Google Launching Its Cloud Service Tomorrow, Without Big Music's Approval | Hacker News Reader

Google Launching Its Cloud Service Tomorrow, Without Big Music's Approval

mediamemo.allthingsd.com

66 pointsandre3k134 comments

I patiently await the day when artists are able to cut better deals with AAPL, GOOG and AMZN to market and sell their content directly - probably at a 70/30 split like the apps and the books.

It already exists, and is called cdbaby.com

They will syndicate music to amazon and itunes, and they pass through 91% of their net revenue from Apple and Amazon.

The problem is most artists aren't happy with the amount of fame and sales their skills would deliver in a total meritocratic market. And so there's never a shortage of takers for the labels' Faustian bargian. Someone's got to handle the payola/promotion/production aspect and that stuff ain't free.

Magnatune isn't a big label, but it's DRM-free and splits 50/50 with the artists. It's also non-exclusive, so the artists can make deals with others as well, if they like. Their "end-user" license lets each subscriber give 3 friends a copy of the music.

I'm not familiar with the industry, but is 50/50 split considered good?

IIRC, the major label deal goes like this:

  * Major label gives artist a loan for $X to cover the costs of
    producing the album.
  * Artists earn back something like 12% on album sales (though I
    believe 12% is on the high end).
  * That 12% goes directly towards paying back the loan for the
    production of the album.
  * Artists don't retain the copyrights to their works (at least the
    recordings, they may retain copyright to the lyrics, depending on
    the contract/studio).
  * Artists don't give a cut of merchandise sales, or ticket sales for
    live shows.
  * Artists retain the copyrights to recordings of live performances,
    which is how bands like Grateful Dead or Dave Matthews can allow
    'bootleg' recordings of their live shows.
  * The studio retains rights to copyrights of live shows that are
    professionally recorded for the purposes of putting out a 'live'
    album though.
  * Most artists are never able to pay back the initial loan to create
    the album.

The other side:

* Major label advances an unknown artist a bunch of money.

* Album sells poorly.

* Artist never pays back advance.

* Major label would have been better not making the deal.

No one seems to be respecting/fearing the music companies any more, not even big companies.

Why should they? It's my music that I'm simply storing in another location. Do the music execs actually think that they have a right to be upset about this? (I ask this seemingly rhetoric question because after Amazon launched their service apparently there were threats and rumblings from some of them)

Sure, they have a right to not license their music for sale on the service, and that's their own ignorance. Someone needs to slap them across the face with Steam. I've spent hundreds of times more dollars on games than I have music, and I exclusively buy games on Steam because of the convenience and because of the "cloud" aspect. My games themselves, saves, etc, synced and available anywhere?

My usic synced and available everywhere? And free storage if I buy it? I can click a button and have the latest Lupe Fiasco album on ALL of my devices instantly? I would happily, HAPPILY hand over $10/album for that convenience.

They just don't get it, and pirating and free/cheap private storage will benefit from their loss.

The labels are understandably worried that people will just share their lockers with friends in the same way people shared cassette tapes back in the day.

Of course labels want to double dip as much as they can; they have a dying product after all, it's natural to try and milk it as much as possible.

Apple seems to be interested in their permission. What a lot of people miss, but was spelled out in Jason Kincaid's TC article* is that label permission is not so much about lawsuits but about making it massively more convenient for the user by bypassing the upload step.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/09/without-the-labels-googles-...

Seems a bit premature. You still can't..

* listen to Pandora outside the US

* or Amazon Cloud Player outside the US

* or Spotify outside Europe

* buy music from Apple's iTunes Music Store US catalog in Japan

    or Spotify outside Europe

It's frustrating to keep hearing this come up as someone living in Germany. Europe is a big place, and Spotify is available in only a handful of countries; namely France, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Netherlands, UK.

That's true, I should've said Spotify outside a few European countries.

It's worth remembering that Page & Brin could probably buy the major labels outright, and personally dismiss any lawsuits against Google.

Antitrust laws might slow that plan down.

At minimum it would kill Google's ability to compete. Every tiny move they made would be under a microscope.

At some stage isn't that likely to happen? All the tech companies will start eyeing the music and movies studios, wondering what it would mean if Apple owned them all, and they'll start snapping them up.

I suspect that won't happen -- with music labels, at least -- for the same reason Netflix didn't look at Blockbuster and think, "We should buy them up!" The whole music distribution model has been based on top-down control and seems very inefficient in light of modern technologies. All signs so far indicate that Apple and Google know that and believe there's a lot more money to be made in coming up with the next distribution model (such as iTunes.)

Sony is perhaps the front runner in this, given its large movie studio and music label, but it's not clear that owning these businesses has been a great boon for Sony's electronics or software.

One can also look at the not-that-long-ago "merger" of AOL with Time Warner as another example of a media/tech marriage where the supposed synergy was vastly exaggerated.

I'm not sure I see any reason for another major tech company to leap in to buying huge legacy businesses given the lessons learned by their competitors.

By the same logic Apple should buy Google.

From a few days ago: "Russian tycoon buys Warner Music for $3.3bn" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2521442

Big Music is fucked. There have been so many times when they could have taken a graceful way out, and switched to a new realistic and reasonable business plan.

Don't underestimate their $$$ influence on the US political machine. Perhaps Canadian, too.

It seems very likely they will get their way with draconian copyright legislation in Canada in the near future.

I don't doubt they are launching this but I'm surprised Google is launching such a consumer-facing product at a developer conference. Perhaps there is a developer/API angle but I doubt it.

It would be like Steve Jobs launching a new version of iWork at WWDC. Sure, it's great, but it doesn't have any impact on developers.

I don't know about Google I/O, but WWDC has always had announcements of consumer products: iPhone 4, FaceTime, iMovie for iPhone, upgraded MacBooks, MobileMe,...

I certainly hope that it's not a rushed product that's aimed at beating Apple to the market.

I could not agree more. That's one thing that I absolutely cannot stand. I understand the need/desire to get to the market first, but an unfinished product is never a good thing.

Fat chance. It launches as "an invite-only beta", so I wouldn't get my hopes up.

"It's Wave for bands! It's invite only, so first all the bass players will get their parts up for download. They'll be able to invite 5 other bass players or drummers each. We'll add guitars, keys, and vocals once we've gained traction as the worlds best bass line download site! If we don't get enough users downloading bass lines, we'll close the project down and have the engineers behind it defect to Facebook..."

I wonder whether a service like this is actually better off without 'big music's approval'?

It all comes down to whether you see a cloud music service to be a purchase orientated service or a playback/consumption service.

If the latter, then at a conceptual level what does it have to do with the record labels. I don't need to get Warner's permission to play Dr Dre back on WinAmp.

The details are a bit murky at the moment but if Google is going to launch a music service that does not offer any method of purchasing or subscribing to music it will probably alienate a lot of users. Music sales may be down but they're not nonexistent. Lots of people don't pirate music for whatever reason. The whole experience will have to be pretty seamless in the way it scans and updates any music you bought from other services. For Google that's problem because you're probably buying that music from Amazon or Apple. Why not just use their cloud music services instead? It makes things a bit too complex. Amazon is in a better position but it'd be kind of shocking if the labels don't retaliate against them. It seems to me both Google and Amazon are forcing the labels back into Apple's camp here.

I really hope it's not going to be US-only :(

edit: FTFA: "Google Music to roll out to all U.S. google users within weeks of launch."

The wording doesn't say "U.S-only" so there might be a glimmer of hope.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com