FROM the sagging shelf of vinyl, through teetering stacks of CDs to a hard drive stuffed with MP3s, personal music collections have adapted to, even thrived on, the technological changes of the last few decades. But actually owning music could soon become a thing of the past 鈥� because of the cloud.
Cloud music services, which enable you to stream music from the internet to your computer or phone, have been around for a few years. But so far, services such as Pandora, Last FM and Spotify, have had little discernible effect on music lovers鈥� appetite for owning songs. But the number of sites is growing, along with the range of services they offer, and with Apple and Google gearing up to offer their own services, could the era of the digital download be coming to an end?
Typically, such services offer unlimited access to a music store of millions of songs, either interspersed with advertisements or for a subscription. The latest versions also promise to give people access to their own music collection from anywhere with an internet connection. The extra bandwith and data transmission speeds of next-generation (4G) mobile networks mean it could soon be possible to listen to music streaming straight from the internet anywhere where there鈥檚 reception. When that happens, music ownership might start to look unappealing. Who would choose to own music when every song is available to stream wirelessly, on demand?
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Last December, Apple acquired Lala, a music-streaming service launched in 2006 that could scan a user鈥檚 hard drive for music files and replicate them in the cloud. This technology is expected to form the basis of a cloud-based update to iTunes, although Apple gave few clues over its cloud intentions at its recent music event. But the event did show how the company has been investing in streaming technology, transmitting a live broadcast using its own HTTP-based streaming protocol. And Apple is building a huge data centre in North Carolina that is set to be one of the largest in the world 鈥� handy if you were planning to host a lot of music files.
鈥淪ome services scan a user鈥檚 hard drive and replicate their own music collection in the cloud鈥�
Google appears to be taking a different approach. In May it acquired Simplify Media, a California-based start-up whose technology enables people to access media files, such as photos and music, across multiple devices without having to synchronise them. So instead of having to wait while files are transferred from your hard drive to your mobile music player, the technology will send the files into the cloud and let you access them from there. The app will run on Google鈥檚 Android smartphone operating system.
Being able to connect people with their desired song is only one aspect of the process, however. Perhaps the greater challenges are persuading the music companies that own the rights to the songs to get on board, and devising a workable royalty system.
Difficulties with this have scuppered many earlier attempts at delivering cloud music. For example, Swedish music service Spotify, while popular in Europe, has been unable to agree with the major record labels how much their artists would receive each time a user accesses their song. As a result it has been unable expand into the US. An early cloud service from Yahoo left many users disgruntled when changes to its digital rights management technology meant they could no longer access songs they had paid for.
Seamless stream
Seamless transmission of the music also needs perfecting. One of the primary means of accessing music over the internet is via streaming, which allows users to start playing the music before the entire file has been transmitted. Typically, streaming files do not get written permanently to the hard drive, so each time a user wants to listen to a song they have to start a new stream. It can also be a slow process when a lot of users are online at the same time, and such bandwidth issues are only magnified when it comes to mobile phones.
Spotify has built its service on (P2P) networking. P2P technology pulls together chunks of a file from multiple sources to create the whole. Songs can get started quickly from the company鈥檚 servers, while the rest of the data is gathered via P2P, says , an engineer with Spotify. This decreases the amount of server space and bandwidth used, making it feasible to deliver a cloud-based music streaming service. 鈥淏y combining peer-to-peer and server streaming, we can get the best of both worlds,鈥� Kreitz says.
California-based mSpot keeps bandwidth down in a different way. Its application scans a user鈥檚 own music library and enables them to access it via the cloud. By letting users dictate which songs are hosted in the cloud and which are stored on their mobile device, it even promises to allow users to access their music when they have no mobile reception, says mSpot鈥檚 chief technology officer, . The software 鈥減re-fetches鈥� a user鈥檚 most listened-to songs when the web connection is good, ensuring they can be played if the connection drops.
Its charges also vary with how much bandwidth a user consumes 鈥� giving the company more control over how much is taken up. One potential drawback is that mSpot uses data compression technology to squeeze down the size of the files being transmitted, thereby losing some of the sound quality.
, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights pressure group in San Francisco, sounds a note of caution over cloud music services. She believes licensing problems like those with Yahoo will be difficult to overcome. 鈥淒ownloading the MP3, having the actual file, gives you more control over how you use the music,鈥� she says.
Ho thinks that while some people will continue to want to own recordings, the culture of music ownership could eventually die out. 鈥淵ou might have a next generation of people who say: 鈥業 don鈥檛 want to bother with having my own collection of music.鈥� I don鈥檛 know when that date will come.鈥�
When this article was first posted, the passage, 鈥淭his technology is expected to form the basis of a cloud-based update to iTunes, although Apple gave few clues over its cloud intentions at its recent music event. But the event did show how the company has been investing in streaming technology, transmitting a live broadcast using its own HTTP-based streaming protocol. And Apple is building a huge data centre in North Carolina that is set to be one of the largest in the world 鈥� handy if you were planning to host a lot of music files,鈥� read as follows: 鈥淭his technology is expected to form the basis of a cloud-based update to iTunes, and although Apple鈥檚 intentions were not clear as 麻豆传媒 went to press, the company is building a huge data centre in North Carolina that is set to be one of the largest in the world 鈥� handy if you were planning to host a lot of music files.鈥�
