So what are your thoughts? Will you store your music in the Cloud? Me, no thanks. I like hard media and will hang on to my CDs with backup on iTunes ± Cloud but the CDs aren't going anywhere. The CD is deemed dead within a decade, but I am hoping they will keep making the players longer like they have for turntables. Back to the Cloud: your thoughts and poll, please.
Here Comes the Cloud
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I presume you mean sound cloud? I never thought of it as a storage place, just a reference point where music could be made available to others. I regularly drop music from there when it's been around for a while. So, if this is what you were meaning, then I don't fit either as it was never intended as storage. Maybe you need a third category: as a reference point for others to hear your music?
I think is is the beginning of storage being taken care of by Apple and/or competitors. At the moment it is supposed to sync devices, but I am pretty sure that in the next generation or the following, the data will be stored in the Cloud and the only thing that is stored on your device is links to access the data, the same way as for anything else on the internet. Presently, there is no iPod that has sufficient memory to store my CD collection. I strongly anticipate that this hardly is unique. Thus, there should drive for external storage. You pay a fee and lose control, but in return, you have access anything you have paid for. Makes a lot of sense, unless you are one of the dinosaurs, who like hard media. I am curious to know if I am the only skeptic around. To my tastes, it is cool as long as it is a supplement, but not if it ends up as the portal that controls your access to music and other stored media, which I somehow feel pretty sure is the intention.
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When there are no CDs and everyone is on the cloud, you will have access to your tunes, but no one else will. Sharing will be eliminated, period. With CDs you can loan a friend your CD and what happens at his own home stays in his own home. You get your CD back and your friend just might have a copy. I know I would never do that, but just sayin'. If you think the cloud is safe, just try to upgrade that copy of Music Match Jukebox you've been using for the last 5 years.
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Tools like Dropbox (a cloud storage / sharing solution) make it very easy to share tunes. Video too. These days all my client work comes in and exits via Dropbox. No more couriers, fed x or driving to deliver large files. Multitrack music files, and video edits can even be worked on directly from within Dropbox. It has changed the way I do business. Huge media files such as protools sessions and audio, along with accompanying video load into the cloud in less time than it takes to render.
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Maybe brasscane was talking about services like Amazon Cloud Drive and Amazon Cloud Player. That's where your music goes if you choose to buy music from Amazon as mp3s. It's pretty nice. They become available immediately to play on your computer with the Amazon Cloud Player (and maybe there will soon be an Amazon Cloud Player for iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android, etc.). And you can easily download all your music from the Amazon cloud. I think you can upload your existing mp3s, too, although I haven't had a need. You get 5 GB storage space for free. (That would be so that you can access your music that way from anywhere, any mp3s that you've ripped from CDs or acquired from other non-Amazon sources, even bit torrent.)
I'm getting used to it, and have about 30 albums in there. Right now I'm listening to Sonny Stitt's Personal Appearance (thanks to having recently read about it on another thread here at SOTW). Instant gratification! I read about it, found it on Amazon, clicked "Buy mp3," and started listening. And I could listen to it on any computer (and presumably, soon, on any internet-connected device). Might be dangerous for your budget.
The mp3s on Amazon are usually cheaper than CDs, but sometimes the same price. (Same pricing more-or-less as iTunes.) I do see this as the future: just stream everything. Same with movies; if it's not Netflix or Amazon streaming the movies, it can be some other company, but I don't need all that plastic laying around my house. As long as the bandwidth is there for reliable streaming with great quality. And as long as all the movies and albums you want are available.
Quality is an issue with mp3s, although it wouldn't have to be, if another digital format became the standard format in which companies made their catalogs available. I hope there will be a push to stream high resolution digital music, the equivalent of lossless formats like FLAC. Even if we can't consciously hear the difference, I think our brains register the loss of detail in compressed formats like mp3 (and even CDs, for that matter, compared to analog formats like vinyl records)--the result might be simply that we get tired of listening more quickly. But let's bring back "high fidelity" for the masses, not just for the millionaires. It's okay to stream it, in my view.
