Survey Finds Strong Consumer Interest in Cloud-Based iTunes Model

[jntdigital]

Paying to stream music from my library, no.

Paying a flat rate have access to the entire Itunes library via streaming, yeah i would do that.

 

[Alphanumeric]

---Steve Jobs

There. fixed it for you.

Haha, thanks!

If you mess up quoting Steve Jobs infamous you blew it quote, you blew it...

 

[dexthageek]

7m to 8m people said they'd pay for it. I bet that none of those surveyed are MR members.

I was never asked. Where do they survey all these people. I have never once been asked to survey anything for NPD.

 

[griz]

Simplify used to do this for a one time app fee and many others still do it. Why would I pay per month? A one time fee, I might pay, but otherwise it's a waste.

I already stream everything from my home computer over 3G, movies and audio. This would only be for people who don't know they can get the same thing with a different app for cheaper or free.

You are powering that machine 24/7 in order to make that music available so no, it's not free.
A late 2009 mac mini uses 14W when idle. Left on 24/7 that would be 10KW in a month. At $.15/KWh you are paying $1.50 for just making the computer available 24/7. If you tack on an external hard drive to store your music and other files, you can add on another $1.50/month to power that. Now if you want redundancy and protection that a cloud based service affords, tack on another $1.50/month to power a second drive. We are now up to $4.50/month and that doesn't factor in the additional power the system consumes when you access and use it remotely to play the music. It also doesn't take into account equipment costs or configuration time. Of course, the mac mini is a best case scenario. Anyone using a system that draws 30 or even 50 watts such as a tower are starting to get closer to the $10/month.

 

[PerfSeeker]

It'll be interesting to see how they sell this idea. Pay for iTunes??? The majority will resist.

Cloud iTunes should work flawlessly and be free.

Apple will charge whatever the market will bear. I thought it was lunacy that people are paying $2000 TCO for smartphones but that's the market. If you don't like a non-free Cloud iTunes, then don't opt in.

 

[PerfSeeker]

No way I'm paying the music industry more to play music I purchased on multiple devices. My music, my decision. Whether I have 3 iPods or a hundred, I'm not paying extra.

You will pay whatever Apple decides, since you opted into their ecosystem. Isn't that walled garden looking a bit confined?

 

[BJMRamage]

Pay for MY stuff??? no way

Pay for stuff I don't own but could enjoy anywhere, anytime? maybe....$1.00 absolutely.


hit up PulpTunes.com for FREE service to enjoy your tunes anywhere from a web connection.

 

[SDRacerR1]

How are you able to stream audio and video from your home comp? Do you still use Simplify as you mentioned or is there another app that you use? Jailbroken?

I use OrbLive which is pretty decent specially over wifi. Plus it plays any format , mkv avi flac wma mp4. Think the cost is 10 bucks

 

[H. Flower]

Apparently you didn't either.

It's estimated that there are 50 million US customers. 7 to 8 million is the estimate of those that would jump on board immediately.

No, I understand the proposition.

But to ammend the number:

7 to 8 million don't.

 

[Torajima]

No way I'm paying the music industry more to play music I purchased on multiple devices. My music, my decision.

Next they'll be charging us a licensing fee for singing a song out loud!

 

[rkw0211]

Unless I will still have local access to the files of the content that I buy, I say no to the whole idea of cloud-based iTunes altogether; free or paid. I could see Apple pulling something like "you have the rights to listen to the song" but you don't actually own it. You can only play it off their servers. If that's the case, see ya later iTunes and hello some other media outlet!

 

[ChazUK]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 1.6; en-us; Archos5 Build/Donut) AppleWebKit/528.5+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.2 Mobile Safari/525.20.1)

I'll wait to see what Google offer with simplify media.

 

[bballmitch2]

Maybe I'm missing something, but why in the hell would ANYONE be willing to pay for access to their personal music library? You bought the music, you ought to be able to play it wherever you darn well please.

Because your iphone only has 16GB or 32GB, you may have 100GB of music. You're basically paying for storage, which isn't a bad idea. I'm not sure how this differs from mobile me though...

