Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
The details of how, exactly, this will play out still are to be revealed. I don't know, for instance, how its going to handle untagged mp3s. Or even music that was ripped from CDs - although I think its likely that most of these will be recognized the same way that iTunes uses the Gracenotes database when you rip a CD to iTunes.

With regard to the technology used in Shazam - tagging doesn't matter. The music itself identifies what it is.
 
25$ per year per user.. how many iOS devices? 100mio$? these 150mio$ are peanuts compared to the money apple can potentially make out of this.
 
I love how forward thinking Apple is, I really hope the rumor is true that iCloud will detect music you already own and then just give you access to it from iCloud. It makes the most sense, people are going to listen to music they have (whether obtained via another source, CD or illegally), so why not give them access. The huge advantage for Apple is that they don't have to store massive number of copies of the same music. Although I don't like ads, I can definitely see them having ads (at least for any free or trial version), another way to attract the record labels.


Correct.

Even the point of pirated music. It makes no difference if it's pirated, ripped, whatever. The labels found a way to get money from pirated tracks by earning streaming royalties from them.
 
My question, really, is what would the point be in allowing people to listen to a high quality version of a pirated track, but not allowing people who have not pirated the track to have access to that version?
 
Yes Apple has failed all the way to $60 billion cash horde. :apple:

Did they make that money from Ping ? The argument that Apple has never failed at anything because they have 60 Billion $ just doesn't work.

Apple has good stuff and they have bad stuff. That the good stuff brings in money doesn't save the bad stuff from being plain bad.
 
I have to say, I find the marketing and branding of "cloud" based services rather amusing... since it's essentially just a synonym for server... or internet... :rolleyes:

But, the "cloud" is pretty darn useful! I think it's biggest limitation now is just the infrastructure needed to convey this data... not so much for speed or capacity (depending on your country), but cost... I know many places have reasonable fees for internet usage with appropriate or even large data caps... like the U.S., in general, for example... but other places (*cough* Canada *cough*) have such high internet fees with such low data bandwidth caps that it will prevent users from really using the cloud... unless you have lots of money to burn...! :) But this should change over time... I hope...

Canada is just ahead of where this is going on this topic. Over time, watch as the duopolies continue to pinch the tiers down from where they are to ever-tighter levels. And watch as costs of access go up. Why will the do this? The excuse will be "due to increasing demand".

Their possible solution will be to raise rates to try to manage demand growth and/or build out lots of additional infrastructure to thoroughly accommodate the demand. The former is loaded with high margin profitability as people will just pay anyway. The latter is loaded with profit-killing cost. Knowing what you know about AT&T & Verizon, which do you think they will choose?

In the U.S., we're now down to "big 4" players, which is really just a "big 2" with another "medium 2" below them. Tmobile has made some increased efforts lately to try to win some business from AT&T on price. So AT&T is buying Tmobile. AT&T is bigger than Tmobile and could probably win a price war, but they like pricing (high) where it is, so they'd rather just eliminate another competitor and maintain their margins.

No one should have any illusions that we are moving toward a future with lower costs of wireless Internet anywhere & anytime you want it for ready cloud access UNLESS someone invents some other communications medium that can be kept from AT&T & Verizon. Good luck with that one.

The last best chance for something favorable for wireless Internet users was when the spectrum was freed up for the digital TV transition. That was entirely new spectrum to be used for additional wireless broadband & cellular communications. Apple & Google appeared to show some genuine interest in buying it, which could have made them direct competitors for AT&T & Verizon. Many others were interested too. Had any others been permitted to buy some of that spectrum, users like us could have some additional choices for wireless Internet and cellular service. But guess who got to take just about all of that spectrum?

Competition is good. Too bad we don't have real competition in wireless web access services.

You're assuming everyone who uses the service will be out and about. I for one would be happy to use it in the home with my broadband connection. Am I the only one who consumes media at home these days?

