'MobileMe iDisk' Music Streaming Functionality Gaining Renewed Attention

[baryon]

Can't wait for "oh I would love to listen to that song but oh I'm on an airplane or there's no wifi or the connection is slow or I need to go to a random website to be redirected to a log in screen where I have to agree to the terms of usage and take a short survey before I can go online"!

 

[lilo777]

Does not it look familiar?

That Apple needs special licensing agreements with the music cartel to enable the streaming of music we've legally purchased from a centralized server to a portable device we own is absurd.

It's like we buy the phone legally but then we can not install the software we want on it.

 

[emsilva]

help me understand

See, I don't get why this is so important. What's the point of having your music online, when you can have it all in your device and not have to worry about your internets for listening to it? It's less of a battery hog and simpler.

That is, from a guy who only has 14gb of music. Is that the point? Do you guys who really want this in place have huge libraries and would like to be able to listen to it all on the go?

For movies, I can see the point. I want to be able to buy a movie and stream it so I can watch it "right now" not after my plane already arrived. But music?

I'm not trolling, really, I just don't get it.

 

[ersatzplanet]

Nobody has seemed to mention the transfer caps that are associated with your .me account. From the .me help file:
"MobileMe monitors the data transfer of each MobileMe account to ensure a high level of performance for all MobileMe subscribers. When you purchase a MobileMe subscription, you receive 20 gigabytes (GB) of storage and up to 200 GB of data-transfer capacity per month.

For example, if you publish a 50 megabyte (MB) movie to a MobileMe website, and ten of your friends view it, 500 MB of your allotted data-transfer quota is used."
That would be a lot of music of course but if you stream videos off the same account or park your very visited website there it might add up.

 

[-AG-]

Ok this is not going to be popular but im going to say it anyhow.

I dont want, like or need a streaming music store on my MobileMe account.

Think that the biggest issue here is that as soon as someone says wireless sync etc people just think 3G and forget that they could just mean WIFI on your personal home network.

Firstly not everyone has unlimited data so that they can afford to dump 20+Gb of music onto their iDisk so that they can then stream it to their iphone.

Second reason that this is a bad idea is the fact that this will section off all ipod touch owners out there. They only have WIFI access not 3G so streaming is kinda stupid.

Thirdly i dont want all my data hosted in "the cloud". Sure its handy for keeping bookmarks synced between devices and calendars etc but thats about the limit.

If they wanted to implement streaming then why not introduce the ability to stream your itunes "master" device (say for example an old mini or similar) connected to a wireless network that can stream your music and video to your device over that said WIFI network. Not via 3G.

I know that people are going to bitch and say but what about wireless syncing of your device. Again thats not an issue as that could be incorporated into the same system. Just not over 3G.

Plus with crappy 3G networks like AT&T they would crumble to their knees with the extra data traffic of everyone that owned an iPhone and a MobileMe account suddenly deciding to sync their playlist every 2 hours.

You thought dropped calls were bad now.....

 

[rhp2424]

This has nothing to do with anything. Safari does the same thing when streaming. Maybe Apple is teaming up with Microsoft to stream through Safari...

...as does Dropbox

 

[Rocketman]

Beyond the cloud, there is the mesh. If Apple has your library on its genius list and you want to stream or download a tune or episode or movie, to an arbitrary permissioned device you have, it could detect the media at whatever physical location is closest in terms of bandwidth and assign a permission slip associated with the electronic copy from an arbitrary location.

Cloud need not be all things from a single server in NC.

Rocketman

OLTPC on steroids

 

[Anonymous Freak]

...as does Dropbox

Heck, Safari will continue to play in the background even on a 3G without background tasks... (Didn't try any other non-iPod/Safari apps before I activated background tasks on my 3G.)

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

Ya but you have to admit, it's a nice email address. Tis the only reason I have it as well.

Its the only one I could get my first.last@whatever.com

 

[Macula]

That's good. Now if only iDisk was nearly as good a product as Dropbox…

 

[Ingster]

Ok this is not going to be popular but im going to say it anyhow.

I dont want, like or need a streaming music store on my MobileMe account.

Think that the biggest issue here is that as soon as someone says wireless sync etc people just think 3G and forget that they could just mean WIFI on your personal home network.

Firstly not everyone has unlimited data so that they can afford to dump 20+Gb of music onto their iDisk so that they can then stream it to their iphone.

Second reason that this is a bad idea is the fact that this will section off all ipod touch owners out there. They only have WIFI access not 3G so streaming is kinda stupid.

Thirdly i dont want all my data hosted in "the cloud". Sure its handy for keeping bookmarks synced between devices and calendars etc but thats about the limit.

If they wanted to implement streaming then why not introduce the ability to stream your itunes "master" device (say for example an old mini or similar) connected to a wireless network that can stream your music and video to your device over that said WIFI network. Not via 3G.

I know that people are going to bitch and say but what about wireless syncing of your device. Again thats not an issue as that could be incorporated into the same system. Just not over 3G.

Plus with crappy 3G networks like AT&T they would crumble to their knees with the extra data traffic of everyone that owned an iPhone and a MobileMe account suddenly deciding to sync their playlist every 2 hours.

