Apple's Cloud-Based Music Service to Offer Storage, Not Subscription Access

MacRumors · Feb 25, 2011

Financial Times reports that Apple has "clarified" with music labels its intent for a cloud-based music storage service, positioning the service as a way to back up existing collections and move music to Apple devices rather than as any sort of subscription streaming service.

Apple, which rocked digital music services such as Pandora, Rdio and MOG last week by announcing plans to keep 30 per cent of all revenues from subscriptions taken out through its App Store, has clarified its plans for using remote storage, known as the cloud, according to several music industry executives.

More than a year after buying Lala, a cloud-based digital music service, Apple is now looking to use the cloud mainly to allow users of its iTunes store to back up their collections and access them from any Apple device.

One person with knowledge of Apple's plans said the company did not want to undermine the market that it dominates for paid downloads, likening its plans for the cloud to "insurance".

It is not entirely clear from the article exactly how users would "access" their cloud-hosted music from Apple devices. Apple has been presumed to be preparing to allow users to simply host their collections in the cloud and then stream tracks to their Internet-connected devices on an as-needed basis, eliminating the need for managing and syncing libraries across machines and reducing onboard storage requirements. The report's emphasis on the "insurance" aspect, however, makes Apple's plans sound more like a backup service than a streaming service, although we would assume Apple is still working to convince record labels to permit streaming rather than forcing users to employ a "re-download" mechanism.

Article Link: Apple's Cloud-Based Music Service to Offer Storage, Not Subscription Access

Popeye206 · Feb 25, 2011

Could be cool and a nice value add.

What would really be nice is an easy way to log in on any iDevice and get easy access. This way if I was at a friends house and they had a iDevice system I could log in and stream my content.

Mattie Num Nums · Feb 25, 2011

... and how will they prevent streaming pirated music?

kolax · Feb 25, 2011

I'm guessing they're using the cloud technology for this at the moment, with the intent to offer full streaming when they can get a deal sorted with the labels.

ouimetnick · Feb 25, 2011

Sounds good. I like to be able to have my iTunes music library were ever I go, and if my iPod can't hold it all, then yay for Apple. Like when I go to my grandfather's place, going to lala.com and playing my music was a must. Hope Apple does the same thing, now that they killed LaLa.

Popeye206 · Feb 25, 2011

Kilamite said:
I'm guessing they're using the cloud technology for this at the moment, with the intent to offer full streaming when they can get a deal sorted with the labels.

Agreed... plus other content and user content. I see them eventually making so that all our iDevices and Macs can just grab content as needed. It seems to be the "service of the year" as everyone is going to cloud based services to add value.

Small White Car · Feb 25, 2011

Makes sense. Apple's business model is based around people buying and owning music, not renting it.

I always assumed this new facility would support Apple's business, not turn it upside down. This particular rumor goes along with that line of thinking so I'm inclined to believe it.

Also, I long ago decided that Apple knows MobileMe isn't really worth $99, but rather than lowering the price they seemed determined to make it "worth it." This would certainly go a long ways towards that. A streaming rental-music service would bring in more money but a lot of it would go to the music labels. A bunch of new MM subscriptions, on the other hand, would be money that Apple gets to keep.

Mattstkc · Feb 25, 2011

Mattie Num Nums said:
... and how will they prevent streaming pirated music?

the only way they could would be to ONLY allow streaming of iTunes purchases.. which would make the service LAME since services like Amazon MP3 are sometimes cheaper and usually better.

Tones2 · Feb 25, 2011

Consistent streaming of music is STILL not practical in the AT&T world, with bandwidth limitations and inconsistent 3G service. I want more on board storage instead. I hate this direction!

Tony

smallnshort247 · Feb 25, 2011

I could see Apple saying something like... You can only stream music you've purchased from iTunes.

codemkr · Feb 25, 2011

My Music Streaming

My bet is that they will allow you to upload your content to the site and then give you the ability to stream your content to any device you own. You could do the same with movies you purchase. They could use links to the apple content when possible to avoid huge data storage requirements. Pretty clever..

ciTiger · Feb 25, 2011

Hopefully it won't just be music purchased in iTunes.. It would render this useless to me and I imagine a few people more..

Piggie · Feb 25, 2011

Can anyone see a time that Apple decides that you never have to actually have the data you pay for?

What might happen in the future would be, you purchase data. App, Movie, Music, Book etc, and at the time of purchase the data gets moved from Apple's shopping sever to your own personal remote space.

The data is never transmitted to your device at home.

Your device only needs to access it from the remote location whenever you want to use/see/listen to it.

One day perhaps?

Mattstkc · Feb 25, 2011

smallnshort247 said:
I could see Apple saying something like... You can only stream music you've purchased from iTunes.

there's gotta be a way to spoof the system though. Either by editing metadata somehow or only "obtaining" music that was originally an iTunes purchase and somehow making it look like you bought it.

uk1simon · Feb 25, 2011

What if your library is say 85gb, like to see that backed up to the cloud!!

Mattstkc · Feb 25, 2011

Piggie said:
Can anyone see a time that Apple decides that you never have to actually have the data you pay for?

What might happen in the future would be, you purchase data. App, Movie, Music, Book etc, and at the time of purchase the data gets moved from Apple's shopping sever to your own personal remote space.

The data is never transmitted to your device at home.

Your device only needs to access it from the remote location whenever you want to use/see/listen to it.