Not at all. I do that too. But then I don't need an iCloud service for access to data that is right there at home with me. I can already wirelessly access everything in iTunes via home sharing and buy or rent everything in the iTunes store. All of my iTunes purchased and NON-purchased content is readily available to me at home. Why do I need an iCloud there (especially if we keep the concept of iCloud to being some kind of anywhere, anytime access to all things iTunes)?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
With regard to the technology used in Shazam - tagging doesn't matter. The music itself identifies what it is.

Its possible that iCloud will use Shazam's "sound fingerprint" technology to identify songs. But think that its unlikely, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, it would be incredibly time-consuming. Going through and playing even five or ten second clip of every song in a 10,000 file music collection would take days. And it would be extremely wasteful of not only bandwidth, but also processor cycles.

But secondly, and more importantly, I don't think Apple and the music companies want to do this. It would enable consumers to "upgrade" from a lo-fi, possibly bootleg, possibly partial version of a song - to a full-fidelity, full-length one. Its one thing to give people cloud access to music they already bought on CD or iTunes. Its another thing entirely to enable widespread piracy. (Theoretically, pirates could distribute files contained 5 or 10 seconds clips of virtually every piece of recorded music.)
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

Wonder how many people don't own iTunes music

Exactly. I don't have any but that is no surprise. I like cd's and lp's, better sound and you can just rip it to your pc.
Downloading it on your device instantly is great, but still I don't know anyone (!) that has one single iTunes track downloaded. It might have to do with the fact that you can buy it on cd cheaper and downloading is even cheaper.
 
Did they make that money from Ping ? The argument that Apple has never failed at anything because they have 60 Billion $ just doesn't work.

Apple has good stuff and they have bad stuff. That the good stuff brings in money doesn't save the bad stuff from being plain bad.

You're totally wrong, Apple has never made a mistake. Ever


...I'm getting so tired of those ltd types
 
When you download a song it is streamed to you once. When it comes from the cloud it is streamed as many times at it is played. Seems that will clog up the internet and cell phone lines especially when it is used for video (like Netflix).

Exactly right. But won't those who sell wireless internet bandwidth love it that way? Burn that 3G data baby.

My iTunes plus songs seem to be about 10MB each on average. AT&T sells 3G streaming plans at $25 for 2GB, or 2000MB. That means for $25 I could stream up to about 200 songs before I'll need to pay AT&T again. If I iCloud stream via 3G for say 1 hour a day, I'll probably be streaming 15 4-minute songs in that hour. Over a 30-day month at just 1-hour of 3G streaming per day, I'll stream 450 songs and burn through about 5GB+ to do so. AT&T will love selling me that 5GB+ for about $60.

Now, if I also use my 3G iDevice to watch some Netflix, youtube, access the web, get emails, etc, I'm also burning 3G data. AT&T will love that too.

Soon the iCloud adds access to iTunes movie streaming. Some of my iTunes movies are bigger than 2GB as a single film. Stream one via 3G and that's $25 or more by itself. Stream a couple of movies on the go each month from the cloud and AT&T can really cash in.

So the reality of the cloud access problem will hit and hit hard. But I can just switch to a lower cost provider of 3G wireless internet at Verizon? Oh yeah, their rates are about the same. Switch to someone else? Right, there's no one else.

The concept of the anywhere & anytime "cloud" is fantastic. The math behind it though can get ugly. As I posted earlier, perhaps the logo should include a vacumn cleaner over a wallet?
 
Last edited:
Reading through the comments, its increasingly obvious why most of you people DON'T run successful technology and media companies.

While the full extent of iCloud's capabilities is still far from clear, most people seem to be overlooking one HUGE advantage of Apple's approach (ie. licensing and paying the music labels) over that of Amazon and Google: It will save consumers the hassle of having to UPLOAD their music files.

Well stated (no doubt the reason you got downranked). I'm surprised people think they will lose local access to their media when they do not have a Net connection. You will still have your media on your devices as much as you want.

