Music exec adds to speculation of Apple's iTunes cloud - Page 2

Maybe so. I just don't think that there's a workable model, and I worry about the possible ramifications. Case in point:

I used to do a radio show. I archived all my shows to MP3. All are handles by iTunes. These are 2 hours a pop. They would not be recognized by iTunes 'cloud'. What happens?

Well, first off, if they were downloaded we'd be talking multiple gigs of information that would be shared with no one but me. Seems a lot to store just for little 'ol me.

If it IS out there and accessible to others somehow, who's to blame if it is 'rebroadcast' somehow? Under the umbrella of the CRTC I could do it, not outside the radio show though.

All I'm saying is there's situations where this could be a problem.

It's not so easy to find a file and content that give you the certain MD5 checksum.

What article are some of you reading? This is NOT a backup of your iTunes library. This is NOT moving your iTunes library to a cloud and out of your control? This is NOT sending every users iTunes library to their streaming servers. The data files will be no more than the size of the current iTunes DB. Everyone that has Wilson Phillips "Hold On" [chuckle] will access the same file for streaming.*


* Yes there will be backups and likely multiple server farms but it's still Apple's music that you are accessing, not your own private iTunes music depot.

More like iTunes Genius copies your catalog list and uploads it to Apple.

From the article:
"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. "

What you say is logical but it was not very clear in the article as there were a number of vague references to copying, uploading and accessing All of Their Music, that left me with the impression that it would automatically copy my stuff to the cloud. Now that I understand the limitations of it I think it is even more useless than before when I just thought it was overly invasive to my privacy.

There are problems when you assume that you will have no control over what you upload, yes. Or that you have no control over who sees your content on the cloud. I would just question why one would make those assumptions. A series of assumptions can lead to this service having very significant problems, but a different series of assumptions can lead to a very good service without those problems. I think paranoia can lead to one making the necessary assumptions needed to make the feared consequences possible.

Obviously there are some reasons to fear cloud competing in general, but I think a lot of things get blown out of proportion.

PS. The mere mention of the CRTC upsets me.

How about it doesn't copy or catalog those files because it doesn't recognize them. How about it only knows the iTunes Store music you bought, which it gives you instant streaming access to and the rest of your music files are just listed with the ones that are known are listed on the streaming service under your name, but you only get so many free plays before you are required to pay for unlimited streaming or buy the track, which you get locally, and aldo gives you unlimited streaming? That is what putting my money on.

I wondered that, too. Does this signal that Apple has calculated it can make more money from the music sales than from the hardware? Or is it counting on all future media hardware relying on streaming rather than internal storage? Or it just preempting competition in a similar but related arena?

More concrete question, could the Lala purchase have a big role in next week's announcement, or is that too recent to figure largely in what's being introduced next week?

I don't understand how it obsoletes the iPod. They are used for a lot more than playing music at work. If the iPod has WiFi/3G, this would enhance the capabilities of an iPod.

All for a price. It's not going to be a free service. Something like MobileMe, but less $$ and less actual services than MobileMe.
Meanwhile, MobileMe will be expanded to include the above with no increase in price.
Get more people to jump on MobileMe.

Are we expecting this only in September 2010, in the iTunes+iPod event?!
Wish I could have my stuff on the go sooner!!

There seems to be a relatively large ownership problem here. Apple isn't going to want to aid piracy in any way because it opens them up to huge copyright infringement suits. Apple needs a secure way to authorize that I have the right to a streaming version of a particular song. MD5 isn't enough if I can convince my local iTunes library that I should have the ability to listen to a song.

This actually seems like a big can of worms. I'm not sure that copyright even covers a model where Apple simply maintains one instance of a song, and streams it to licensed users (licensed because they purchased a physical CD). I'm guessing that it's not allowed. They may be able to do this if they merely provide you exclusive streaming access to a physical copy that you uploaded, where the liability is yours if you upload a file that you don't have rights to use. This is a lot of space though when considering media.

My guess is that the service will initially only work with content you have purchased from the iTunes store, which they have complete control over.

