Post by kevinfelixlee on Apr 23, 2011 1:44:38 GMT -5
Amazons announcement that it is offering a cloud-based music streaming service is a big step in the right direction to helping ensure that musicians can make a living doing what they love: creating and performing music. It is a small step towards restructuring the music industry to treat music as a service rather than a product to be sold.
With music as a service, you could listen to any song ever released, on any device that is connected to the internet. It would make the problem of copyright protection instantly vanish. No one would ever "steal" music. Why would you take possession of a song rs gold when you can listen to any song at any time on any device? Its no different than people not "stealing" YouTube content today.
Call it "Everywhere Internet Audio" (EIA).
Amazons new service points the way. Music lovers runescape items can upload all the songs they own to Amazons data storage facilities. Such online storage, offered by major companies such as Amazon, Google and Apple, is often referred to as the "cloud." Once your songs are stored in Amazons cloud-based digital locker, you can access your music from any online computer or Android phone.
The goal is to replace the idea of people having to carry their music with them wherever they go, which often means an iPod. If youre in your car, you have to plug in your iPod runescape accounts to hear your music. Then you have to carry your iPod into the house and plug it into your home stereo system. Introducing a song you enjoy to a friend is hard to do if you dont have your iPod with you.
Cloud-based services assume that in the near future we will be connected wirelessly to the internet at all times, often described as a "persistent" connection. The most likely internet connection will be through a smartphone or similar device, which will be part mobile phone, part Blackberry, part iPod, part digital camera, part video camera, part voice-recorder, part sextant, part calendar, and part kitchen sink.
Soon our cars will connect directly to the internet, as will all electronic devices at home and at work. When we want to watch or listen to entertainment such as songs, videos, movies and television, we will stream this content to whatever device is most convenient. Netflixs streaming of films and television buy runescape accounts shows is a good example of the business model that will make the most sense in tomorrows constantly connected world.
To use Amazons new service, the user needs to log on to a special web page called the Amazon Cloud Player. There they can listen to any song they have uploaded. You get 5GB of storage for free, but this jumps to 20GB if you buy an album through Amazons music store. As an added bonus, any songs purchased from Amazon can be moved directly to your storage locker and doesnt count against your storage limit. Amazon hopes this will make buying songs from them more attractive than buying from Apples iTunes.
Amazon surprised the music industry by introducing its new service without having licensing agreements in place with the major music labels. Amazon says it doesnt need them. The company says music fans can store their legally purchased song on any device they want, and that Amazons storage is the same as an external hard drive attached to a home computer.
Nevertheless, Amazon wants to strike licensing arrangements with the music labels, for it would make its life much simpler. With agreements in place, Amazon could store one copy of a song and make it available to multiple owners. Without the agreement, Amazon must store individual copies of the same song for each user.
Once all the pieces are in place ¨C all our electronics devices are connected to the internet and people are comfortable with streaming content ¨C it will be a small step to persuade consumers to accept the idea of music as a service rather than buying individual songs. For a small monthly fee, music fans could have access to all the music ever released. Recordings would be streamed to you when you want to any appliance you want, such as your laptop, mobile device, car, or home stereo.
Every customer could slice and dice the massive musical database anyway they like ¨C by artist, by genre, by year, by songwriter, by popularity, and so on. The music service would know what customers like, based on what theyve chosen in the past. Users could ask their everywhere internet audio service to suggest new artists that resemble their known favourites. Since all EIA services would have the same musical database, companies would compete to offer innovations and make the EIA service most appealing.
Musicians, songwriters and even their labels would be compensated through systems that track their popularity. All the music would be pooled and using actuarial economics the total pie would be divided up according to the number of times the songs of a given artist were streamed. Technologies and companies already exist that can do this.
There is growing support for streaming, and initial variations of everywhere internet audio are already in business. Services such as Last.fm, We7, Rhapsody, Spotify and Pandora stream music to their subscribers. But these companies arent offering the wide array of personalised services that are possible. More than a year ago, Apple bought digital music provider lala.com, and its widely expected it will introduce some form of music streaming service in the near future. Google is also rumoured to be working on a similar plan. Amazons announcement may just spur Apple and Google into action.