That's perfect for those with iTunes-only content. What about the rest of us with huge, diverse music collections that really just want a digital locker? I don't want the labels interfering with MY collection.
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Music Labels Hoping Apple Can Force Amazon and Google Into Cloud Licensing
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That's perfect for those with iTunes-only content. What about the rest of us with huge, diverse music collections that really just want a digital locker? I don't want the labels interfering with MY collection.
Nailed it.
Major iTunes updates have generally been released in the fall, but since their won't be a new iPhone this summer (rumored), it could be the year for Apple to shake things up a bit.
LMFAO!!! 
THe spent years trying to no avail to kneecap Apple, now they go running to Apple. "Save us! Save us from big mean Google and Amazon!!" And some on the Infinite Loop, Mr Steve says "Sure, we'll save you but its gonna cost you. Mua, Muah, Muahaahaaa. Muahhaaahaaaa!"
THe spent years trying to no avail to kneecap Apple, now they go running to Apple. "Save us! Save us from big mean Google and Amazon!!" And some on the Infinite Loop, Mr Steve says "Sure, we'll save you but its gonna cost you. Mua, Muah, Muahaahaaa. Muahhaaahaaaa!"Apple has spent pretty much most of the 21st century saving the labels from themselves.
1) Created a great online music store, that led a large number of people to purchase, instead of using Napster.
2) Forced them to offer minimal DRM, and then pushed them towards DRM free, despite their obstruction.
3) Forced a simple pricing scheme, at a time when consumers had no experience buying digital goods.
4) Provided hardware (iPods) which make people want to actually listen to music on.
And now they are pushing them towards a decent Cloud based Music model.
I couldn't agree more. Since Apple isn't going to give me a player with enough physical capacity to hold my music library, I want a service that will let me upload and stream it. If Apple just gives me access to music they have in iTunes, about half my collection won't be there. And it sure as heck isn't going to be lossless.
If it isn't lossless, I ain't playing. I'll stick with carrying half my library on my Classic.
You're going to be waiting a while then for a service. At least Google's service converts the file to mp3 when it's uploaded.
Yeah, I gotta agree. Good on Amazon and Google on putting the pressure on the music labels. Maybe they'll be more reasonable now that there is more pressure.
They'll ofcourse allow you to upload music of your own, a lot of people have ripped old music of their own and added it to iTunes. Striking a deal with the music companies is just more efficient by having 1 master copy of "all" songs.
I don't quite agree. I figure the only time I'll want lossless is when I'm at home and can stream audio over my wi-fi using home share (or whatever it's called). When I want to stream music elsewhere like at work, in my car, etc. I think Apples standard 256 aac would be more than sufficient. I don't think my employer would appreciate me streaming huge lossless files here all day tying up the bandwidth.
then you have multiple versions of that song.
Point is there are tons of multiple copies of the exact same song and the exact same bit rate. Just reducing the copies can save a lot of money because it is reduces the amount of space required.
For example that Amazon 5 gig of cloud space could easy be 20-30 gigs of Hard drive space when you factor back-ups and space lost to raid. It is all about back ups. So if every time you can reduce a copy reduces its size by 4 per person it adds up fast which translates into savings. Lets say a 50 cents per gig.
Question about Google's implementation.
Many, including Google, have said they are 100% sure that their service is legal and complies with fair use because it is no different than using an external harddrive.
However, Google made mention that they re-encode the song based on bandwidth abilities. This implies the data they are serving down to the user is NOT the same as what the user uploaded making the service substantially different than an external harddrive. It is a derived stream.
Does this change things? Does anyone know the finner points of the law on this?
Many, including Google, have said they are 100% sure that their service is legal and complies with fair use because it is no different than using an external harddrive.
However, Google made mention that they re-encode the song based on bandwidth abilities. This implies the data they are serving down to the user is NOT the same as what the user uploaded making the service substantially different than an external harddrive. It is a derived stream.
Does this change things? Does anyone know the finner points of the law on this?
Dropbox for example hashes files so if someone uploads the same file it doesn't get copied again and wastes space. No doubt Amazon and Google are planning on doing something similar.
Can someone explain to me why record labels need to be involved with this? Aren't cloud services simply just a way to listen to your music from a cloud rather than a hard drive? How is it any different from DropBox? Why do the labels have any say in what I do with my music?
