One of the highlights of last week’s SXSW show, aside from seeing the Austin Crew again (hi, guys!), was when I spent some time talking to a few of the guys from Rhapsody, just like I did last year. The conversation touched a number of topics, but the one I found most interesting was the changing notion of music ownership. That is, now that most of us are at least familiar with streaming, on-demand music from pick-your-service (Imeem, Pandora, Spotify, Rhapsody, etc.), will people in the future still see music as a “thing” that they’ll own, or more like a service that they’ll tap into whenever the need arises? Will people still cling to a finite number of MP3s on their iPod, or will they prefer to have their music on The Cloud, using a device (say, the iPhone) that can call upon any song at will? A sort of, “Shoot, I wish I had that U2 song on my iPod right now” versus, “Here, let me stream that U2 song for you.” And, if people are becoming more comfortable with this type of music consumption, where does that leave traditional, download-to-own services like iTunes and Amazon MP3? The things we think about!
It’s like this: we’re right about at the point where most of us have a smartphone or other device that has a reasonably reliable, always-on Internet connection. As such, we’re right about at the point where a service—the aforementioned ones, or perhaps some new one—can came along and say, “Oh hai! You know, instead of taking your iPod with you everywhere you go, why not just connect your phone to our service? We have every song in recorded history in our database (“Cloud”), and they’re all yours, provided you pay us $15 per month. Think about it: every song ever, in the palm of your hands. That sure beats listening to the same MP3s over and over again, right?!” That’s a best case scenario, of course. While Rhapsody told me the record labels are now much easier to deal with than they were in the past—there’s still a few music executives yelling, “Go away, Internet!”—, we’re still a little bit away from having Everything Ever at our fingertips. On the technical side of things, that also assumes that our Internet connections are, indeed, sound as a pound (aside: I think that phrase needs to be updated!), something that any iPhone-using SXSW attendee will tell you isn’t exactly the case just yet.
But, for the purposes of this here article, let’s assume that all those problems have been solved. Let’s assume that the mobile Internet is fast, reliable and affordable, and that the record labels have opened up their vaults for placement in The Cloud; no technical issues remain. The only thing we have to confront now is the consumer and her listening habits: will they change? Have they already changed? Does Little Stacy, who’s currently in junior high and listens to music via YouTube and Imeem, portend an adult who won’t think of music in terms of CDs and MP3s, but of something that’s “just there,” for lack of a better term? She won’t have a personal music library, in the form of vinyl, CDs, MP3s, FLACs, or whatever; The Cloud will be her library, on which everything ever recorded will reside. The notion of “not having that album” will be totally alien to her; she has everything, always. No, she doesn’t own any of it—it belongs to the record labels, by way of your Rhapsody and Spotify (or whatever)—but it’s always available to her wherever she goes, so why should she care wether or not she “owns” it? Ownership, in this scenario, will become an antiquated concept, no longer applicable to current conditions, and Adult Stacy wouldn’t have it any other way. Nothing’s stopping Stacy from buying a physical copy of an album on some future whiz-bang format, which includes a super-de-dooper high quality copy of the album, but it would be the exception and not the rule. People still go camping (“roughing it”) even though they have fully decorated master bedroom they can sleep in.
But that describes Little Stacy, our hastily invented character who’s currently in junior high; at most she’s 13-year-old. What about Big Steve, who’s 15 years out of college and works in a spiffy office downtown? He still owns his music—in fact, he’s probably just getting used to buying songs off iTunes and the like—and the idea of songs “being there” is sorta weird to him. What if they’re not there? (Big Steve is a glass-half-empty kind of guy; blame the recession.) And even if the songs were there, why should he pay a monthly fee for an entire library of music he’ll never listen to? How is that better than having an iPod filled with only the songs he likes—he loves Danzig—without any garbage pop music getting in the way? A cynic could say, well, long-term, Big Steve is irrelevant, since he doesn’t buy new music anyway, and besides, it’s his kids whom the music industry will be targeting in a few years anyway. Let him “own” all the music he wants, since it’s only a matter of time till he isn’t even on the music industry’s radar. Of course, that completely ignores the fact that, with his fancy corner office, Big Steve has more disposable income to throw at the music industry (and the services we’ve been talking about) than Little Stacy ever will while she’s growing up. To ignore Big Steve, and all the dollar signs he represents, would be foolish. That’s not to say that Big Steve can’t still buy CDs and MP3s, of course, but the question here is whether or not people, in the future, will be comfortable with not owning music. And as people like Little Stacy use the aforementioned services, they’ll no doubt get used to it; it’ll be just another thing they do, like sending thousands of text messages per month or spending hours upon hours on Facebook.