People must think Apple is made up of technical idiots going by the whining in this thread. We should save this thread for Monday so people can see how worried they were over nothing.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

GLS said:
If it's iTunes only content, this will be another failure from Apple.

iTunes only content on icloud = Ping 2

You must be a barrel of fun at parties.

Ha no doubt. Full of Wind is more like it :p

To each his own, we always have the "mute button"
 
You're assuming everyone who uses the service will be out and about. I for one would be happy to use it in the home with my broadband connection. Am I the only one who consumes media at home these days?
Your individual usage case is irrelevant.

Apple is looking at the needs of the broader marketplace, not just homebodies like you. Besides, they already have technology to allow for home sharing of media.
 
Exactly right. But won't those who sell wireless internet bandwidth love it that way? Burn that 3G data baby.

snip

The concept of the anywhere & anytime "cloud" is fantastic. The math behind it though can get ugly. As I posted earlier, perhaps the logo should include a vacumn cleaner over a wallet?
I would surmise that streaming via iCloud can be adjusted so that when on 3G, the bit rate could be dropped down to 64 or 128 kbps. If you're on wifi, then crank it up to 11.
 
Wow, Steve Jobs must be an idiot to not see what all you posters see. Yeah, he must not have thought about using iCloud for more than music, and he must not realize that people might not have all of their music from iTunes, and he's totally unaware of capped broadband issues, and he certainly misses the point that sometimes you might not have access to WiFi.

Good thing you are all here to educate Steve on these totally obvious issues that Apple couldn't possibly have taken into consideration when building iCloud.

Of course he doesn't need to be educated about these issues. He knows what they are and will have identified them almost immediately. But I'm still supremely confident the concerns people are raising will be real factors when this service is launched or unveiled next week.

Steve probably thinks he can easily convince enough of the Apple cult that giving him some more of their hard-earned dollars for what I think will be another half-assed service is reasonable. And based on recent history it's a bet I'd make too in his shoes. :)

Or you could wait until Monday.

You might want to try spending time on another site if DISCUSSIONS posted to a DISCUSSION FORUM about RUMORS irritates you. Just a thought.
 
The way this article is written, does does like only iTunes purchased media will be allowed on the system to start with.
It then, to me anyway, hints that OTHER purchased software would be allowable at a later date. Perhaps meaning from other online music stores who can also verify the authenticity of the tracks.

I know most people naturally want to be able to also enjoy their CD music, and or music from anywhere else they may have collected over many years.
But there is no way they are going to know how you obtained your personal collection.

I do hope it's not going to be what we think it is.

I was hoping and expecting a PROPER cloud data storage service, and iOS 5 linked into it, so with my iPad I can save/load documents, music, photo's, videos, and app data to and from the iCloud, directly from within every app in the future.

I fear it's not going to be anything like this, which will be a shame.

Not long before we know for sure, so let's keep our fingers crossed its going to be a lot more and a lot better than we are currently fearing.
 
I'm beginning to think I'm the only person that still buys Compact Discs for ALL my music.

I record the songs from the CDs and the radio onto Cassette Tapes (backup purposes and nostalgia from being a 90s kid)

Very cheap and I can't see the "obsession" of having access to your music from anywhere

I don't download. I only buy discs. Better and cheaper.
 
No you're not. I have 3,919 items in my iTunes library, most of them came from CDs I purchased and then imported. Any "only iTunes" solution will not be very useful for my music. Video is another story since its harder to get your video library loaded into iTunes.

What would be possible (not saying that will happen): iTunes (the software on your computer) compares all songs on your computer with the songs on the iTunes store, and if your song is in the iTunes store (whether bought from there or ripped from CD) you can stream it.

That should cover 80% of my music :mad:


Its possible that iCloud will use Shazam's "sound fingerprint" technology to identify songs. But think that its unlikely, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, it would be incredibly time-consuming. Going through and playing even five or ten second clip of every song in a 10,000 file music collection would take days. And it would be extremely wasteful of not only bandwidth, but also processor cycles.