What should really happen, let em all compete for our business. Apple, Google & Amazon should come to an agreement put the product out and let the consumer choose who they want to purchase music from. May the best deal/plan win. Simple as that
I doubt they even do that. With modern de-duping software on their server farms they only store one copy of each identical file. That's with commercial software. It would be simple to extend that to hold metadata separately from the bulk of each file. Logically they have one copy for each client file. Physically, they only store one copy of each song, plus each user's metadata.
as in someone else or the same user. Same user is one thing. It can be another issue if it is another user and using private folder.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F191 Safari/6533.18.5)
Must say -- I visit the mobile version of this site at least once a day and I was pleasantly surprised to see my album used in the image!
Must say -- I visit the mobile version of this site at least once a day and I was pleasantly surprised to see my album used in the image!
Yeah if that's true that'd be weird if it's between users. The concept makes sense from a conservatory standpoint but unless they're the exact same file that isn't private and won't get modified, this wouldn't make any sense ...
If you can't earn an honest living...
Well, if the record companies can't stay afloat on their own, they demand that the rules change to suit them.
No one should have to pay license fees to them. I love Apple, but I applaud Google and Amazon for refusing. If this is allowed, then it won't be long before they start charging individual users to "stream" the music we already bought from our iPods to our ears (via headphones) each time we use it.
Assuming we already bough a track, I can store it anywhere I want and shouldn't have to pay extra just to store it in a cloud (unless I'm paying the cloud owner for the storage space). I store most of my music on these 5" plastic discs called "CDs". Should I pay a yearly fee for this? No. I also store the same data on my hard drives. Should I pay extra for this? No. Do I have to pay to "stream" that data? No. Should I? No. The only cloud based storage that should be paid for it for the storage space it takes to store my data. Should I pay for that? Yes. Should record companies get paid to sell the initial song? Yes. Do they? Yes. Should they get paid over and over for the song that they already sold you once just so that you can listen to it? No. And yet that's exactly what they want.
Apple, I appreciate your trying to do this legally, but just because the record companies claim that this is legal, doesn't make it correct. Please keep in mind that they are trying to change the rules to make it a legal must.
Personally, I love Apple, but I really feel that their actions in this case is damaging to everyone (except for the record companies) IN THE LONG RUN. KUDOS TO GOOGLE AND AMAZON!
Well, if the record companies can't stay afloat on their own, they demand that the rules change to suit them.
No one should have to pay license fees to them. I love Apple, but I applaud Google and Amazon for refusing. If this is allowed, then it won't be long before they start charging individual users to "stream" the music we already bought from our iPods to our ears (via headphones) each time we use it.
Assuming we already bough a track, I can store it anywhere I want and shouldn't have to pay extra just to store it in a cloud (unless I'm paying the cloud owner for the storage space). I store most of my music on these 5" plastic discs called "CDs". Should I pay a yearly fee for this? No. I also store the same data on my hard drives. Should I pay extra for this? No. Do I have to pay to "stream" that data? No. Should I? No. The only cloud based storage that should be paid for it for the storage space it takes to store my data. Should I pay for that? Yes. Should record companies get paid to sell the initial song? Yes. Do they? Yes. Should they get paid over and over for the song that they already sold you once just so that you can listen to it? No. And yet that's exactly what they want.
Apple, I appreciate your trying to do this legally, but just because the record companies claim that this is legal, doesn't make it correct. Please keep in mind that they are trying to change the rules to make it a legal must.
Personally, I love Apple, but I really feel that their actions in this case is damaging to everyone (except for the record companies) IN THE LONG RUN. KUDOS TO GOOGLE AND AMAZON!
You are missing the point. The record labels are not interested that the content of the file is the same. What they will be looking for is "who" bought the music in the file's metadata . If it is known by the software system that you bought the music then licensing probably isn't needed. If it is unknown that is most likely they want some payment to offest piracy (e.g., fee on digital recording media ).
In the case where only match metadata I think they are threading a very file point. They are trying to draw distinction between the copy Apple bought/licensed as a master copy ( and replicated to multiiple download servers.... it is all not going to be served out of a single file) and the copy the user has.
The licensing may have more to do with Apple's (Google's and Amazon's) obligations as "policemen" for the RIAA than as much to do with setting some price point.
Similarly if going to some kind of "all you can eat" streaming service. Where don't buy songs just stream them then need license. (because users don't really own the songs.)
Unless the CD rips is tagged with a userid or some unique identifier it doesn't prove much at all.
If they were just to scan users metadata and keep 1 master copy of each song on their servers, I wonder how smart it would be. Would it be able to tell that...
Renegade by Jay-Z
Renegade by Jay Z
Renegade by Jay-Z feat. Eminem
Renegade (featuring Eminem) by jay Z
are the same song?
Renegade by Jay-Z
Renegade by Jay Z
Renegade by Jay-Z feat. Eminem
Renegade (featuring Eminem) by jay Z
are the same song?