Specific to Rhapsody, yes, you can now buy MP3s from their online store. (Even disruptive technologies and companies like to hedge their bets.) Whether or not that’s the way forward, or merely something done to placate the Big Steves of the world, is what we’re trying to determine. My guess? I hope they have house music in The Cloud.
For me, it already has. My “ownership”, whether physical media or digital IP, means absolutely nothing to me. As long as I can stream what I want when I want it, I could care less about “owning anything. Paying for overpriced, already obsolete physical media is absurd to me as is hoarding 80+ GB of mp3’s. At any given time I have less than 2 gb of music and a dozen or so movies on tap. Tastes change so frequently nowadays. “Owning” is merely a trend that is finally passing…
Good point drdrew, I think the “Owning” concept will fade away. As you mentioned as long as you have what you need at your fingertips, why do you care if you own it?
It’s hard. How do we future proof our technologies? Do we need to? Do we need a huge company, such as Google, who everyone seemingly trusts/thinks will be around for the foreseeable future, to develop a service that can provide reliable service and continually upgrade over time? Or do we just switch services when one company fails?
Follow me now @ http://twitter.com/ianmikutel
The bulk sale of music is moving towards a model based on access – all media will soon be available like that of a utility to us – like water, some might say (See David Kusic/Gerd Leonhard’s Book, The Digital Music Revolution)
The bottom line is that paying for access to music is where the business is headed.
http://www.mybandstock.com
…is an interesting concept in that you get MORE access to an artist – and you get involved in making their record by purchasing shares in the band. Basically, the website awards people for purchasing music by giving them other perks as well!
When you can access any music at any time (tap water), people will stay pay for heightened interaction (ie, bottled water).
Personal Media Serving will be the future.
The cost to maintain a basic home media server with something like SimplifyMedia is VERY MINIMAL and decreasing everyday.
The trend for Geeks will be to acquire as much unlocked music as possible for free and serve this up to themselves on all of their devices at a fixed and minimal cost.
Eventually this will be mainstream.
Perhaps this will be coupled with a subscription or a pay per use model, but Free is Free is Free.
How can you convince an entire generation of people that piracy is no longer acceptable?
Socialist!! Who let the socialist onto TechCrunch!
Absolutely not! Hard core capitalist here. I just tell it like it is. How do my predictions expose my political views?
You can pretend that piracy will go away but without enforced penalties (unlikely) it will continue to flourish.
The trick is to make cloud based music distribution so easy, inexpensive, and GOOD that people actually prefer it over their cheap and PRIVATE homebrew media servers. This would be great for consumers and for business but it is also unlikely to happen anytime soon.
The problem is: If you don’t own it, somebody else does, and they will charge you for accessing it every time you try to. (ie: subscriptions.)
In the long run, you are going to be paying outta your arse for something that you would have otherwise owned and kept for yourself.
As we move to more of a connected world, it will make it less necessary to store music locally. It will be interesting to see how the “cloud” will change the music industry. There is tons of music today on people’s local harddrive, it would be cool if we could use the cloud to share. If course you’d need an option to download it to your music device to play offline, but at least the repository would be somewhat shared. It will be cool to watch this and see how it pans out…
http://www.soundcloud.com is the best I’ve come across
I agree!
Interesting site! I’m off to watch the video.
This looks like a monumental step back from Lala, Rhapsody and (less legally) Grooveshark.
From a business model perspective, i think the Music industry should move to adapting the Radio/TV model to the internet: a.k.a Licensing and royalties for streaming. That way everyone is happy. We can stream whenever/however/wherever we want for free, and the industry gets paid. They need to solve these rights issues for the net, and figure out a licensing model. Obviously Pandora and Co will complain, but they need to figure out a way to support licensing costs through advertising, and stop bitching about it. How are they any different to Radio and TV? they’re all businesses seeking to make a profit from advertising. Its their problem to figure it out.
for music ‘purists’ (whatever that means), i think ownership will always be necessary. i peruse last.fm on occasion, but everything else i listen to (tens of thousands of songs) comes either via my mp3s, vinyl or cds. and i don’t want that to change. and i know many people who think similarly.
streaming, etc. is nice, but i’ve never cared for it much. i want to own my music, and still feel good when i lay down $15 for a record by an independent or unsigned band.
You can’t use “peruse” interchangeably with “use.” “Perusing” last.fm on occasion doesn’t make any sense.
oh shut it.
I 100% agree with you. While I’ve converted all my music to digital, I still treat it as if it’s a physical media collection. I like to listen to albums. I enjoy browsing my library and finding something I haven’t heard in awhile. I can’t imagine going “I’d love to hear Red Red Meat’s first album” and searching for it in the cloud. It’s only by “flipping” through my collection that I’d come across this, give it a listen, and remember how much I love it. Cloud music is for casual fans and background noise.