But secondly, and more importantly, I don't think Apple and the music companies want to do this. It would enable consumers to "upgrade" from a lo-fi, possibly bootleg, possibly partial version of a song - to a full-fidelity, full-length one. Its one thing to give people cloud access to music they already bought on CD or iTunes. Its another thing entirely to enable widespread piracy. (Theoretically, pirates could distribute files contained 5 or 10 seconds clips of virtually every piece of recorded music.)

Would only work if Apple is incredibly stupid. Any ten second clip would only be matched against ten second clips on the iTunes store - there shouldn't be that many! And there are lots of shortcuts. Most songs on your computer have musician, album title and song title on them - they should be matched up quite easily (obviously a check would have to be made if the music in the song is what the title says), so everything that you recorded from CDs should happen very, very quickly.
 
Last edited:
This sounds more and more like a Spotify Killer to me... annual subscription for "all you can eat" music from the record labels - why else would they pay such large sums upfront?

Infact, I'm positive this is what it is... Spotify are currently trying to get US record labels to sign up to their service, but they don't have the deep pockets that Apple does. Apple have most likely lured them away from Spotify with a cash advance.

Still think the iCloud logo/icon is lame though.
 
What would be possible (not saying that will happen): iTunes (the software on your computer) compares all songs on your computer with the songs on the iTunes store, and if your song is in the iTunes store (whether bought from there or ripped from CD) you can stream it.

That should cover 80% of my music :mad:

No. They wouldn't know if you bought it.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

0815 said:
Everyone is approaching this with the mindset of the past. I doubt the labels are even thinking the same way they used to. It's not even about if you own the song or not. Doesn't matter if you pirated it or not. The whole goal of this entire thing IMO is to get both the people who paid for the songs, and the ones who pirated the songs all together under one business model.

The labels realize they are NOT winning this war by forcing you to buy the music. So a subscription model is the only form of profit going forward.

If you have illegal downloads you'll still have that in iCloud. It's not fair to the ones who purchased the songs, but that's the way it'll be. Doesn't matter how you got the songs, everyone will still pay the subscription fee, plus pandora type ads, tie that all in together with everyone getting a percentage of this money and you'll see where the business model is.

You are assuming that the music industry is able to think, change and adapt ....

Yeah I'm not sure that'll work in regards to allowing pirated music. All I would have to do is barrow my friends HD with 400GB of music and Apple would scan the drive thinking I had 400GB of music. I couldn't see them allowing that. Soon we will see but it's my opinion that the coolest thing at WWDC for me will be the release date of Lion!
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_6 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E200 Safari/6533.18.5)

Wonder how many people don't own iTunes music

me, zero bought from itunes, if that is what you mean....

someone in south africa is preventing amazon, apple etc from selling music..

legalsounds works well! and i have digitised 2000+ of my CDs collectd since 1984

:rolleyes:

ps- too much muzak, too little time
 
What would be possible (not saying that will happen): iTunes (the software on your computer) compares all songs on your computer with the songs on the iTunes store, and if your song is in the iTunes store (whether bought from there or ripped from CD) you can stream it.

That should cover 80% of my music :mad:

It would be possible. But it would not be possible for Apple to identify that the files in your library were legally acquired or downloaded illegally from some nefarious filesharing site. This is important because at $25/yr Apple is not going to be able to do a full blown online music streaming service clone. It has to be limited in some way so as not to compete directly with Napster and Spotify who charge a whole lot more. And the music industry needs to keep that competition with Apple.

So I am certain the big content companies are going to require Apple to only permit you to access music they can be sure you lawfully acquired. And the only music Apple can identify as lawfully acquired is the music you purchased from iTunes using your account history. The mp3 files themselves cannot be identified as legally purchased through any technical means.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.