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

Back in the early days of digital music, MP3.com tried to do something similar with their MyMP3 service, and got seriously b****slapped by the major labels. MP3.com never fully recovered from the blow.

Good luck on this one, Apple.

Besides, what good would this do for someone with, say, a nano or classic? Neither have Wi-Fi or a way to communicate with anything except via the dock connector.

Until this and other obstacles are overcome, I'll stick with local storage, thanks.
 
Phil A. said:
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
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You're forgetting one thing. They already have a good proportion of your music. It's called the iTunes Store. All they will do is scan your collection for music they already sell. For those tracks they already have they would simply "link" that track from the iTunes Store to your account, meaning zero upload for you and zero additional space for them. You'd only need to upload those tracks they can't identify.

M.
 
Streaming sucks. Streaming will continue to suck so long as internet access is spotty and is bandwidth crippled or even bowl of GB crippled to a significant degree.

Streaming, if used at all, should have huge cache.

Re-downloading sounds harsh until you realize the time to download a song is much shorter than the time to stream it with an IP persistent stream.

I see the value in Apple keeping only one copy per song (per server grid) and sending it as needed to users with rights established so the download/stream can contain user specific rights management code, if any.

But in the case of DRM-free files where it is the user itself and his rights to that content that are ticketed and the file itself is streamed or downloaded, this becomes more about licensing contracts than technology. The Apple NC server farm has already been delayed a year mainly because the needed licensing was not granted by rights holders to require its early release and ramp-up. Apple was ready.

Hopefully AppleTV 3 will be 1+2.

Rocketman
 
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Mattstkc said:
right but they'd never be able to fully prevent pirated music from streaming via iTunes. muhahaha ....
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Of course not. But Apple knows that you can't stop pirates. The best you can do is make it somewhat inconvenient so that normal people don't do it and then you ignore the small percentage that does.

It's why they stripped DRM from iTunes music and it's why they wouldn't be terribly worried if a small percentage of users abuses this system.
 
I don't really want a streaming service a la Rhapsody. I want a backup service that integrates with iPhone and iPad's iPod app as well as iTunes.

In theory, it's simple. iTunes automatically uploads your complete library to their servers. It's treated like an iDisk--it's just disk space. You set your iPhone/iPad to automatically manage your music.

iTunes/MobileMe uses your personal listening habits and Genius to decide what gets put on your iPhone's internal storage. However, all of your library's music appears in your iPod app. If you try to request a song that isn't on your internal memory, it gets downloaded and cached. If you're not online, it tells you that, and promises to download it to your device when you're next online.

This would provide theoretically unlimited storage for iDevices, and it should help Apple get around any subscription licensing issues. They're not licensing music. They're just allowing users to put the music they already own on a remote hard drive, and access it from anywhere.
 
Rocketman said:
[...] But in the case of DRM-free files where it is the user itself and his rights to that content that are ticketed and the file itself is streamed or downloaded, this becomes more about licensing contracts than technology. The Apple NC server farm has already been delayed a year mainly because the needed licensing was not granted by rights holders to require its early release and ramp-up. Apple was ready. [...]
Click to expand...

This!
 
Small White Car said:
Of course not. But Apple knows that you can't stop pirates. The best you can do is make it somewhat inconvenient so that normal people don't do it and then you ignore the small percentage that does.

It's why they stripped DRM from iTunes music and it's why they wouldn't be terribly worried if a small percentage of users abuses this system.
Click to expand...

Just curious, but do pirates have a way around the limited number of machines that can be authorized with a single iTunes account? (other than stripping drm from individual content). Is there a way for someone to register more than 5 copies of itunes to an itunes account simultaneously? I can imagine apple using a similar method to restrict access to cloud based content. Not completely air-tight, but enough to make it not completely obvious to the average person howmto abuse it.
 
Mattstkc said:
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
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I agree something called Cloud Sharing. You turn it on and the "Cloud" looks at your iTunes and makes it available via the web to linked devices. The "Cloud" just serves as a middle man.
 
Salacion said:
Because Pandora is a streaming service where you can store your music in the cloud.

You really stuck it to me!
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You called it a 'gimmick' because it's a streaming service.

I pointed out that other streaming services are quiet popular.

Thus I don't think 'gimmick' is really the right word to use.