Music purists are a minority and always will be a (very small) minority.
Purists are the same group appalled that “kids these days” prefer the sound of the iPod/iPhone/MP3 player of choice sound over a sound system costing thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. They decry the advent of convenience and access for tangible trip down memory lane (yawn). That’s what playlists are for…or a best of album…or a listen to one of your favorite band’s old platters.
Your argument reinforces the bias in many toward holding on to the physical/tangible because it is comforting. This will be an edge perspective soon enough.
The cloud is coming. The advent of (rental) streaming anything/anytime is inevitable. Mass acceptance will not be far behind (as soon as speed and reliability of access, and quantity of content is acceptable).
Physical ownership will always be available in some form, but it will be the exception within 10 years.
-DRB
Did you forget about Lala.com? I paid .10 to stream a song for as long as the site it still alive. I can get a whole album for .80 in the cloud. If I like it and want to play it else were I just pay the diff and buy the mp3s.
Since I am always connect to the internet if its in the cloud I feel like I own it.
But that just might be me.
It’s definitely not just you. I love Lala, precisely for that flexibility you mention. You don’t *have* to own the file, but you can if you want. Perfect.
lalame
If you can share playlists and make your playlists follow your online identity throughout your online browsing (somehow), then that’s equal to or bigger than any personal record collection.
I think we still have a need to show others what music we listen to even if “owning” is becoming less and less important.
You’re forgeting one thing.
We’re all Homo sapiens, we like to own our property.
We are willing to pay money to get something that we can hold and show to the world that it’s ours.
Concrete example? check out Video Download Helper addon for Firefox… the top most downloaded addon out there. Why the hell people would like to download a youtube video when it’s already on youtube ready for streaming anytime?
My answer, we need it local on our computer, the inherited moneky gens still control us (what if youtube will be burned tomorrow? what if suddenly they will charge us money? what if… )
That’s the human nature dude.
But if youtube was no more tomorrow, over 99% of the crap on there now wouldn’t be the downloads you speak of…hell, or even be missed.
except, do monkeys have an ownership gene?
I think people like to ‘own’ as a matter of habit (and currently offline access).
Personally, I think it is just a matter of getting used to the new paradigm.
I think there’s room for both. I use Rhapsody to browse stuff I probably wouldn’t buy, or try out albums I’m not sure about. Last.fm is great for discovering new music, etc.
If I come across something I think I’d want, I buy it.
Streaming / Subscriptions are a suckers bet. Sure it is $15 month now, but what happens when it goes to $20/month and then to $25/month and to $30/month, etc. (think Cable TV).
I’ll stick with ownership, thank you very much.
yup – who wants to rent music? in fact, i’d be willing to bet at least some the people supporting this business model here on this forum are industry shills…
For me the issue is selection and discovery. I can have 3,000 songs on my iPod (btw, RIAA – that’s not a real number) and set it to play radom and I have philipFM, my own personal radio station. If its all in the cloud, how do I define my playlist and, more importantly, export my playlist elsewhere? So long as I can do that (and it is ironic that I value the playlist more than the music) then bring on the cloud – so long as it offers a way to discover new stuff.
This post is right on! I used to spend atleast $100 each month on buying CDs. Now I spend $15 a month on Zune Pass and it has completely changed my perspective on music ownership. A service like Zune lets me play anything I want at anytime! And if I like something a LOT, I have the option of owning it; its strange though that I’ve never felt the need to “buy” anything for a few months now.
Yeah, I also subscribe to Zune and could see them launching a streaming app for all portable devices this summer. You can already stream full songs off the website while logged in and in the zune software.
How do you think this future of streaming will apply to the Audiobook industry?
Some of you say music is free and the artists will make money off the live shows. Will audio publishers survive without a live show or other revenue?
A very interesting debate, one which I feel will be a crucial one to be had to essentially monetarise the digital music industry most fully.
Firstly, to simply gloss over the technical issues leaves a crucial part of the debate – one of the clear disadvantages of the cloud is durability and reliability. Can anyone recall the panic when gmail was down for a few hours? Also this impacts on the quality of music you can listen to, will we as consumers merely accept streaming mp3 quality songs? The one thing about owning a cd and mp3 is that you are not at the mercy of ‘downtime’ like a cloud based jukebox would be.
Secondly, such a blanket approach to pricing music surely inhibits individual artists and labels abilities to sell more in comparison to others? Essentially if this model becomes the norm, then there is a danger that by offering everything we are being punitive on those songs in demand. Of course, I have to note, that I would imagine that there will be a ‘per stream’ revenue for each song available, but that is vastly different to someone going out and buying a cd or mp3. There is a gap in that approach surely? I mean what will a thousand more streams mean for an artist in comparison to those with a thousand less?
