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So, I have to pay $25 to stream the songs that I bought from iTunes :eek:?!?! This service is DOA for me if this is really true.
 
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aurichie said:
I can't see the recording industry ever allowing Apple to store music acquired outside of iTunes. So the service will be pretty useless to me. Most of my music is purchased through Amazon these days and that isn't going to change no matter how cool Apple's service turns out to be.

I appreciate you letting me know you already don't like it. I hope the service is able to succeed without you on board.
 
You guys want to much...how in the hell do you think you are going up upload music bought from amazon into icloud on day one? Or music you ripped from the internet from day one? Its all about itunes in the cloud baby. Get real and get with iCloud!

Amazon will not be dead...but the music industry will come down on them hard for not licensing....same thing to google...Apple once again got the music industry locked up...now if they can do the same with video...its all over.
 
You guys want to much...how in the hell do you think you are going up upload music bought from amazon into icloud on day one? Or music you ripped from the internet from day one? Its all about itunes in the cloud baby. Get real and get with iCloud!

Amazon will not be dead...but the music industry will come down on them hard for not licensing....same thing to google...Apple once again got the music industry locked up...now if they can do the same with video...its all over.

Amazon gives you 20GB of free space to upload the songs you've purchased from outside Amazon store. Apple should offer very least the same in day one if they want to stay competitive in services. Then again Apple has screwed up iTools, .Mac, MobileMe so it isn't a huge shocker if they manage to screw up this too. Regarding Amazon and Google there is no sign that labels are trying to stop their cloud services. I'll bet they had more room to move in their original distribution agreements then Apple so they can offer cloud services without renegotiations.
 
Where do people listen to their digital music? On a subway? Cloud is useless. On a flight? Cloud is useless. In the car? Better avoid tunnels or dead spots. Have a capped data plan? Better get out the lube.

Basically the cloud appears to be made for listening to music at home (where there is usually no storage limitation) or work, or someplace else that has wifi access. BFD. It's much ado about nothing.
 
99% of my music is imported from CDs. I like having the original CDs -- not that I use them anymore, because putting playlist on shuffle and airplaying over 11 speakers is too good. Most of the music is not even available on iTunes.

Kirtan / mantra / bhajan. Been collecting for over 40 years. Esoteric and heavenly.

What Apple really should do is build a library in the Cloud of all music that everybody has, and then hunt down the musicians and pay *them* to officially let Apple include it for purchase.

There's some awesome cassettes I have not had time to convert to iTunes songs. Would love to buy them from somebody who's done the work. Also have some amazing LPs that were not put on CDs. Same thing, would like to buy those songs. Someday I'll have time to convert them myself.
 
I have tried the Amazon service as I have 'Prime'.

The one flaw is that it takes forever to upload albums on a cable modem.

Depending on your internet upload speeds, have fun!
 
So, I have to pay $25 to stream the songs that I bought from iTunes :eek:?!?! This service is DOA for me if this is really true.

I am with you on this point.

If the rumors are correct and you can only stream what you bought from the iTunes store the service is DOA.

Again, if the rumors are correct, it is the fault of the music industry and not Apple. The industry is so short sighted!!!!
 
Well lets see how this works on capped data plans for iPhones

It's going to be great. You can pay more to Apple so you can stream music you already bought from this iCloud while burning bandwidth so you can pay more to your 3G provider as soon as you run through the limit. For example, AT&Ts bigger limit is 2G or (2000MB) for $25. I just checked the sizes of lots of my iTunes plus songs and they seem to range between about 7MB and about 14MB. 2000MB/10MB per song means that I can burn through that $25 by streaming ONE 10MB iTunes Plus song 200 times, or maybe a 200 song playlist ONE time.

Now, I don't track exactly how many songs I listen to every day, but let's say I want to listen to 1 hour of iCloud streamed music each day (maybe just on the commute). 1 hour of 4 minute songs is 15 songs. So every 13.33 days I can burn through my entire allotment of 2GB for $25 from AT&T on music listening alone.

If I average about 1 hour of music streaming each day for a month, it appears that I would burn through about 5GB from AT&T which can be had for (I presume) around $50 per month. If I listen to about 2 hours of music streaming each day for month, I'll use about 10GB for around $80 per month. Both assume I stream nothing else at all- just songs. If I also take a look at a few youtube videos, watch some netflix or similar, etc... watch out!

Just think how much lighter your wallet will be!!! Doesn't Apple love "thinner & lighter"? "Introducing the iWallet... thinner & lighter than ever".

Or I can just sync the songs to the iDevice, have no iCloud fee and no AT&T 3G bandwidth burn for nothing. Hmmm. Convenience has some value but that seems to be pushing it.

Note that once movies are available in iCloud, just ONE movie can be >2GB. Stream it via AT&T 3G for $25+ or own the DVD, rip it and sync?

I guess I just don't get it. I think the concept of iCloud is fantastic. It just falls down when we have to access that cloud via AT&T or Verizon.

Now off the patent office to try to lock up iWallet.
 
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I can understand paying Apple for the service. It's going use a lot of bandwidth and it costs them quite a bit to support it. But why the hell should record labels get a cut of that? They already got their money when I bought the music. Why should they get more now that I want to listen to it? Screw that. I'll still with Squeezebox Server.
 
As long as it's itunes purchased music only it's a spectacular fail for my money.Might be just the ticket for those who buy all theirs from Apple though.With the next iPhone hopefully having 64 GB,and pandora etc.,it will be interesting to see how it flies.
 
So if all the Apple service lets me do is stream the music I've already bought, which I probably have on my device anyway.... am I missing something?

