since the election, the parties have confirmed that they made progress on various issues in talks today and have concluded for the Christmas break.
They plan to meet again in January to resume discussing a potential Programme for Government.
They also intend to continue engaging with the Social Democrats and Independents as they look to gather enough numbers for a majority in the Dáil.
The most likely outcome currently appears to be that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will go back into Government together with the support of a group of Independents after both parties backed Independent TD Verona Murphy as their pick for Ceann Comhairle.
Murphy, a member of a newly-formed grouping of Independents called the Regional Group, was elected as Ceann Comhairle on Wednesday during the 34 Dáil’s first sitting.
The Labour Party had also engaged in discussions but has ruled out entering an agreement with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, citing a “policy gulf”.
I think I will stick with my Spotify at €5.99 (with Vodafone). Just got PS4 support and there is no Taylor Swift… It’s win win!!
It’s such a Godsend on PS4. The second a streaming service manages to get the Beatles, I’ll convert.
Nothing more uplifting than seeing the future billionaires of this world rallying together, to squeeze the humble human beings for an extra few dollars for their services….
Well done to all involved, great cause indeed!
Spotify has the Beatles.
Spotify doesn’t have the Beatles. It has some early stuff (which apple records mustn’t own) and they have some covers, but they don’t have the Beatles discography.
€9.99 for Spotify a month, sure where would ya be going?! Shazam’n music and being able to add straight to your playlist is great!
The iTunes deal they signed up to a couple of years ago is a ten year deal so don’t expect them on Spotify anytime soon
If only there was a way to download music for free, instead of renting it on Spotify.
It doesn’t have the Beatles. It has some of the demos and lots of covers. But it doesn’t have the albums themselves.
I will never get this argument. Unless you can physically hold it there’s no argument for having “a way to download it”. Does sync not give you the same benefit? Fair enough if you don’t have Spotify on your phone or want it for DJ purposes, but other than that I don’t get the download argument, sorry.
Google play music has the Beatles. I’m not sure if it has all of their but it has some of it anyway.
Google Play doesn’t have any of the Beatles either. Same old demos and interviews shite.
Business venture disguised as social justice. Nonsense.
Lots of non-famous people couldn’t give a toss.
More expensive? Run by a rapper? I think I will stick to Spotify. I use Spotify every day and think its great. €9.99 is good value as far as I’m concerned.
And you won’t hear those extra lossless audio things unless you listen with headphones which not everyone does, I think spotify and rdio are pretty good.
Well, headphones generally aren’t great for listening to music unless you spend a ton of money. To get anything out of the lossless music you’d need a good hifi, which most people don’t have these days. Fortunately, I do have a decent Hifi and have used spotify on it and its fine. If I want to hear the best quality, I will buy the vinyl.
Lily Allen had quite a lot to say about it last night on Twitter she’s right it’s upgraded sound quality would be useless unless you had the best and probably most expensive headphones and that the price of the service would inevitably drive people to torrents and piracy
You know what I love to listen to Vinyl audio rips, they are the best thing ever, you can find some on YouTube, I wish they were made more readily available, I buy vinyl when that option is possible, cassettes were portable analog it’s a shame they died out because you could listen to them in the car but if you do the same with a cd the cd gets scratched and destroyed after one use.
Hate jay z music and his wife’s music so not interested in supporting anything to do with them the kardashians or west. Rubbish the lot of them.
Won’t stop free downloading.
It won’t, but services like Spotify certainly prevents a need to.
Article is nothing but a promo for the service. It was badly received, plenty of tweets/articles to show this.
This is pseudoscience. The sampling rate is much higher than the highest rate that a human ear can discern.
I enjoy good quality music but paying twice that of spotify for less music is bit of a stretch, plus 320kbps is enough for almost all uses. Plus most people don’t have the gear to make use of anything better.
I absolutely detest all of the acts involved in that signing last night so I won’t be going near it. They have enough money!
You detest Daft Punk, really? I know their last album was a bit weak but come on.
One More Time was fine. Won’t be rushing out to sign up to a service for 20 quid a month though.
It’s unfortunate a bunch of artists are hijacking turn it blue when so many are preparing to turn blue for autism awareness month. I personally don’t do blue for autism because it started with autism speaks and I’m not convinced they are the best representation for autism but most of the autism family, carers, and supporters I know do. They should have picked another color to promote their download service to launch now or launch a different time.
They should have waited until October and used the color pink.
Twas all grand till that west lads name came up. The Eddie Hobbs of music.
Proof that too many nuts spoil the broth.
€19.99 a MONTH? Are ya crazy. To make mega rich people richer! Haha ya right
Do these shite bags not have enough money??
“How Tidal will address artist compensation is not yet known”..
So it just another business back by a few big players. I’ll wait to see how much unknown artists get compensated before even looking at it. Perhaps they can do another high profile launch when they have that figured out.
I don’t care about billionaire singers. If they want my money come and sing in a concert for me live. Work for your millions.
Scientology nut-cases!
If it’s a question of money for people then why spend any at all when you can get it for free on Piratebay? Paying for Spotify only ensures that the fat arses in suits (as John Lennon called them 50 years ago) get paid,not the artist.
Daft Punk had the biggest Spotify song in 2013 which was streamed over 100 million times.The got paid around 8k for that,which was presumably shared with management and publisher.As a matter of principle i think that’s outrageous even by the standards of an industry that has been raping the artist since the very beginning.
You can use Spotify for free if you don’t mind ads or google play music is good and let’s you load 50,000 tunes onto their cloud to use whether you pay 9,99 or not..i won’t be turning blue for these,moguls”!
Double the price! No thanks
You’d want to be mad to purchase tidal.. plenty of more affordable ways to get your music ! But it’s like people buying latest iPhone’s because of the name when there are plenty of better phones out there and more affordable.. so I wouldn’t be surprised if tidal done very well.
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