Thirdly, there is an element of both a medium and service monopoly here. To fully take advantage of these services you will need a device (which will mean a contract for said device), a subscription and the sound internet connection. That is quite a high barrier to entry if you really think about it, particularly in comparison to buying a cd or mp3. I am talking of course if this becomes the dominant model, rather than if it exists within a diverse set of options.
Ultimately, I believe that this is the way to go, particularly in providing a genuine response to digital piracy (I find spotify easier illegally downloading, which is a result for all involved)
monetize.
All good, but think about this….if I just pay a fixed fee per month and in am allowed to listen to any song i want on the cloud…how will quality of music be sustained? If better music doesn’t come with a higher price whats the incentive to make good music?
DNA – exactly.
How as a consumer can I express my support for a certain song, artist or label?
I mostly buy from small independent labels, but with only so much disposable income, my £20 a month cloud subscription leaves me with precious little money to pay for cds from indies.
Ordinarily I would buy a cd or an mp3, but by paying for a subscription service (note how much less revenue this actually is for labels of all shapes and sizes) I am essentially paying a fee to potentially access everything, rather than something I like.
The issue of cost is important, and chimes with my monopoly point – I would imagine the major labels are too masochistic to sign a common deal with a service provider, which will lead to some labels being with one provider and others with another. This scenario makes the ‘everything in the cloud’ idea not realistic.
Imagine a point where you have one dominant provider in this space, buoyed by the biggest catalogue, able to charge more and more. Cds are likely cost more in the future, leaving the average music fan forced into paying for a service.
People will always want to “own” music. They just don’t want to pay for it… ever.
In the future money will not be made by selling tracks, or access to tracks no matter how infinite the library.
The song is over, all the fat ladies have sang, the music industry as we know it is deadsy, all music is free.
The challenge is for artists to figure out how to survive and possibly even prosper off of their art.
You notice how articles like this never ever make your point, that we’re yammering about future visions here while musicians can’t figure out how to make a living. Basically they need to have day jobs or else write songs of some niche style that’s got a chance of being picked up for a beer commercial. In fact if you’re not helping the club owner sell beer, your band is hosed anyway. Touring isn’t doing that great either. The “whole history of recorded music for $15/month” argument is bogus anymore. The bands I know aren’t going to get any significant fraction of that. And the typical user isn’t going to cooperate with usage tracking to help figure out what’s a fair share anyway. Face it the audience thinks musicians have too much fun to get paid.
I look at this just as another evolution of the web and new media. As long as the quality is good, this is a far more efficient way than hard copies or even pay per song.
Why would I pay $15 a month when I can download mp3s for nothing and just store them online and then access them? I agree with the main points though of streaming. Music became a public good long ago in my mind but the disintermediation of record companies still hasn’t taken place. But it will. Music will be free and artists will make money from concerts and merchandising which gives them their incentives.
Or product placement in songs. Recorded ones for bulk payment and live change versions at concerts for subsequent ones:
Green Day – Longview
Bite my Twix and close my eyes
Take me away to Travelocity’s site
I’m smoking Marlboro’s and feeling fine
Surgeon General says it’s not a myyyyth…
Nope. Music listening will never be entirely devoid of a financial context. Services like spotify, which monetize song plays will just become more and more popular.
You ask why would someone not download it / upload it / access it etc. But in all honesty, i can tell you exactly why. That takes AGES. Not all music (especially if you have vaugely esoteric tastes) is freely available online yet. However spotify, takes SECONDS to access and is simple to use.
Downloading was popular because it was easier, quicker and cheaper than buying music. But streaming is also cheaper, but importantly easier still.
This is all it needs. It just has to be easier than piracy.
As for making money off merchandising and live.. i’m afraid it’s not that easy.
I’ve worked in music for many years and you’d be surprised how few bands can make money on the road. Live fees are absolutely tiny until you start getting to be a reasonably sized band.
This means bands will ultimately still need to make money off as many means as possible… if moneterizing streaming can make money, then you can bet your life there will be people there who will be looking to further numbers of people streaming songs etc. so labels will continue, and the traditional relationship between artist and label will continue (band writes songs, label promotes songs, band and label split profits for successful streams of bands songs).
Interesting debate.
What an opening paragraph. Can you say “SXSW boondoggle”?
If music-as-a-service can more closely match customer charges with real production costs, it will gain a competitive advantage through higher product value.
Nokia has an interesting model with the “Comes with Music” service. It’s available lots of places and is just coming state-side. The price of the service is baked into the handset, so when you buy the device it’s perceived as free (in-the-cloud) music. Of course you can buy (read: download) a local copy as well.