 

[Cousin Dirk]

Nice graphic, but I can't help but think that if Apple were to do this, they'd finally get rid of the CD in the iTunes logo, which has stood for a long time to undermine Apple's claim that physical media is doomed.

The only reason I have an interest in a cloud-based iTunes is so I can listen to my music on another computer that isn't mine - but then, last.fm covers that, albeit with a little less control.

 

[JediZenMaster]

Next they'll be charging us a licensing fee for singing a song out loud!

Actually i think that already happens. Certain songs can't be sung at karaoke.

 

[Jeremy1026]

It'll be interesting to see how they sell this idea. Pay for iTunes??? The majority will resist.

Cloud iTunes should work flawlessly and be free.

Totally, the cost of the servers, the cost of the energy to run the servers, the cost to build the building to house the servers, the cost to cool the building that houses the servers and the cost of maintaining the servers are all fake anyway. Why should the end user have to pay for a service that costs millions to get up and running.

 

[jon macnrow]

Wait-I'm confused...Why would anyone pay for this??

 

[Freis968]

I would rather it be FREE for everyone but if not then atleast for those of us already dishing out the money each year for MobileMe.

 

[Torajima]

Actually i think that already happens. Certain songs can't be sung at karaoke.

Psst... don't tell the music industry, but I think I might have made an illegal copy of a song today. I heard a song on the radio, and well I'm pretty sure it was copied into my brain cells, as I can't get the song out of my head!

 

[baryon]

The only problem is you won't have an internet connection in 99% of the places where you want to listen to music. I'd rather have my stuff with me all the time and not rely on impossible to find WiFi hotspots or slow 3G connections.

 

[WhoDaKat]

How can you not see the benefit?

Clearly Steve has said he doesn't like making consumers pay for something they have already purchased. So I am assuming it has to be a free service of sorts. However, no one likes giving anything away so I think they will bundle it with MobileMe. If you are already paying for the "cloud" service, they will just add an iTunes section. Personally, I'd love to not have to buy the most expensive iPhone, iPad just because I have a huge iTunes library. I'll put my favorite songs physically (so to speak) on my device, and I'll stream the rest of the library. Viola, more room for apps!

The space you would save on your device (not to mention the money if you get a smaller HD), and free streaming of your own personal media would be a huge selling point for MobileMe. They would get tons more subscribers and the more subscribers they get the more the "Apple experience" is enhanced for these customers. I love having all my devices synched up automatically. (My only complaint about MobileMe is the price.)

That being said, how are the big media companies not loving it? They should love it that people consume their product constantly. Anything that facilitates consumption should be a good thing.

Lots of options for Apple as well. Make the MobileMe streaming of your own media free, then offer subscriptions for other content. TV subscriptions, movie subscriptions, and of course music subscriptions. Its all your own choice. Pay for it if you want, if not, buy your stuff and stream it via MobileMe.

People better get used to this though, streaming is the future!

 

[SteveLV702]

man glad I kept my Unlimited Data plan otherwise overages would be killer..

 

[darrenbeige]

The idea of a "Cloud iTunes" is a bit vague, and could mean many things.

My idea of the Cloud iTunes would be a monthly fee for free unlimited streaming of everything on iTunes ASWELL AS free streaming for anything you've already purchased from iTunes.

That'd be nice. Your not paying for stuff you own either.

If Apple really wanted to dazzle, they could add a storage area too where you can upload music that you didn't purchase from iTunes to stream aswell. I'd expect that to be like 2GB free, then paid for more.

 

[bawbag]

Apple may introduced a tiered pricing model i.e. ad supported free streaming and then premium, paid for by the user, high quality streaming. I think that might be the best way to do this. Especially if they are wanting to integrate iAds somehow.

 

[jjhny]

Meh. The whole cloud concept, well, it just sucks.

This cloud thing is being pushed because it's a money maker for the cloud server owners - you are a hostage to data. It's like going back to the mainframe and terminals - what an error.

I can see limited use of cloud, but not for anything mission critical.

What if you are out of range or have an outage, or who knows what. Anything important, I have - and with backups. Maybe for the idiot user this works, but not for anyone who has a clue. Besides my library is 37 GB of music alone. I have no need or desire to pay for something I don't own.