I'd be happy to know what more copyright-knowledgeable people think about this.

mp3.com was shut down for the same reason. you can borrow from friends and the library to build a huge "collection".

i wouldn't be surprised if the music companies don't just say to allow this with monthly or annual payments and Apple will just roll this into MobileMe. that way the record companies and ASCAP get paid even if you don't buy the music.

or they will just do something like the Zune Pass. $15 a month you download all you want but you can keep a small number of songs. In iTunes's case since the format is insecure they will probably let you stream all you want with custom playlists like Slacker Premium and you can download 10 songs or so a month to keep

Needless to say this service will require broadband access, or equivalent wireless speed to be useful. Now that a federal appeals court panel has thrown the FCC's oversight authority over the internet into question what is to stop Comcast or Verizon from throttling iTunes streaming, thus destroying the usefulness of this service?

I realize that this is a US centric comment, but in many ways Apple is US centric in their iTunes offerings.

Maybe the rest of the world can embarrass the US into net neutrality, but never underestimate corporate greed.

I would imagine that they would use a linked file/authorization system, meaning they would only store one copy of any particular movie file and simply authorize your account to stream it. I don't see them storing millions of copies of a video when a single file would do the same job.

This case hasn't been decided. It's simply being heard in a federal appeals court. Should they do so, congress can simply grant FCC the authority, or they can reclassify these providers as telecommunications companies which would force them by law to comply with non-discrimination laws.

That is true but the judges questioned whether the FCC had the authority to begin with which has prompted the Julius Genachowski to make the comment that Congress may have to make net neutrality happen.

If it has to go to Congress then it could take years and by that time Comcast and Verizon could have already strangled these types of services. All I am saying is that I don't think we can assume that net neutrality is going to happen, and until then who is going to subscribe to these services under the threat of bandwidth throttling?

I agree it's not an optimal outcome, but not the end of the world. It all hinges on this bit here:

"But the commission argues that a 2005 Supreme Court ruling upholding its move to deregulate Internet service gives it the jurisdiction it needs. The high court upheld the FCC's decision to define broadband as a lightly regulated information service, which is not subject to the obligations traditional telecommunications services have to share their networks with competitors and treat all traffic equally. A 1996 federal telecommunications law, however, gives the agency authority to set rules for information services _ including, the FCC argues, net neutrality rules."

If the appeals court rejects that argument, we're stuck with Congress as an out ;(

Call me old school if you want, but the primary fuction of my iPod is to play music. Yeah I have a couple of apps that seldom get any use. If I had an iPhone its primary purposes would be a phone and to play music so the added wifi/3g wouldn't matter much to me. Perhaps having 3G makes it more useful as you always have a connection but as far as just an iPod not iPhone I think cloud storage of my music files or links to stream them (however it works the result is the same) makes it much less appealing to keep updating every few years.

Ever since i read that AI post on Apple making large east coast purchases of server farm space, i've been predicting an iTunes Cloud. I'm very curious to see how this works. My guess would be that it's not going to work through anything but MobileMe...at least until we get to 10G coverage or much faster Wi-Fi coverage to handle seamless multi-media uploads. Still very curious and exciting news. Hope it's true.

Another aspect of Cloud iTunes that is so compelling is the elimination of the need for large storage capacity. I don't know the facts but i've heard that the Flash Memory is one of the most expensive components to the ipod and iPhone. So with Cloud iTunes, you could dramatically lower the cost of the devices, therefore making apple products much more cost competitive and open to anyone. We might even see a preview of this in the Tablet.

it's almost like you're not even purchasing music. more like, you're buying the right to listen to a song or watch a bit of media at will.

it would be impossible for Apple to host all iTunes users content for on demand streaming, as suggested by the rumor. the total amount of global data would be some utterly humongous number. and why store millions of copies of the same song, etc.?

but it would be very straightforward to host users' iTunes library data and files metadata, a far far smaller amount of data. users' account info and purchase history is already stored in the iTunes cloud, this would just add some more. it would then be easy for iTunes to stream all content users purchased from the iTunes store anywhere with playlists and all that. As a free service. for up to five authorized devices, which is what Apple's deal with the content owners allows now (don't know if those contracts would count iPods/Phones or not).

that would be great for all portable Apple devices. and the iThing of course.

but storing or streaming iTunes content that users ripped from CD's or DVD's or got some other way would be impossible because there is no way to tell if users first acquired it legally. even passively hosting such files on MobileMe raises the same issue. so no way.