And the vast ‘unwashed’ who aren’t hip or rich enough to live in a tech enclave with ubiqutious high-speed wifi can go hang, apparently. You folks need to get out a little more (and Austin definitely does not count).
Until subway stations (and other moving vehicles) allow for fast internet, I will still want to own my music so I can listen on my commute.
Slacker Radio for the BlackBerry lets you cache their streaming content for such occasions.
I’m still waiting for the country exclusive bonus tracks to be gone.
I’m all for this if these are met.
1 All bonus tracks available, no more certain tracks for certain countries, stores, sites etc.
2 Don’t pull no DRM/Region code/ bull shit
3 I get all music I listen to Asian and African music as well as North American music I want it all from every country not just some countries (this is for you Sony Music Japan, BMG Japan)
4 Price make it 5.99 and I’m for it.
5. I want full catalogs from 1930’s to present.
6 Good quality
7 Must be available on the day it is released; If its released in Japan on the 23 of March I want it the 23rd of March Japan Time.
8 Use as many devices as I want
for these to happen must have
1 Good Internet speeds, I will not wait over 40 seconds for the song to stream.
Don’t agree I will get it by other non monetary means.
2 Dont pull no country restriction type shit.
I think it is called the RADIO, that music channel that is always on!
you hit the nail on the head; like streaming is called TV.
I’ve already moved to the cloud. My entire playlist of music is on YouTube. What I want, when I want, from any computer or YouTube enabled device.
F&CK the record labels.
what’s even better is starting your own label. and youtube sucks for quality dude.
hits it bitch.
I think there is still room for both camps, both types of user. Why NOT put music on the cloud for those that want it? It already exists for the most part. I can logon to my webtop and pull up files I’ve uploaded to Box.net or listen to songs via Youtube. I’m not sure I personally would choose to subscribe to a program that gives me access to the entire music library, but I definitely know people who would!
quote: “we’re right about at the point where most of us have a smartphone or other device that has a reasonably reliable, always-on Internet connection.”
Perhaps in the cloistered web 2.0-gadget geek-tech writer world this is true, but I suspect in the general populations this is a wild exaggeration.
Maybe I’m too old to get it, but I don’t want my access to recorded music to be dependent on paying some corporate entity $15 (or whatever) per month, every month in perpetuity.
This article could have been written 3 years ago. Boring.
yeah i agree. they keep pushing this cloud computing thing cause they have no other ideas; and, are too lazy to hunt down new startups which are really changing the world.
To me the biggest difference between streaming & owning is in the quality. Compressed audio can sound terrible & it is painful to listen to. If/when flac is is the preferred file format over mp3 or (ach!) AAC then there may be a conversation. As it stands, streaming is nice for convenience, but the quality just isn’t there.
That being said I’m listening to my Ramones radio station on Pandora as I type this.
Very good post. For me, Rhapsody-to-Go has been a godsend. I can stream from the site, but more often I download whatever I want to listen to to my firstgen Sansa clip and change it whenever I want. Seems to me better than buying stuff I might like, or parts of stuff I might like, in order to listen. If it’s a classic, maybe I’ll buy it just to keep it. But I have found I buy less stuff because I can get it anytime I want, whether streaming or as a download. Well worth the monthly subscription.
The biggest difference between ownership and streaming is that ownership is completely independent of platform. I love having my catalog up on Lala, but what if they screw up the interface? Or start charging for something that I don’t want to pay for? No big deal…I just stop using the service and don’t lose any music. But if you don’t have *something* that you can move from one service to another, then you’re going to lose stuff as services go bad. That is: you’re going to pay for it again.
not only that; we let you buy and sell your music…so you’re not only independent, you’re cashing in too. by being a distributor, helping the artist.
this is what no one in silicon valley is thinking of; intellectual property is property, and you can make money from it while you enjoy it.
and money really matters now. not bullshit dreamland cloud crap… “if i’m hik’n in the mountains, ans i can’ts connects…”
yeah. i wish comp-sci geeks would get real and start making things with bidness models and realism.
umakeitcool.com baby…
The convenience of music in the cloud is an amazing proposition, but the changes in user expectations that will happen over the next decade are just one factor in a complex picture. People like Stacy will want their music in the cloud, but not in isolation from the existing ecosystem of music players, devices and purchases.
What about the 151 million iPods sold, which need to dock to iTunes to sync? The personalized and curated music collections that people have invested in? The hundreds of millions of dollars spent on home audio installations? They all need to be hooked into the cloud.
The flip side of the coin is that individual preferences of how we choose to experience music are as diverse as music itself. There is no one-size-fits-all solution…
By not making music affordable and available, those music executives mentioned are creating a black market. And affordable is not I-live-in-Palo-Alto-and-drive-an-Audi affordable.