No, I don't think I 'stuck it to you,' but that was not what I was trying to do. I was just trying to make a point and I apparently wasn't clear enough. I guess since you assumed I was attacking you then you'd see my post as a failure.

rumz said:
Just curious, but do pirates have a way around the limited number of machines that can be authorized with a single iTunes account?
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I've got no clue but I've found you can't go wrong by assuming someone will find a way around everything.
 
this is precisely what i want! I don't want a subscription service, i just want to store some of my music in the cloud and access when i need. Sadly, however, i feel this will be restricted to music bought through itunes. Understandable as this is probs the only way labels will agree.
 
Not saying the service will function this way, but just a suggestion for the cloud nay-sayers. This is something i'd love:

To have a device that stays in my car and can be updated from the cloud. Send a playlist or album to it. I don't necessarily want to stream-- I'm thinking more in terms of drop box style syncing. This doesn't mean I put my whole collection in the cloud, it means I choose what I want synced with other devices from one device / machine, and the cloud service does the rest.
 
Small White Car said:
You called it a 'gimmick' because it's a streaming service.

I pointed out that other streaming services are quiet popular.

Thus I don't think 'gimmick' is really the right word to use.

No, I don't think I 'stuck it to you,' but that was not what I was trying to do. I was just trying to make a point and I apparently wasn't clear enough. I guess since you assumed I was attacking you then you'd see my post as a failure.
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Don't take it so serious man.

Anyways, I didn't call streaming a gimmick, I called this Cloud idealism a gimmick.

I'm all for streaming. It works well. Storing your music up in the clouds however, is another thing.

I think you misunderstood.
 
Small White Car said:
It's why they stripped DRM from iTunes music and it's why they wouldn't be terribly worried if a small percentage of users abuses this system.
Click to expand...

That might be a small percentage in US but in lots of parts of europe buying digital content of any sort is fraud upon. It does not bother me much if few individuals are pirating content but a whole country thats just sad. And just to be clear obviously not all EU nations fall in this category.
 
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The Great Boony said:
Gay
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Ok so we have your sexual orientation nailed, any comments on the headline?
 
Mattstkc said:
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.
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I won't be surprised if Apple does this as they really don't care about music except for iTunes.

I think they must be doing something like this:

- Go to iTunes store.
- Stream a song once, completely; they might know where the person stopped, etc.
- Buy if you need to stream it more than once. So they might do something which looks like the itunes web store in the following window where you could review/playback/stream all in one and hence rely on an iTunes based model.
- All songs that you have already bought will be streamable already.

View attachment 272817

I guess they have a huge fanbase, and they won't care about your "other" music collection.

This would result in:

- Another fill in the ecosystem
- All metadata access
- No need to look for another implementation model as everything is in place already.

They just need to make the streaming methods much more secure for them and have to make all the playback - High quality.
 
Salacion said:
Don't take it so serious man.

Anyways, I didn't call streaming a gimmick, I called this Cloud idealism a gimmick.

I'm all for streaming. It works well. Storing your music up in the clouds however, is another thing.

I think you misunderstood.
Click to expand...

If it were affordable enough, I wouldn't mind having a cloud-based backup. I may do that anyways with another cloud backup service. I certainly don't want the cloud library to be my main library, though. Id rather my primary storage be my Mac. (I listen to itunes as much as or more than my iDevices.)
 
Backing up content costs Apple very little space

They really only need to provide a "pointer" to a purchased item that you can download to your device. They don't need to save the same file to disk millions of places. I am talking about purchased content only. They may also give some free user space disk that you can use to store whatever you want, like Google Docs.

In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if they would like to make the MobileMe service similar to Google Docs & email. As long as the syncing with Mac products is still there, I will be happy. That is why I have it. You might well have the option to purpose disk space for backup purposes, just as right now you pay $99 a year for 20 GB. I in fact back up my iTunes content there already.

Sounds great to me.
 
rumz said:
If it were affordable enough, I wouldn't mind having a cloud-based backup. I may do that anyways with another cloud backup service. I certainly don't want the cloud library to be my main library, though. Id rather my primary storage be my Mac. (I listen to itunes as much as or more than my iDevices.)
Click to expand...

Sure I'll concur. But ergh, it's so contrived.

I suppose it's nice to have to outlets for accessing your library of music, but at the same time, why? It's bound to be limited in storage capability, just as physical storage is. Then again, accessing your music anywhere is a cool notion.

This is just a wait and see.
 
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