BTW, Fader, I use Dropbox all the time, too. Very convenient for file-sharing, whether with yourself or others. That company is really on the rise, and other companies are rushing to get into that business. That's part of the whole "cloud" thing. I work in high tech in Silicon Valley, and you can hardly go five minutes around here without hearing somebody talking about "the cloud... the cloud... the cloud"!
jrvinson45: I hate to sound like a sales rep for the Amazon Cloud--I'm not that crazy about it--but you can download all the music you buy as mp3s. But I agree with you, basically--the music companies will keep trying to restrict sharing. Maybe the downloaded mp3s will be "copy-protected" soon, but I don't think they are now. Of course, there's a case to be made for those restrictions--music is intellectual property, after all (even though there's also a question about who gets most of the money--but that's a separate question, a question about contracts between musicians and music distributors, a separate question from whether the music made by professional musicians, i.e., those who make their living by making music, should be free).
I'm getting used to it, and have about 30 albums in there. Right now I'm listening to Sonny Stitt's Personal Appearance (thanks to having recently read about it on another thread here at SOTW). Instant gratification! I read about it, found it on Amazon, clicked "Buy mp3," and started listening. And I could listen to it on any computer (and presumably, soon, on any internet-connected device). Might be dangerous for your budget.
The mp3s on Amazon are usually cheaper than CDs, but sometimes the same price. (Same pricing more-or-less as iTunes.) I do see this as the future: just stream everything. Same with movies; if it's not Netflix or Amazon streaming the movies, it can be some other company, but I don't need all that plastic laying around my house. As long as the bandwidth is there for reliable streaming with great quality. And as long as all the movies and albums you want are available.
Quality is an issue with mp3s, although it wouldn't have to be, if another digital format became the standard format in which companies made their catalogs available. I hope there will be a push to stream high resolution digital music, the equivalent of lossless formats like FLAC. Even if we can't consciously hear the difference, I think our brains register the loss of detail in compressed formats like mp3 (and even CDs, for that matter, compared to analog formats like vinyl records)--the result might be simply that we get tired of listening more quickly. But let's bring back "high fidelity" for the masses, not just for the millionaires. It's okay to stream it, in my view.
BTW, Fader, I use Dropbox all the time, too. Very convenient for file-sharing, whether with yourself or others. That company is really on the rise, and other companies are rushing to get into that business. That's part of the whole "cloud" thing. I work in high tech in Silicon Valley, and you can hardly go five minutes around here without hearing somebody talking about "the cloud... the cloud... the cloud"!
jrvinson45: I hate to sound like a sales rep for the Amazon Cloud--I'm not that crazy about it--but you can download all the music you buy as mp3s. But I agree with you, basically--the music companies will keep trying to restrict sharing. Maybe the downloaded mp3s will be "copy-protected" soon, but I don't think they are now. Of course, there's a case to be made for those restrictions--music is intellectual property, after all (even though there's also a question about who gets most of the money--but that's a separate question, a question about contracts between musicians and music distributors, a separate question from whether the music made by professional musicians, i.e., those who make their living by making music, should be free).
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Actually, I just tried it and the Amazon Cloud Player works fine on the iPad. You just access it through the web browser, the same way you would on a computer. That should also work on Android, iPhone, iPad, etc. I'm glad because that's mainly how I listen to digital music.
Another cloud thing: Naxos has a streaming service, Naxos Music Library. It's not just classical and not just their own recordings. Many genres, but I couldn't check out the jazz offerings even though they offer a free 15-minute trial, because it requires Adobe Flash, which won't run on the iPad. And I don't have access to a PC because my kids are playing Wizard 101. The anguish it would cause if I kicked them off! Someone should try it and report back on whether it's worth it. Seems too expensive ($300/yr for 128 kbps), when you can stream so many jazz CDs and tracks on Rhapsody for that price. (Rhapsody is, in effect, another cloud music service, as is Pandora, maybe, though Pandora is more like configurable Internet radio.)