Frank Zappa, who was a pioneer of music distribution, made his bootlegs futile by making them available for an affordable price.
Long-term, cutting the middleman makes more sense –having services that bridge artists with audience and provide (and reasonably charge for) a service to both.
Interesting article. I was talking with my brother about this a couple of years ago. We discussed it at length and how such a cloud type streaming service might work. I think it will end up looking something like this though.
1: Hard core music heads like myself will more than likely suffer from one of the following problems.
a. The cloud service I’m paying doesn’t have the esoteric music that I listen to on hand.
b. They have the music, but the sonic quality provided by their stream is choppy and lacks the kind of quality I’m used to with my self-ripped LAME encoded mp3’s.
c. I’m in an airplane on a business trip or on the subway and have no way to connect to the net or cannot receive a clear enough signal to receive the stream in high-fidelity and/or is choppy.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against the technology. In fact, it seems to me, that any music lover would love this service. It’s just that any such service will depend on it’s servers being updated constantly and to stay in touch with it’s users, will undoubtedly have to have some kind of upload service that allows musicians of all walks of life to upload their stuff signed, not signed, popular or not. When I think of all the red tape that will be required for such a service to walk through, I think to myself, maybe someday. But sadly, for heavy music lovers like myself, no time soon.
Oh and one more thing. Before any company could consider trying to take over the entire music industry which if what this article is talking about was done right could do, the United States will have to make leaps and bounds in broadband service as it’s currently ranked like 18th in overall speed. Behind a host of other countries actually living in the 21st century. Japan, S.Korea, Netherlands, Germany, and many more… I may sound like a pessimist, but truly, I’d love nothing more than America’s broad band to come up to speed with the rest of the world and this kind of service to become available!
I have no interest in “owning” music any longer. It’s not simply that there are limited numbers of songs I wish to hear time and again for years on end, but also that the world is too diverse and too dynamic to settle on a limited set of music.
I just gave up on my Zune this past weekend–the hardware and software problems were too much to overcome–and a friend said, “See, that’s the problem with subscription services–now you don’t own anything.” But since I had subscribed to Zune for 36 months at $14.95 per month and had enjoyed ~150 CDs in that time, it hardly seems a poor economic choice ($540 for the subscription versus $1500 to $2000 to purchase the same music.)
My next MP3 player won’t be an “ownership” model either. I will explore Rhapsody to Go or Napster and continue to “rent” music so that the music I listen to can stay as fresh, diverse, and dynamic as my tastes. For $15 a month, that’s a small price to pay, IMO.
Owning music means you own the responsibility of keeping track of all those files and moving them all between computers when things die. I’d rather pay Rhapsody $12/month to do that work.
That’s really not that hard….
yeah, and you can’t make money from them cause you don’t use umakeitcool.com; u just pay for shit.
everyone knows Rhapsody is shit. no one who has a brain installs that crap. it’s noth’n but hack ware to rip you off. $12 a month, or $144 a year…
i can listen to the radio for free, and buy CDs. $144 a year so you don’t have to move files on your computer? guess you’re a ‘tard, stupid, or lazy.
hehe. Lemon obviously doesn’t know what Rhapsody is if he compares it to the radio.
rhapsody use to be called listen.com; before yous born. i worked there.
u guys are ‘tards for sure. We’re releasing technology which allows you to re-sell the music you buy. so you can make money.
cloud computing is a wet-dream for comp-sci geeks IMHO;
most people walk around with their ipods listening to music; or play it while they work; usually wanting to listen to something they know; or their favorite radio station, like pandora, if they want random or something new.
i guess you guys are really thinking about making money from the intellectual property you buy; or getting paid for selling it.
that’s cause you’ve been brain-washed.
goto umakeitcool.com and start kick’n ass today; sell what you make instead of giving it away trying to be cools…making money is cool, not act’n like a ‘tard to impress some chick who’ll never give you the time of day.
buy and sell between your friends and the world,
start thinking about making money rather than just paying $12 subscription fees to get used by the entertaiment industry when it’s u who makes it cool.
quit listen to the olds about what we should do, and how we should do…
it’s our time.
interesting that the old ugly real networks came up with this music cloud service years ago when it was called streaming media.. meanwhile the problem is not the underlaying technology or architecture, (while p2p is hard to beat) but the quality of the content itself. the selections of social playlist generators or the mp3 shopping malls are rather a replacement of the format radio and pre-selected mega record stores. they please the mainstream needs maybe, but any new imortant niche, any interesting genre will be still deeper in variety, faster in release speed, more exiting in experience more cost effective and generally ahead of the curve of such suburban mass comsumer services . exiting new niches, use remixes, dubplates, own radio stations, have their own clubs, communities, labels and real existing economies. the mass consumers will just stink even more than they do already and pay more for some kind of streamlined service, for stuff which was cool 2 or 3 years ago.
besides the net factory aka the cloud will lead to a second phase of p2p in form of networked homeservers, a massive multipetabyte NAS network, controlled by its own users. check out the tremendous value of private torrent trackers. much more fun and cost effective in times of recession. so get ready to get lost with your MBAs.
btw, a reference standard in service quality was set by the p2p service audiogalaxy.. never achieved again, after listen.com/rhapsody bought it. the model with the little smart client is not reactivated by spotify.