I think the idea (at least partially) is to do similar with iTunes purchased music, for those have lots of it especially, as the other services... If you are at a friends place or at work you can just open a browser and log into your iCloud account and access your (purchased) music. No need to transfer files from device to device. Also, I think it will help with the "my iPod doesn't have enough storage space left (after loading it up with video) to store all of my music" problem... What do I want to take with me on the road today?

My 2.5¢
 
I think the idea (at least partially) is to do similar with iTunes purchased music, for those have lots of it especially, as the other services... If you are at a friends place or at work you can just open a browser and log into your iCloud account and access your (purchased) music. No need to transfer files from device to device. Also, I think it will help with the "my iPod doesn't have enough storage space left (after loading it up with video) to store all of my music" problem... What do I want to take with me on the road today?

My 2.5¢

It would also free up physical space internally, making room to add new hardware features.
 
I think this serves one main purpose:

It creates an online backup of your iTunes purchases. It's amazing to me how many people buy tons of music on their phones or iPods and NEVER sync them. If you buy $1000 worth of content, don't sync it and then you break or lose your device--you're screwed. This is the first step in eliminating the sync necessity which is overbearing if you use multiple computers/wireless devices.

What if you're a kid who uses iTunes cards to buy content? You do it on your iPod or iPhone and the family computer is a jumbled mess of accounts and craziness. Problem solved.

The iTunes hub/sync thing is outdated, it needs to go and this will be the first step in doing that. I don't expect people to use streaming on a regular basis, and I'll bet Apple doesn't either.
 
I will wager that iCloud will be much more than the storage of music content. My guess is we will see the syncing of all devices and access to all files from any device. This will mean music stored on a computer accessible drive will be available to all devices and iTunes purchases will not need to be stored locally at all if one elects not to do so. Further, if the record labels get a fee for allowing storage of any song, then that becomes a way of gaining revenue from copied music.
 
I can't see the recording industry ever allowing Apple to store music acquired outside of iTunes. So the service will be pretty useless to me. Most of my music is purchased through Amazon these days and that isn't going to change no matter how cool Apple's service turns out to be.

Why? Storing music on a hosted server that is only accessible by the owner has nothing to do with the recording industry. It's no different to online backup, me hosting my own server with RackSpace or using DropBox.
 
I think this serves one main purpose:

It creates an online backup of your iTunes purchases. It's amazing to me how many people buy tons of music on their phones or iPods and NEVER sync them. If you buy $1000 worth of content, don't sync it and then you break or lose your device--you're screwed. This is the first step in eliminating the sync necessity which is overbearing if you use multiple computers/wireless devices.

What if you're a kid who uses iTunes cards to buy content? You do it on your iPod or iPhone and the family computer is a jumbled mess of accounts and craziness. Problem solved.

The iTunes hub/sync thing is outdated, it needs to go and this will be the first step in doing that. I don't expect people to use streaming on a regular basis, and I'll bet Apple doesn't either.

Something I was hoping they'd go through with was allowing people to download their purchases from iTunes more than once if necessary. While that wouldn't be fun having to download $1000 worth of songs, it would be nice to know that you at least wouldn't have to pay for them again (if you didn't back them up)
 
Something I was hoping they'd go through with was allowing people to download their purchases from iTunes more than once if necessary. While that wouldn't be fun having to download $1000 worth of songs, it would be nice to know that you at least wouldn't have to pay for them again (if you didn't back them up)

Apple is actually really forgiving about this is if you contact them.
 
I could care less about this cloud music service. Just get me the MobileMe services I have right now for significantly less if not free and I'll consider this new service a win.
 
This is looking more and more like one of the ancient, now-famous threads from when the iPod launched and everyone ranted about how it was a pointless product, it's been done before and better/cheaper/etc. Can't wait to look back in 5 years and see how ridiculous all this looks. This is the future, grumps.

People also said the same about Ping. And people said that they were being over cynical and that they were wrong about the iPod.

Doesn't make Ping any less of a disaster, does it?

Unless there is some radical element of this that's not known yet, this is a waste of time (just as Amazon etc's are). It strikes me as nothing more than a very expensive and not very good backup service. The time and effort could have been spent licencing content so I could connect my iPod/iPhone to any of my computers (tie it to my 5 authorised machines if you want) and freely copy and paste music between them. That would have made a dramatic difference in ease of use and helping people out who's computers die.

Phazer
 
Good start, but Amazon has everything you purchase stored in addition to whatever you already have. Apple's service is substandard if true.

Don't you have to upload everything to Amazon, and it's a pretty limited amount of space? Amazon seems to have their own set of disadvantages as well, not to mention that there's the question of whether they'll get sued over it and whether they'll be able to continue the service as it exists.


I purchased 0% of my music from iTunes and have no plans to ever buy any music or movies from iTunes either.

Not looking good for me, and others like me is it? :(

In your case, it seems like it doesn't matter what Apple offers.


So I had to re-buy the music my mom owned.

No you didn't. Of course it's more convenient to buy either a CD or digital file than to digitize a vinyl album, but you didn't HAVE to re-buy it.

The situation is very different between having the option of handing a DVD to your kid (which they may or may not want) and lacking the option to do the same because of DRM and accounts.


First of all, nearly no one has a huge portion of their music bought from iTunes.

True for most existing consumers particularly older ones. But what about younger consumers who are just starting out? iTunes is the biggest seller of music right now, if you're buying much of your content from there anyway this is an extra feature. Not to mention that the details haven't been announced yet, it's entirely possible that this could include a subscription option instead of buying songs, either right away or added down the road.

Good thing most people don't buy from iTunes.

If that were the case, how do they manage to be the top music seller in the US?
 
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