Word!

PS: I hope they get the Beatles collection before they go live with this service.

Are you arguing that you wouldn't need an iPod with this service because you could just stream music to your computer or that you would just be less inclined to upgrade your existing iPod?

I don't understand how streaming makes iPod less desirable for running, going to the gym, riding the bus, or going anywhere where you aren't tied to your computer and the internet.

I think this would be great. Of course I want my regular syncing to be local (not via the cloud), but it's good to have the online version accessible anywhere, and for access from other Macs.

I'd really like to have the same music folder, same photos, same applications, and same documents on any Mac I have a login on... movies are unnecessary. It'd be great if the iPhone or slate had those too (but tries to avoid living off online copies - too much data transfers!!).


Yes. Lala apparently does this - recognises your songs and enables access to equivalent online copies of them. If a song is not recognised it uploads it. I'd say it'll only use iTunes masters if you purchased the song from Apple, but for your CD rips it'll try to match your file to an identical one that's already uploaded by another user.

I figure if iTunes was able to automatically name your song when you imported it, it'll be very accurate with identifying the song. It would even hold copies at different bitrates, so you have access to a copy as you made it on your computer.


If they're in the CDDB it'd be fine. Otherwise it'd upload a copy of your track.


This also worries me. However, the CDDB used to identify CDs is different to iTunes catalog which identify the cover art which causes issues. So hopefully by not relating to iTunes catalog it'll be fine.

It may not be so accurate with pirated mp3s though.

To really work, they'll need to have extra checks that a song is the same as they think - perhaps means randomly selecting one part of the song and matching it against the online copy.


I think if it's purchased video from iTunes, then this should be very easy and likely for Apple to offer. For personal, ripped or pirated video it's a no go (too much data, and too many piracy issues?)


Every user will have some unique content, probably Apple will just average that out so they can offer a "simple" service for everyone. So yes you'd cost Apple more, where I'd cost Apple less, but we're both seeing our whole libraries and don't have to think about it.

Either that or Apple could make a limit - eg: 300GB library - and still average that out by assuming most users will not have unique content. This then allows a premium service for bigger users.


They might even disallow certain usage. Or give lossless users access to a 256Kbps version of their music. Syncing a home iTunes via "Back to My Mac" with work iTunes might make more sense in some situations like yours.

Were you saying that the service was useless because it would upload your private tracks so they're available to you online - and that was an invasion of privacy?

But now you are saying the service is useless because it won't upload your unique tracks so they're available to you online?

I may have misunderstood. What are you saying you would actually find good?

Although Lala would make your own tracks just available to you, I imagine there could be times where somehow your unique content is identified with something incorrectly, and someone would hear your unique content. Apparently Lala did incorrectly identify songs at times.

This system needs to have good cross checks before saying 2 song files are identical. Actually, if they work on the SONG FILE being identical, rather than just trying to make sure the SONG is the same, they'd have to use more storage space but it would avoid song recognition issues.

that will depend on the studios and frankly at this point I don't see it happening.

as for the music thing, it's non news. they are basically describing lala as it is now. the only 'new' bit is the idea that uploading would be a simple click of the button similar to the whole genius thing. but is anyone not expecting such a thing (that and perhaps a way to link an old lala account to your apple id)

The whole genius thing is a total invasion of privacy. Why would anyone unleash this monster for Apple to peer at your files in the first place?

I can't think of a way of putting my information online for access anywhere, without trusting some organisation to host that data for me.

If the service is free then the cloud service might only allow songs streamed from the iTunes library. Maybe Apple will allow a small storage space available for free with an itunes account. And maybe Apple will charge for additional storage if this all works very well, I could see it this way.

What a great idea for iTunes though.

http://tinyurl.com/applecloud

They're not buying/leasing server space, Apple is building and owning the whole deal in North Carolina. Has been for a spell.

Not sure if this is the right forum to be asking, but based on a couple of posts mentioning DotTunes I checked out their website. They apparently have two different products, HookUp and DotTunes. However they don't offer any comparison of the two products and from what I can tell they both do the same thing. Does anyone have experience with both products and can tell me how they compare to each other?