[Macworld]

Post your comments for Music: Then, now, and tomorrow here

[diasmo]

I wouldn't enjoy having to pay a monthly/yearly fee 'just' to play back music that I already bought, also because your constant wireless connection (here in Belgium) is a huge cost...

Being able to play back your own music from your own computer (kind of like a 3g/edge version of a Sonos system?) would be very nice though.

I have a vague feeling that this will be possible with the iPhone/iPod touch in the not so distant future, but then again, who really knows what apple is and is not going to implement!

Nice post though, portability and options have changed a lot indeed! I remember being stuck in a car with some friends for 12 hours on the road with one Doors tape, I can tell you I no longer enjoy riders on the storm ;) (just kidding, I still do, but it took a while!)

[GFLa]

I know at some point this is coming. I just can't get my head around how Apple would institute an "all you can eat" model, and still effectively be able to pay the labels and artists, unless is was cost prohibitive for the user. I could see them offering such a service for power users willing to pay, and of course still allowing people to pay per track. Honestly, between the thousands of songs that I own from the iTunes store (many of which have been Pandora inspired), and Pandora itself...I dont really want for more in the music space. Should be interesting though. Choices are good!

[diasmo]

I think that if you can only reach your own library (e.g. everything you ripped to your itunes library or bought from online stores) that apple wouldn't need to pay for any licensing and copyright beyond the sales they make via itunes. If they would make it like last.fm where the music you play is not actually bought and payed for by the listener, this might be very different (and very costly I guess, unless they make a pay as you play subscription thing where you pay per track that you play without owning it). I am not entirely sure about all this though!

[downunder]

Nice thoughts but its like the paperless office. Ain't going to happen...

[snail]

As someone who's listening to music a lot of the time and who's at the same time quite picky with regard to what's playing, I see two problems with streaming access to music as a major usage form: 1. If music is streamed from my personal library to my portable device a constant connection is required for my home server and my portable device, which is not only costly, but currently far away from actually being reliable or available when you're doing serious travelling in cars, trains and airplanes. 2. If a monthly fee were to cover access to exhaustive online music library, it would require a selection/management system for each individual user because, usually, I select music and create playlists and so on not while I'm on the road but beforehand. For me, it's still half of the fun to pick music I'd like to own and to create playlists either for myself or for others to enjoy - but perhaps I'm already "old-fashioned" when it comes to that.

[kirkmc]

I think that connection costs and speeds will change radically as we approach the scenario I suggest in this article. Phone charges will drop, always-on connections will be the norm, and your home server will always be accessible. This isn't next year, but I'd see it in 5-10 years.
I can also imagine that, with a well-thought-out subscription service, you'd have access to a personal library with playlists and the like. It just makes sense.
Kirk

[DreamweaverMM]

I go back a little further than you. Growing up in the 50's, we had our big record players at home, but on the road we only had AM radio.. Fortunately, the music of the 50's and 60's was (and is still) wonderful.
My first tape unit was a 4-track player which I used during college, later on a cassette then a CD player and now the iPod. I disagree, however, with the comment that digital music has matured. None of these products can play the depth and beauty of the vinyl record which is why they are still so coveted today.
Having said that, I love my iPod. No more having to listen to the awful music on the radio, I can play exactly the music I want, when and where I want.
The last thing I would ever go for is either a subscription service or cloud service. I don't want to rent music, I want to own the music I like. As for cloud service, that would only work in places I don't want to be, such as cities. I live in the intermountain West where it can be 100 miles between towns with spotty cell phone service and little WiFi and cloud service would give me an iPod brick, a small brick, but still a brick.
To sum it up, Apple provides me exactly the service I need. They can offer these other services if there is a demand, as long as they don't take away the current services.

[macless]

What would stop it it from being like satellite radio.

[ObiWandreas]

This is missing the whole point of the iPhone.
Now, you can actually carry everything with you in a form where you can really see your library and find what you want. The convenience of having everything on one small, gorgeously engineered device is what I really enjoy. It takes advantage of an external connection, but is not dependent upon it for basic iPhone & app function. The cloud enhances the functionality, but does not define it.
Relying on the cloud would be a step backward.

[bastion]

Quote

I especially remember Jon’s Mercury Marquis, which had an 8-track player and a shoebox of tapes in the back seat. (“Baby you were born to ka-chunk run.”)

That's great. I imagine you can effectively divide people by age based on whether they understood the ka-chunk in that quote. I'm probably among the youngest that do. Don McLean's "American Pie" had the entire title track on program one and then the program switch in the middle of the second song, Sister Fatima.

[bastion]

Quote

Tomorrow’s way of listening to music will likely be different. We’ve recently taken our first steps toward keeping data in a “cloud”, remote servers accessible from any device, with services such as Apple’s MobileMe and Google Docs. Why can’t we do this with music?

Because the RIAA would throw the mother of all hissy-fits. Again. This was already tried several years ago and they were destroyed for distributing, even though the recipients already had the stuff being distributed. This is one of the most fundamental and long-standing issues with the RIAA. They're insistent that when you buy (a license to listen to) music, your rights cover the combination of content and medium. You may very well have the CD of "News of the World" but as far as they're concerned you don't have the right to listen to it on a taped copy or over a network connection. They're wrong, of course, but every once in a while they find a judge willing to go along with one specific instance or, more often, they're able to threaten the violators into complying with their idiocy.

[Chris Breen]

bastion said:

Because the RIAA would throw the mother of all hissy-fits. Again.

Keep in mind that the RIAA is the music industry. And, so far, that industry has been keen on subscription services because they provide a steady and fairly predictable revenue stream. If everything is the product instead of the latest hit, artist, or trend, you're less subject to the whims of the moment.

[schafdog]

This already exists in Denmark.
The biggest ISP/mobile operator (The AT&T of Denmark) has a concept of "Play" which for a fix amount (perhaps even include) you can chose from 2 million songs. But it uses DRM which must be supported on the PC/Mac and mobile phone.