Google And Amazon May Have Just Handed Apple The Keys To The Cloud Music Kingdom | Hacker News Reader

Google And Amazon May Have Just Handed Apple The Keys To The Cloud Music Kingdom

techcrunch.com

55 pointsssclafani64 comments

Not having to upload music would be nice but making a deal with the labels could also lead to serious shortcomings. Google and Amazon didn’t have to play nice with the labels, Apple does.

One consequence of that could be that you can only have music you purchased in the iTunes Store in the cloud. What about music bought in other stores? What about music ripped from CDs? Indeed, what about pirated music? Amazon’s and Google’s cloud lockers work with all those files, will Apple’s?

If it doesn’t, its usefulness will be quite poor compared to what Amazon and Google have to offer.

Given that the labels were quite miffed that Amazon and Google allow you to upload arbitrary files I would be surprised if they moved away from that position.

With Amazon's service you don't have to upload anything you've bought from them, so we can assume that Apple gets that for free as well. These deals are so Steve can tell people they get to play their whole library from the cloud, no matter how they got it, while only needing to upload songs not released by the major labels.

No way will this allow to listen to music not purchased via iTunes without uploading. How would they prevent anyone from creating a 10000 track library full of correctly tagged empty files?

The server could pick say 5 random offsets in the song, and ask the client to upload the decoded data from one second of music starting at each of those offsets. The server can then compare that to what it has and see if it is close enough.

Or simpler still - the iTunes application will generate fingerprint of the whole audio in each file and send it along with whatever metadata is available. Then serverside the fingerprint and metadata are analyzed and if a certain criteria for a match are not met, iTunes is prompted to upload the file.

Yeah, I'm sure the people working at Apple couldn't ever find a way to verify the identity of a song. They'd probably just write something that looked at the tags. Then when someone pointed out how easy it is to fake that, they'd just say, "Oh well, fuck it. Tell Jobs it can't be done! They'll just have to upload everything."

Sure people can make iPhone and Android apps that can identity a song from you humming it into a crappy speaker in a crowded bar, but Apple doesn't have that kind of programmer talent working for them.

Yes, but the record companies insist that they're not licensed for this which is where the issue is.

> Google and Amazon didn’t have to play nice with the labels

Want to. Whether that will pan out is still to be seen.

> Apple does.

To an extent. Jobs's Apple has always been headstrong, and right now — because of Google and Amazon — they have labels by the balls.

> If it doesn’t, its usefulness will be quite poor compared to what Amazon and Google have to offer.

True, time will tell. It would not be the first time Apple fucks up a "cloud" service either. Still, I think they would realize how shitty the situation would be, and would have an easy time arguing that a worse service than Amazon's and Google's would not be able to compete, and would fail.

Apple agrees to the demand of the music labels by paying license fees - additional fees for storing music you already own in the cloud.

Only MG Siegler can spin this into something positive.

My.mp3.com lost. That’s the legal situation. If you want to let people access their music in the cloud without them having to upload it you will have to come to some agreement with the labels. There is no way around it.

Google and Amazon are bigger and could afford a fight. And I hope they do.

To me the fact that Apple will have deals with the music labels and will probably only allow you to play music you bought from them - that's no surprise at all.

> Google and Amazon are bigger and could afford a fight.

A fight they have no guarantee they can win still. The jurisprudence is against them, although Amazon definitely seems to think they can be successful.

When did fair use go away? I must have missed that.

> When did fair use go away?

Around 1952.

> I must have missed that.

Were you asleep the whole time? Did you miss the my.mp3.com case ugh referred to above?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_v._MP3.com

You're thinking in legal terms. This is about money.

Amazon is one of the largest music sellers in the world. Google is has enough money to buy the whole industry.

Pick your fight.

> You're thinking in legal terms. This is about money.

Which matters not at all.

> Amazon is one of the largest music sellers in the world. Google is has enough money to buy the whole industry.

Being big is not sufficient, nor is having money. Apple has more cash on hand than Amazon and Google at the same time.

> Pick your fight.

You don't even make sense.

And while they're fighting Apple are establishing themselves as the number one player.

This isn't about what's right, it's about what will work.

I'm not sure Amazon (or Google) really think they can be successful but I'm not sure that's the point. I think they're just manoeuvring - potentially trying to show the record companies that there is demand, that there is money to be made and to encourage them into a mutually agreeable licensing deal.