More phones with access to Rhapsody/Napster/Imeem will be the tipping point of the cloud/subscription adoption.
I have been a Rhapsody member for 2 years now and every time someone comes over and realizes that through my Tivo box I have access to virtual any song through my stereo, they are amazed, and love “testing” the library.
Now, if a phone app could demonstrate that same ability (which is obviously possible now) to stream any song to anyone, anywhere I am, it would create the kind of viral effect that happened once Pandora hit iPhone.
After I found Pandora, my Ipod became just another travel HD. besides I haven’t bought any new music in years.
I don’t know, I am still a music traditionalist at heart. I really don’t want to pay for a service that will offer me all the stuff I don’t like in addition to the stuff I want. Dialing it up upon request seems a little tiresome. I want a playlist, a set of continuous music like my Ipod has yet knowing that I own that music, I can play it when I want, where I want and how I want yet I still have the album artwork and liner notes that go with it.
That to me is the joy in owning music, you get the info, the artistic work and the tangible things that go with it. Why else would vinyle be making a comeback? That was the joy back in the day being able to peel that vinyl out and loot at all the album artwork.
Music has become so shallow though with artists just coming up with the one hit wonder to get their 15 seconds of fame and most people are too short sighted to wait for the sophmore release when the next big thing is right in front of them.
The Cloud will absolutely change most people’s take on ownership of almost all media. If I never have to worry about accessing everything anywhere, why would I want to own it? The question still remains of how this will be monetized though.
Although I intellectually understand there will be services that will allow you access to everything for a fee (and if the fee is super low I believe a lot of people will pony up money) but my gut tells me many will find a way around paying anything and enable people to access this all for nothing. Don’t underestimate the habit of free that we have gotten used to online.
Whether The Cloud is a godsend for content owners or the final nail in the coffin is still up in the air.
http://www.gerardbabitts.com/2009/03/23/whats-the-value-of-content/
Cloud Music is great, but we dont have the perfect connections and as stated above there would be a whole lot of other technical issues to overcome. Just think about how many articles TC would write on “cloud music” network is crawling or unavailable.
Twitter = text and it cant deal with it.
Music?
What happens when the ( potentially ) inevitable two tier internet gets rolled out, pay for music, pay for the download. ( it all starts to become costly ).
Throw into the mix that you have companies like Sony who want to be an isp, and all of a sudden streaming music is costly. ( again noted “DNA, Marcus Warner” to name a few from above )
I can see the first uptake of cloud music will come from us ( technological minded people ). But after that I think until other barriers are broken down it will be a trickle growth.
For instance, youtube for a long time has had playlists, recently they have started pushing them more in the search results. But I as a techie have only made a handful of playlists. Perhaps others churn them out by the dozen.
I would go out on a limb and say the playlist creators are in the minority and the “search, play” group are in the majority by a landslide.
I can picture in years to come, a whole street full of “cloud listening music lovers”, stopping in the street looking upto the skies, wondering why their music just stopped. ( network went down ).
Until networks are as quick as my computer at spreading the data love, I will be looking to storing music at home.
Unless a service/site can prove itself trustworthy in that it will ALWAYS have ALL the music you’ve EVER had access to, and will not discontinue or remove anything, maybe this concept would work. But if people can stream a song one week and not the next, preference will fall on actually “owning” their music on their own devices to ensure access.
I think both models could survive. Most people would just have multiple music accounts. Kinda like how we have a shuffle for running, iPhone for occasional music, and ipod for regular music.
Personally I still like offline music, unless you have a cloud everywhere cloud music won’t be that valuable. Can’t listen during commute for example.
“Kinda like how we have a shuffle for running, iPhone for occasional music, and ipod for regular music.”
Nobody needs this, you’ve just bought into Apple marketing hype. Don’t fool yourself.
It’s funny that there is so much vitriol reserved for labels.
Do you not see that the ‘new’ record labels, the new businessmen exploiting artists are the owners of Google, you tube, spotify, myspace, all those cheeky mp3 sharing sites, hype machine. etc. etc.
These people are ALL making money off the artists by using their content, through advertising revenue, but nearly none of it is going to the artist.
