Music exec adds to speculation of Apple's iTunes cloud
Another prediction that Apple's acquisition of streaming music service Lala will result in a cloud-based iTunes service was offered Tuesday, with a digital music executive suggesting purchased content will be available from any browser or Internet-connected device.
In a guest column on TechCrunch, Michael Robertson, a 12-year veteran of the digital music business, former CEO of MP3. com and current CEO of MP3tunes, said he believes Apple will not offer a subscription music service in the future. Instead, he said, the purchase of Lala will allow Apple to create an iTunes service that will make content accessible from anywhere.
"An upcoming major revision of iTunes will copy each user's catalog to the net making it available from any browser or net connected ipod/touch/tablet," he wrote. "The Lala upload technology will be bundled into a future iTunes upgrade which will automatically be installed for the 100+ million itunes users with a simple 'An upgrade is available?' notification dialog box.
"After installation iTunes will push in the background their entire media library to their personal mobile iTunes area. Once loaded, users will be able to navigate and play their music, videos and playlists from their personal URL using a browser based iTunes experience."
Robertson's column echoes what was said over a month ago by The Wall Street Journal: Apple will change its iTunes business model to focus on Internet-based content. The $85 million purchase of Lala will allow users to access and manage their iTunes purchases directly through the Internet without downloading the content in question, or the iTunes software.
In its current form, iTunes requires users to download and manage purchased content on a per-computer basis. But with Internet-based management, users could log into their iTunes account and access and stream all of their music from any computer, or device, with an Internet connection. Apple could even sell music on other Web sites or through Web-based search results.
In addition, analyst Maynard J. Um of UBS Investment Research said in early December that he believes iTunes content will become available from a Web browser and other Apple devices. The purchase of Lala could tie in to Apple's $1 billion server farm in North Carolina.
The presence of iTunes on the Web has already grown, with the iTunes Preview Web page being introduced in early 2009, and browser-based 30-second song samples coming soon after. The iTunes Preview site allows users to view content available from the service without opening the media suite software.
Robertson wrote Tuesday that he expects a mobile iTunes to appear in 2010, allowing Apple to "protect their media franchise from encroachment." Such a move, he said, would allow the Cupertino, Calif., company to stay well ahead of the competition.
"Think Amazon/e-commerce, Microsoft/OS, Google/search, Apple/media," he wrote. "(Apple co-founder Steve) Jobs is keenly aware of the digital transition from PC to cloud centric programs and services. It?s imperative Apple lead in this transition or risk ceding leadership in media to others such as Amazon, Real, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc."
In a guest column on TechCrunch, Michael Robertson, a 12-year veteran of the digital music business, former CEO of MP3. com and current CEO of MP3tunes, said he believes Apple will not offer a subscription music service in the future. Instead, he said, the purchase of Lala will allow Apple to create an iTunes service that will make content accessible from anywhere.
"An upcoming major revision of iTunes will copy each user's catalog to the net making it available from any browser or net connected ipod/touch/tablet," he wrote. "The Lala upload technology will be bundled into a future iTunes upgrade which will automatically be installed for the 100+ million itunes users with a simple 'An upgrade is available?' notification dialog box.
"After installation iTunes will push in the background their entire media library to their personal mobile iTunes area. Once loaded, users will be able to navigate and play their music, videos and playlists from their personal URL using a browser based iTunes experience."
Robertson's column echoes what was said over a month ago by The Wall Street Journal: Apple will change its iTunes business model to focus on Internet-based content. The $85 million purchase of Lala will allow users to access and manage their iTunes purchases directly through the Internet without downloading the content in question, or the iTunes software.
In its current form, iTunes requires users to download and manage purchased content on a per-computer basis. But with Internet-based management, users could log into their iTunes account and access and stream all of their music from any computer, or device, with an Internet connection. Apple could even sell music on other Web sites or through Web-based search results.
In addition, analyst Maynard J. Um of UBS Investment Research said in early December that he believes iTunes content will become available from a Web browser and other Apple devices. The purchase of Lala could tie in to Apple's $1 billion server farm in North Carolina.
The presence of iTunes on the Web has already grown, with the iTunes Preview Web page being introduced in early 2009, and browser-based 30-second song samples coming soon after. The iTunes Preview site allows users to view content available from the service without opening the media suite software.
Robertson wrote Tuesday that he expects a mobile iTunes to appear in 2010, allowing Apple to "protect their media franchise from encroachment." Such a move, he said, would allow the Cupertino, Calif., company to stay well ahead of the competition.
"Think Amazon/e-commerce, Microsoft/OS, Google/search, Apple/media," he wrote. "(Apple co-founder Steve) Jobs is keenly aware of the digital transition from PC to cloud centric programs and services. It?s imperative Apple lead in this transition or risk ceding leadership in media to others such as Amazon, Real, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc."
Comments
I purchased a song/movie/audiobook etc from iTunes, it downloads to my computer & a file is created then on the iTunes Cloud saying I purchased certain files, then when I try to access it from any other device it verifies that I did purchase that from that file and streams the file to me from their typical storage location. This way it would eliminate Apple storing users files that may have been pirated and then it would also eliminate thousands of duplicates of the same files on iTunes Servers.
Apple then would be providing you access to all your legally purchased content and then end user then would be able to take advantage of this new service they purchased with Lala and stream it to any browser or Internet-connected device.
Hope this makes sense.
This seems a logical way to go although I doubt IE will be supported
MS has been making IE more and more standards complaint. The open standards revolution beat them.