As of right now they are not willing to fight.

There are plenty of ways around it, including getting better lawyers.

This is Sony and Universal Music we're talking about not some two bit patent troll with no balls. They've got pretty good lawyers, deep pockets and believe (rightly or wrongly) that they're fighting for their survival.

Spending more and more on lawyers is likely to really only benefit the lawyers.

In our warped reality, the media cartel have top guys in the US DOJ. It can be considered an extreme form of regulatory capture.

In this environment, what is sane (you purchase a CD, rip the bits for use space-shifted to the cloud) is not seen as "legal" without "license fees".

Apple paying dues to the music cartel does win in this environment; Google and Amazon playing to rational logic do not. Apple groked this 20 years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosumi

It strikes me as very strategic for a few reasons.

1. As pointed out below, Google and Amazon are likely to pick this fight. I would imagine Apple is more then happy to let those two companies spend the blood, sweat, tears and dollars on what will surely be a lengthy legal fight.

2. With the labels opening a deal, they'll feel more inclined to shutdown/stop Amazon/Google pressing their need to move legally in return.

3. While all this is happening, especially if injunctive relief is given to the labels, Apple has the legal solution in the U.S.

4. They continue to sell silly amounts of content and done right the process of shopping by my iPhone now becomes building a playlist, that can sync later to physical files in my iTunes, if at all. Or a subscription stream model, where again just putting together a list from the largest online retailer of music.

I'm sure Apple thinks it's positive because otherwise they'd just follow Amazon/Google. So it's hardly "spin", quite clearly Apple feels that what they're getting is going to be well worth the costs. They have a decent track record too.

It's certainly positive for Apple's customers that they don't have to spend hours and hours and tons of bandwidth uploading their music.

It's certainly positive for Apple and their customers if the fees are lower then they would have otherwise been or if Apple was able to get other concessions from the labels.

As someone who has put together a cloud music player/site, I can assure you that uploading is by far the biggest deterrent from people using the service.

In fact, out of my large music library, I only have a couple thousand songs of my own uploaded. Out of a few hundred users, there are only 3 others who have uploaded a similar number of songs. My service allows you to share playlists with your friends and loads of users don't upload anything and are just dependent on playlists form their early adopter friends. If Apple gets the rights to skip out on having users upload it will be a huge win.

It also seems like Google and Amazon are in this space only for the sake of trying to get people on their respective Android platforms (in the case of Amazon up and coming) where as Apple at least has _some_ sense in organizing music nicely and creating a nice playback experience. The Amazon UI kinda makes me shudder as I always end up clicking on things by accident because there are too many links/buttons embedded in each row.

Why is it so hard to get them to upload their music? I'd think that you could just have a button in your UI that says, "Upload all my music in the background". And then just do it constantly in the background.

I'd think that Apple could just have the same button in iTunes.

It takes time and lots of bandwidth -- it's a serious commitment compared to using something like Grooveshark, Spotify, or if Apple is allowed to do it: by scanning your iTunes Library xml file and automatically permissioning you to play your songs from anywhere. If you are dealing with huge amounts of files you need to create a client side uploader apps to keep track of failures and loading new songs -- which also means users have to keep that app running. This is why Amazon pushes hard for mp3s you purchase from their site to be pushed to your player and don't count for storage space. I decided on uploading from the browser using drag and drop as it was the most natural way for me to upload music, but might implement a dropbox like queue system.

I do agree that it takes a lot of time and bandwidth, but for the user it should just be one click. The app can just be a service that is installed and runs on system startup in the background, so the user never has to even think about after they clicked that button in the UI the first time.

With that said you've actually done it and I haven't. But it seems like the type of thing that shouldn't be too hard. I suspect Apple will nail it with iTunes support.

> but for the user it should just be one click.

One click and a few weeks worth of waiting while the client uploads your complete music collection.

Perhaps this will be rolled out in Europe and Asia before the US.

Even in Asia, uploading tens of gigabytes of music is not a small endeavour.

Most DSL lines are ADSL and have limited upload bandwidth. Even for me I have 25Mbps down/800kbps up. I run bittorrent and have it QOSed and limited to 400kbps up. Uploading just one album would take all day (but probably shorter if done at night) so someone wanting to upload a sizable music collection will probably take longer than most people have the patience for.