I’m sure someone will chime in with the familiar ‘but it helps artists get bigger and they will win by making money from live and merchandising.’
But don’t you see, these sites are then just fufilling the exact same role as a record label did – you make no money off your music because of your deal, but you will make money off the label promoting you to become a bigger band, and ultimately you’ll make money off your live and merchandising.
Do you not see that it is just THE SAME thing happening all over again? And all these blind people have not realised it. Once again businessmen are exploiting artist songs for their own gain. Apparently the artists will gain somewhere down the line (sounds a bit like the trickledown theory of economics doesn’t it?). But once again it’s an industry not run by the artists and the artists interests, but using them and hoping some money gets to them in the end.
Obviously this assumes that artists even make money off merch and live.. and believe me they don’t (unless you’re playing to upwards of 1500 people or more a night, which most bands aren’t). Being your average indie band you can expect to see maybe $2 of a ticket price (if that, more often than not it’s a flat fee of maybe $50 – $100 ) on a venue you play (promoter gets the rest), and maybe sales of 8-15 shirts if you’re lucky ($6 profit per shirt probably, based on an average $4 per shirt fee for a three colour screened shirt). With 5 people in your band, maybe a driver, food for a day and definately a van, with gas price of maybe $80 to the next city you can go to pull a decent audience, then somewhere to stay if you’re lucky – most promtoters won’t like people staying at their house, so you may need a motel)… you’re looking at making no money at all. Not to mention the fact you can’t tour every day of the year (even blag flag can’t do that).
So everyone who thinks hooray ! myspace music ! hooray spotify ! Hooray youtube ! Once again, you’ve all just f***ed the artists.
People on other posts have said things like “hooray no more commercial radio” but as people here are realising, commercial radio in essence will still exist ! Just in a different form. Sites like youtube and spotify will promote artists (just like myspace music does) that will GENERATE TRAFFIC for them, and their advertising revenues. They’re not going to just promote the average dudes indie band. They’ll promote just the same type of commercial artists that the masses like. And, once again, the indie artist has the same familiar struggle for attention (nothing is changing, have you noticed?)
You may even find spotify etc. simply signing artists, just like a label. Afterall live nation signed madonna. So to will sites like spotify (if not spotify themselves) quite probably. It makes sense for them. They can then promote their own artists.
The whole thing is a joke.
yes we know; check out umakeitcool.com, where the artist controls everyting; cause it was built by artist.
bravo…great post
I am happy with a mix of both owning and streaming. I have recently started rebuilding my vinyl library with new releases and some classics. I’ve got a new turntable and a well-used high end amp and a pair of speakers from the same family. This is my hi-fi setup. To compliment this, I am planning to get a Sonos solution to stream audio from both the net (i.e. last.fm) and my personal library to any room in the house. If I didn’t have to maintain my own library, and could stream directly from the net, I would be perfectly content with that. …but let me keep my vinyl please. :)
Find a service who’s heard of anything other than pop-chart fluff? Maybe
Find a service who’s going to be able to guarantee availability (both technical & legal)? Doubt it.
Trust someone else with looking after something so rare and precious as music I like? Not a chance. Not ever. I’ve been through too many hard-drive crashes to ever risk not ‘owning’ at least one backup of everything myself.
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On another note – Someone mentioned that there was no need to group music into albums any more. That’s a technical freedom, which could well be used to good effect on occasion. It’s not just about the technical though – something like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is not an album for the convenience of bundling 9 tracks into one place – it is one musically entity comprised of 9 pieces.
How is this different from LastFM which is free?
brendan b brown
wheatus.com
I think it was John Udell who described the iPod as a local cache for your music in the cloud. The benefits of having an unlimited collection in the cloud as well as shared metadata for discovery are eventually going to outweigh the hassle of organizing a local collection.
On Ownership-
The Label owns the track, and the music publisher/publishers own the IP rights to the words & music. I, as a consumer, demand the highest quality reproduction of this media, whenever and whereever I want it.
As soon as someone figures out a reliable way to monetize this for the Owners, this will happen.
My access will be many-fold: my cellular supplier*s*; the ISP’s via WiFi points; my OnStar(or equivalent); my hotel where I stay for a week; etc. etc. Just ANYWHERE.
The actual content will be supplied by professional digital content suppliers, at the best data-rate and format for whatever client I’m using.
And the selection?
Any media (tracks, videos, holographs, ebooks, web-radio stations, podcasts, etc etc etc) covered by my license from the access service, paid for by a small monthly/yearly fee.
EVERYBODY WINS. I get my media when and where I want it. The Labels & Pubs get their piece. The digital suppliers, etc., all get their piece.
I wonder if anyone’s come up with a business model for this?