I don't mind paying for music (why should it be free?) as long as there are lots of options, and good music with good quality at a fair price. These networked services could give all of us all better, easier access to the music we love. But the companies will make mistakes along the way, and some will try to gouge us. And we have to adjust to a paradigm shift.
If we don't, out kids probably will anyway.
Another cloud thing: Naxos has a streaming service, Naxos Music Library. It's not just classical and not just their own recordings. Many genres, but I couldn't check out the jazz offerings even though they offer a free 15-minute trial, because it requires Adobe Flash, which won't run on the iPad. And I don't have access to a PC because my kids are playing Wizard 101. The anguish it would cause if I kicked them off! Someone should try it and report back on whether it's worth it. Seems too expensive ($300/yr for 128 kbps), when you can stream so many jazz CDs and tracks on Rhapsody for that price. (Rhapsody is, in effect, another cloud music service, as is Pandora, maybe, though Pandora is more like configurable Internet radio.)
I don't mind paying for music (why should it be free?) as long as there are lots of options, and good music with good quality at a fair price. These networked services could give all of us all better, easier access to the music we love. But the companies will make mistakes along the way, and some will try to gouge us. And we have to adjust to a paradigm shift.
If we don't, out kids probably will anyway.
Thanks, mcudahy; I am learning a lot. Some of my concerns are (a) more of the corporate control with pick-apart albums at 99 cents a song; (b) storage at low quality on soft media, that are significantly more prone to being damaged by glitches; (c) music that never reaches the cloud. I actually own several CDs recorded by professional musicians that are not on iTunes and would be really surprised if they existed on other platforms. BTW, four iPods between my wife, so nothing inherently against up- or downloads, but the streamlining conferred by clouds and elimination of alternatives seems threatening to the interests of both the musician and listener. Moreover, I really prefer owning a back-up on CD (and BTW have paid for every one of them).
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For me, the cloud is mainly a comfortable way to share and to dematerialize your info to take it on the road. I use Dropbox for that. So you can view it like a short term backup.
I don't see it as a long term backup, as you never know exactly who is behind such a service, and what are their plans.
Furthermore, Apple and the cloud are almost opposite from a philosophy point of view: the cloud should be dematerialized (from the user point of view), interoperable (device independent) and user shareable. Apple's products are strongly hardware related, upmost device dependent and almost unshareable. Google and Dropbox are much more cloud players.
As an example, my best half and myself use a cloud calendar to synchronize the agendas of our smartphones. Not an Apple service.
To put it another way: I see the cloud for dynamic data (the one which changes daily/weekly), but less for static/archive data, which needs to be kept "forever".
I don't see it as a long term backup, as you never know exactly who is behind such a service, and what are their plans.
Furthermore, Apple and the cloud are almost opposite from a philosophy point of view: the cloud should be dematerialized (from the user point of view), interoperable (device independent) and user shareable. Apple's products are strongly hardware related, upmost device dependent and almost unshareable. Google and Dropbox are much more cloud players.
As an example, my best half and myself use a cloud calendar to synchronize the agendas of our smartphones. Not an Apple service.
To put it another way: I see the cloud for dynamic data (the one which changes daily/weekly), but less for static/archive data, which needs to be kept "forever".
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FWIW, you need to decide if listening to music is important if your connection to the Internet is down. If it is, then you won't have access to it, potentially for days, while your Internet provider decides to come fix the problem. If this isn't an issue for you, then Cloud Computing may have value to you.
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Never. I refuse to have corporations dictate how, when or where I store and use music that I legally own.
Cloud is over hyped, handy for storing things that you don't care about. Not so handy if you are concerned about security.
Cloud is over hyped, handy for storing things that you don't care about. Not so handy if you are concerned about security.
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In our music activity, a good example of usefulness of the cloud is to run a band: shared agenda for gigs and rehearsals, shared repository for work documents (scores, mp3s, templates, etc...). Assuming that iPads and other tablets get a bit better at shared document management, you can leave those heavy binders full of torn apart scores at home.
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