Now, you could prioritize what albums get uploaded but then you're back to curating your music (picking which songs get priority) and most people don't want to do that. If any of these companies are able to do a music service without needing to upload files then they win.

> Why is it so hard to get them to upload their music?

1. It's a chore to even do it

2. Consumer landlines are generally very asymetric. I have an ADSL line providing 1.1 MB/s (no typo) down, but 75kB/s up. I have 32GB of music on this machine (in lossy encodings). It would take me 3 weeks and 4 days uninterrupted to push that to "the cloud". Not only would make my internet connection completely unusable in the meantime (I don't have a QoS router), 3 weeks before I can truly use the service is hardly seamless.

If uploading is so hard, then why is Dropbox so successful? I'm on the max plan and I don't have any problems syncing. Sure, it takes a looooong time, but I expect it so I'm ok with it. Make the uploading automatic & out of sight and most people will have no trouble at all.

I assume it's successful in part because very few people upload the full 2GB quota in their first ten minutes of using Dropbox. I installed it, poked around with a couple of MP3s and PDFs, and then stopped. I doubt many users of Dropbox upload more than a couple hundred MB at a time.

> If uploading is so hard, then why is Dropbox so successful?

because for most users dropbox does not require uploading tens of gigabytes (blocking) before you can start enjoying it.

What prevents Google/Amazon to handle the upload like Dropbox does ? I mean if someone else already uploaded a file with the same hash it would be available automagically. I realize that this would not work for self-ripped-encoded albums but it would work for legally/illegally obtained songs.

The legal precedents prevent that.

It's funny, in China, Google has this exact same deal as Apple with the labels. google.cn/music/ is only accessible from within China though. But I can go there and listen to anything from anywhere, as long as the label has signed on. It works amazing.

It feels like a failure of the internet that I didn't know this existed.

What does this even mean? How did the Internet fail just because you didn't know about it? I'm pretty sure there is a lot of stuff that you aren't aware of, and that in no way reflects on the Internet as a whole.

It's quite premature to call this game.

No one has seen Apple's cloud music offering.

How locked up will it be? How much will it cost? Will it support MP3s not purchased from iTunes? Will it work on non-Apple-brand devices?

Move along folks. Nothing to see here.

Good point. I would expect the Apple service to only work with Apple devices and to have the same 3 device (or whatever the number is) limitation that they currently have. I'd also expect it to be a pay service, as Apple doesn't do freemium.

I'd consider it a major fail if it's not accessible through a web interface, something I'm not expecting.

>only work with Apple devices and to have the same 3 device (or whatever the number is) limitation

That number is unlimited. You're restricted to 5 computers, but unlimited iDevices. I currently have something like 30 associated with my account.

I wouldn't be betting on the company making deals with the horse company right after the combustion engine got invented.

People are already getting paid enough by their youtube channel to work on it full time. All it will take is one or two big success stories, of a new celebrity that gets superstar famous purely from youtube -- and we actually already passed that point a while ago, it's just a matter of them figuring out how to monetize properly -- if new stars no longer feel like they need the exploitative record companies, and start launching new music purely through youtube and similar record-company-free cloud mediums, Sony and EMI will go the same way as palm and nokia.

There have already been dozens of these superstar from YouTube/MySpace/wherever success stories. I don't know of any that haven't converted their overnight fame into some sort of label deal. It is my firm belief that the only way to properly monetize a music career that can't be pirated and without record label "help" is to build a devoted live audience, which takes years if not decades. Any sort of fame that's caught on the internet is as fleeting as the next famous act on the internet, so while a huge YouTube video or car commercial may guarantee big crowds for one show, they very well may not be there for the next one. And define "paid enough".

On the other hand, you will always have plenty of young, attention hungry people for whom the lure of a record deal and instant riches and fame will be plenty to sign away everything for the chance at it. The point of the whole Justin Bieber marketing machine isn't just to sell his product, it's to fill the labels' funnels with the next round of wanna-bes. And to be fair, the internet wasn't just invented. Napster was over a decade ago but labels, the RIAA and all their purchased goons in the govt. have been very effectively suppressing innovation through legal action for that entire time, and I don't see that trend abating. If anything it seems like it's getting worse.