One day perhaps?

one day when AT&T has 15mbps down and 6 up and you can use it on planes, underwater, in the middle of the desert, and WiFi is either all encompassing or free and LTE is considered as old as EDGE is today

Phil A. · Feb 25, 2011

It sounds a reasonable idea in theory, but internet speeds are far too slow for many people to make it practical to upload your iTunes library "to the cloud": In the UK, the vast majority of users have a 450kbps or less upload channel on their ADSL, and uploading gigabytes of music would take forever.

For example, I recently decided to sync my photos with dropbox. My photo library is 20GB and it's been going for a week already with another 5 days predicted to completion.

My iTunes library is 700GB so at that rate it would take well over 6 months to get the thing uploaded!

What would make it a bit more sensible (and more storage effective) would be if Apple gave you access to all your purchases (past and future) automatically from your account without you having to upload anything

Andythed · Feb 25, 2011

I better hope my network carrier allows unlimited data

Salacion · Feb 25, 2011

What is it, the age of gimmicks? Cloud? 3D? Motion Controls?

I don't need to store music in the cloud to listen on the go, nor do I want to. Conventional storage is where it's at, and should remain. What streaming does, is promise some form of network hiccup or waiting periods, for when you want to access your music (I mean come on, internet isn't consistent or stable). With physical storage, your music is accessible when you want it, at any moment.

I see how this could work for someone who say, wants to showcase their music on someone else's device, but this is far from being a primary feature.

What would work is a subscription service. I like to own music, but I want to fully ensure I like the entirety of the song before I purchase it. I would pay a monthly fee to listen to full songs. Still, 90 second previews just aren't enough for 'song discovery'.

I wouldn't care normally for this supplemental feature, but it demotes physical storage and its eventual increase. Yes, I do want a 128 GB iPhone in the future.

bassjunky · Feb 25, 2011

For some reason, I still like pulling and streaming my media from my own server at home. This includes music and movies, and there are a plethora of IOS apps that offer this functionality. In fact, well before iDevices were ubiquitous, I've been doing this for years. I also don't seem to have a problem streaming media, at least music, over AT&T's network.

I'd certainly give Apple's service a look, but I do already have my 80+ GB music library backed up in several places.

Mattstkc · Feb 25, 2011

uk1simon said:
What if your library is say 85gb, like to see that backed up to the cloud!!

prob won't be "in the cloud" just an extension of Home Sharing where you can access your home library from anywhere. That would actually be better than having to upload my collection to the cloud

Small White Car · Feb 25, 2011

Mattstkc said:
the only way they could would be to ONLY allow streaming of iTunes purchases.

What? How do you figure?

Let's say... Service only streams to devices logged in with the correct MobileMe name. Only allow a set number of devices to be associated with the name and make it so it uses the MM name that is synced with iTunes (so that it's a big deal to change and not something you'd sign in and out of constantly).

That'd do it. Upload whatever you want, then.

Salacion said:
What is it, the age of gimmicks? Cloud? 3D? Motion Controls?

I don't need to store music in the cloud to listen on the go, nor do I want to. Conventional storage is where it's at, and should remain. What streaming does, is promise some form of network hiccup or waiting periods, for when you want to access your music (I mean come on, internet isn't consistent or stable). With physical storage, your music is accessible when you want it, at any moment.

The extreme succes of Pandora suggests to me that all of your problems are imaginary.

Mattstkc · Feb 25, 2011

Salacion said:
What is it, the age of gimmicks? Cloud? 3D? Motion Controls?

I don't need to store music in the cloud to listen on the go, nor do I want to. Conventional storage is where it's at, and should remain. What streaming does, is promise some form of network hiccup or waiting periods, for when you want to access your music (I mean come on, internet isn't consistent or stable). With physical storage, your music is accessible when you want it, at any moment.

I see how this could work for someone who say, wants to showcase their music on someone else's device, but this is far from being a primary feature.

What would work is a subscription service. I like to own music, but I want to fully ensure I like the entirety of the song before I purchase it. I would pay a monthly fee to listen to full songs. Still, 90 second previews just aren't enough for 'song discovery'.

I wouldn't care normally for this supplemental feature, but it demotes physical storage and its eventual increase. Yes, I do want a 128 GB iPhone in the future.

I think it would allow people who say, have 30-40 gig of music and movies who can't afford a 64gb iPad to say, ehh I'll buy a 16, put the essentials on there and stream the rest.

Though I agree I want to see a 128gb iPad on Wednesday and eventually 128gb iPhone

Mattstkc · Feb 25, 2011

Small White Car said:
What? How do you figure?

Let's say... Service only streams to devices logged in with the correct MobileMe name. Only allow a set number of devices to be associated with the name and make it so it uses the MM name that is synced with iTunes (so that it's a big deal to change and not something you'd sign in and out of constantly).

That'd do it. Upload whatever you want, then.

right but they'd never be able to fully prevent pirated music from streaming via iTunes. muhahaha ....

martint84 · Feb 25, 2011

To me it sounds pretty simple:

Apple knows everything you've ever bought from iTunes.

Every purchase made in the past, as well as all future purchases will now be able to be accessed from anywhere. Music, Movies, TV shows, etc. Apple will not store your personal library in the cloud, they will just use the original files that are already on their servers. If you've bought that song/movie, you'll get access to it.

For those bitching about their music that wasn't bought on iTunes, Apple could care less. The whole point is to provide incentives to buy everything through iTunes...

Apple's Cloud-Based Music Service to Offer Storage, Not Subscription Access

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