You thought dropped calls were bad now.....

+1 that was what i thought when I saw this, also IF the cloud would be accessed via 3G our new usage limits would be eaten up within days of use leaving us with the nasty taste of excess MB useage costs

 

[johnnyjibbs]

Um.. hasn't the streaming functionality always been there in the iDisk app? The only thing that's new is multitasking functionality, which is obviously only possible since the release of iOS4.

Yes, your music is technically being stored on Apple's servers but it is not recognised by Apple as such and they have no control of it. And this functionality has been available on iDisk since its inception 10 years ago.

The content may be on Apple's servers, but you, the user, owns it. This is very different from a service like Spotify or Last.fm.

Must be a slow news day.. 😀

 

[Master Chief]

I didn't use it when I had an iPhone. Don't use it now that I have my EVO. Either way paying $99 for the feature isn't worth it. Insurance for my current phone is $4 dollars a month and covers everything.

The Record Company and Apple are BOTH in it for the money.

Sure. A good insurance is a must have.

Note: My browser strips out all signatures – and advertising – and thus I missed the fact that you are a happy EVO user, these days. Sorry.

 

[zedsdead]

That's good. Now if only iDisk was nearly as good a product as Dropbox…

I know. It is really pathetic that Apple can't get this fixed.

 

[fabianjj]

Can someone please explain to me what the purpose of streaming ONLY the iTunes content that you have already purchased, from the cloud? I mean you probably already have it with you in your iphone/ipod/ipad/iwhatever, and if they would charge you for that, that would just be totally useless. A service comparable to Spotify, Pandora (not 100% sure about how that works though) or something like that where you could stream the entire iTunes catalogue would be great, but anything less than that is just a waste of time

 

[steviem]

See, I don't get why this is so important. What's the point of having your music online, when you can have it all in your device and not have to worry about your internets for listening to it? It's less of a battery hog and simpler.

That is, from a guy who only has 14gb of music. Is that the point? Do you guys who really want this in place have huge libraries and would like to be able to listen to it all on the go?

For movies, I can see the point. I want to be able to buy a movie and stream it so I can watch it "right now" not after my plane already arrived. But music?

I'm not trolling, really, I just don't get it.

When Simplifymedia was still available on the iPhone before Google bought them, I used it. It was only when I had a sudden 'Ooh, I've not heard (random song) for a while' and didn't have it in my iTunes library. It was great on wifi, but on 2G (I only had a first gen iPhone back then) it was slow and just about ok for one song.

Something that streams as quickly as spotify, but can stream the music from your computer would be great.

 

[fkntotalkaos]

wow you can stream from drop box

 

[The Wedge]

And you don't use/like Find My iPhone?

Heh, I use that at least once a week

 

[SBeardsl]

That Apple needs special licensing agreements with the music cartel to enable the streaming of music we've legally purchased from a centralized server to a portable device we own is absurd.

I don't they do and the fact you can stream from your iDisk (or Dropbox) probably proves it. So you can upload your music (from any source) to an online storage site and stream it to yourself.

What Apple needs a license for is streaming music you don't already own from their servers (think Lulu). They probably also need a license to steam from the files they have stored with the permission of the record companies for use by the iTune store itself.

What YOU need a license (that you will probably never be able to get) to do is to stream music you own (including certifiably purchased at the iTunes store) to friends and strangers over the net.

So, today you can upload your music and listen to it from some online site like iDisk or Dropbox. In the future Apply may be able to let you listen to songs it knows you have purchased from the iTunes store without you having to upload them and it may be able to let you pay for the right to listen to but not save or copy songs you have not purchased yet (the subscription model).

 

[tdmac]

I don't they do and the fact you can stream from your iDisk (or Dropbox) probably proves it. So you can upload your music (from any source) to an online storage site and stream it to yourself.

What Apple needs a license for is streaming music you don't already own from their servers (think Lulu). They probably also need a license to steam from the files they have stored with the permission of the record companies for use by the iTune store itself.

What YOU need a license (that you will probably never be able to get) to do is to stream music you own (including certifiably purchased at the iTunes store) to friends and strangers over the net.

So, today you can upload your music and listen to it from some online site like iDisk or Dropbox. In the future Apply may be able to let you listen to songs it knows you have purchased from the iTunes store without you having to upload them and it may be able to let you pay for the right to listen to but not save or copy songs you have not purchased yet (the subscription model).

What makes this any different than a Pandora? Pandora and similar stations, skirt the issue of having to deal with the record companies. They are only required to pay royalty fee's for playing through the normal royalty outlets.

Part of the issue is we don't know the direction that Apple wants to go with cloud computing. If its stricktly a streaming service for music you do not own, that is one thing. If its storage of music in the cloud of your itunes library, then this is something else and can't see why this would require any approval.

Storage requirements on Apple's end probably wouldn't be as huge as you think if they were storing your own music. If its itunes purchased music, then they only need to store one file that can be used across thousands of libraries that contain the same song. Its only the songs that were ripped from CD's that would be different. Not sure how that would go. Really then you are syncing an itunes database file.