While this sounds logical it would have to be for Mobile Me users only and even then it's sketch. Think about this - how many GB's is the average users library? If this service was completely free think of the exabytes this would use up for 100 million users. I cannot see this being free and even then it could be more along the lines of this:
Lala.com already does this and it works fantastically well. Any "mainstream" music that you have that matches titles in their catalog it just gives your listening priveleges to. Content unique to your library is uploaded. It took many hours to do the unique content but I presently have all of my iTunes available to me wherever I go on lala.com. It is absolutely brilliant and I encourage you to try it out yourself.
Their downloaded application, which is similar to Amazon's, handles the uploading.
Too bad it probably wont work with video. It sure seems a good answer to the managing video though. Just purchase video content and stream it, no backup, or media management issues. I would definitely purchase more TV shows and movies if this were the model.
I agree with the thinking on the video side vs. the audio side. At least it could put iTunes movies on better footing to compete with Netflix and eliminate the problem of having to eat up HD storage for content that would likely be accessed far less often than music files.
What about people with massive catalogs like 500gb?
The more music you have, the more beneficial this would be to you, as you are less likely to have your entire collection with you all the time. From Apple's perspective, they probably wouldn't make you upload your entire library. You would only have to upload songs not available on iTunes servers (assuming they will let you back up non-iTunes purchases). Apple wouldn't be giving individual users 500GB of storage space, they would mostly be indexing what you have and allowing you to stream those songs from iTunes servers. At least that is what I have deduced from previous articles on this topic.
Lala.com already does this and it works fantastically well. Any "mainstream" music that you have that matches titles in their catalog it just gives your listening priveleges to. Content unique to your library is uploaded. It took many hours to do the unique content but I presently have all of my iTunes available to me wherever I go on lala.com. It is absolutely brilliant and I encourage you to try it out yourself.
That's great! I actually didn't know Lala could do this to my entire library (i.e. songs not available on Lala's catalog included). If that's the case, though, it obviously won't be free for everyone once iTunes absorbs the service. Even the $1billion server farm wouldn't handle it.
Luckily I'm already a MobileMe subscriber!
The more music you have, the more beneficial this would be to you, as you are less likely to have your entire collection with you all the time. From Apple's perspective, they probably wouldn't make you upload your entire library. You would only have to upload songs not available on iTunes servers (assuming they will let you back up non-iTunes purchases). Apple wouldn't be giving individual users 500GB of storage space, they would mostly be indexing what you have and allowing you to stream those songs from iTunes servers. At least that is what I have deduced from previous articles on this topic.
If this were the case, I'd have no use for this service, except as a backup. I use DOTTUNES, which is free, and allows me to do for myself what Apple wants to do. My terabyte of music and video are served up from my computer at home using Dottunes. Full quality, not this Pandora/Simplify/Lala nonsense. Music and Video.
Free. Private. Encrypted. Reliable. Last thing I want to do is get out on the road and see a "We'll be back soon!" stickie when I try to log on to my "iTunes Cloud"
Then this sounds great just so long as the quality doesn't take a hit. If my library is 500gb, 1tb with videos its for a reason. I have good quality equipment and I do hear and see the difference in quality from my music or dvd rips. If they index things from my music library, will I get to stream lossless tracks or simply the standard quality? And if it is the higher quality, does that mean everyone who has the mp3 version gets an upgrade in quality when they stream? Seems they will either archive the low or high quality.
Quality may not take much of a hit but your bitrate will surely take a major hit if you expect lossless to be streamed. Just look at the bitrate for ALAC files. It's not feasible to stream that much data with little to no beneft or most. I'm not even sure we can expect 256kbps AAC from this service, especially if it's offered as a bonus service.
If this were the case, I'd have no use for this service, except as a backup. I use DOTTUNES, which is free, and allows me to do for myself what Apple wants to do. My terabyte of music and video are served up from my computer at home using Dottunes. Full quality, not this Pandora/Simplify/Lala nonsense. Music and Video.
Free. Private. Encrypted. Reliable. Last thing I want to do is get out on the road and see a "We'll be back soon!" stickie when I try to log on to my "iTunes Cloud"
I can guarantee you this will not be a backup service. It's likely going to grab a master list of your music library, probably ignoring the billions of ill-formed metadata files. It'll match your list to your name and let you grab their streaming master fom their server.
One copy of the song, not copy of the song per user account. I guarantee this will also use HTTP Live Streaming. I even wonder if it will grab anything you haven't previously purchased without first requiring some additional fee to allow streaming of the song.
iTunes online will look just like iTunes - just like the Me.com site reproduces the Mac software. That will be hott.
The iTunes Store has already moved to WebKit making it HTML, CSS and JS. I wonder if the rest of the of browser-based iTunes will be released when they release iTunes X that is all Cocoa and 64-bit. I expect some dramatic UI changes. Also, I think they need to have a full browser-based version even if to maintain dominance when Chrome OS starts shipping on cheap machines.
Lala.com already does this and it works fantastically well. Any "mainstream" music that you have that matches titles in their catalog it just gives your listening priveleges to.... .
Couldn't a person cheat that by just making up sound files of a certain length and changing the title of the file or tags in order to gain privileges to a real music file. I'm only asking since I'm sure some people would try that.
I want complete control of my library whenever, wherever and with whatever device I choose. There are so many reasons not to use a service like this and only a few minor advantages offered to even consider changing to it. At least for me.
No thanks, I'll keep my stuff on my own machine. I hope we will have an opt out available.