It's a bummer, but record labels aren't going anywhere for a while.

It's interesting to see Amazon & Google directly competing, to the point that Google rushes a seemingly incomplete cloud music offering (also without label consent) to counter Amazon's early control of the market.

They're also competing in cloud infrastructure, android app markets and streaming video services. Their fundamental services are not that different, both centered around search, though they don't really compete for it. Amazon is a retail service but part of their effectiveness is showing you what you want.

Supposedly the labels were asking Google to block torrent sites from search results. A store is the only missing feature and it just wasn't going to happen.

For all the talk about how Amazon/Google require people to upload their own libraries, there's absolutely no way that the music labels will allow Apple to skip this for anything other than iTunes (and probably only iTunes+) purchased music. Infact I'd be surprised if there's anyway for people to get non-iTunes music into the service at all.

(Apple doesn’t sell music with DRM anymore. There is only “iTunes+” music. Limiting the service to legacy music with DRM wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever. I’m not saying that the labels wouldn’t demand it, I’m, however, doubtful that anyone would ever agree to that. It would obviously doom Apple’s cloud locker right from the start.)

Nowhere did I say it'd be limited to DRM, I said it would be limited to music purchased from the iTunes store.

Even though today's iTunes music doesn't contain DRM it is still fingerprinted and Apple (and iTunes) know exactly whether a song in your library came from the store or whether it was one you ripped yourself.

I'm pretty sure only the former will appear magically in your cloudstore without an upload, and I suspect the latter will never be welcome.

Ok, sorry! I assumed you were talking about DRM because you mentioned iTunes+.

Google and Amazon's approach has some big potential to blow up in their faces. It's definitely going to create some interesting legal questions. For instance Google's YouTube copyright filter applies equally to private videos. What makes music different? It's a slightly different circumstance of course but Google will have to explain why they think private pirated video is a no-no but private pirated audio is not. I think they'll also have some burden to prove only one user is accessing an account. For example when Google Music invites are flying around what stops me from creating multiple accounts and simply giving the username/password to my friends?

Google Music service could work.

We have corporate music shoved down our throats from the 3 company radio / 4 company label monopoly.

If one were to reinvent the whole process, giving more profits to artists, aggregating the best tunes 'pandora style', we could see a shift in the zeitgeist of the music we listen to in general.

Let Apple have Lil Wayne and Lady Gaga.

With the advent of cheap professional home recording equipment and loads of talent waiting for a break, the industry is waiting to be dumped on its head.

We are talking about Google here. Why don't you use Altavista or Yahoo what that company does? You could always Ask Jeeves...

One of Lala's products that I tried involved purchasing songs without the ability to download, but they were stored in my music locker on their servers. Although these songs couldn't be downloaded, they cost only ten cents a song (I think, but can't remember the exact amount). While this was restrictive relative to purchasing DRM-free MP3s, it cost a lot less and was all I needed in some cases. I hope that either Amazon, Google, or Apple offers something similar at a low price, as I'd like to give it another try.

That was what made Lala so brilliant:

1) No subscription requirement. I'm not convinced that the average consumer spends $120 a year on music and wants that expense every month of paying for a MOG, Spotify or Rdio.

2) Extremely low per-song price made "impulse" buys easy.

3) Matching your library to their catalog without uploading.

4) A really nice web interface. Extremely good for 2 years ago. Amazon's is so-so, and I haven't tried Google's yet (looks good from screenshots). I doubt Apple will do one at all.

Very well said. But don't forget the full-length free preview of any song. I loved that "once and only once" feature.

I forgot all about that, yes that was a killer feature as well. That turned out to be the killer feature for Google's music search as well, and made it infinitely less valuable when Lala went away.

What about rolling your own 'cloud locker' to stream media to your various devices?

Anyone who has decent upload capabilities (talkin' to you Fios) could have a home media server stream to all relevant devices inside and outside of one's home (audio is obviously easier than audio+video).

All I need is a semi-automated DVD ripper that can take a spindle of purchased DVD movies and rip them all unattended.

In several years, why shouldn't we have a colocated home media server that syncs with the cloud?

What about Spotify?

Yes! What about spotify? Uploading your own music? Only playing songs that you already own? Bah! Spotify came before google, amazon and apple with what seems to be a better service..

article title stunned me in an 'ah ha' sort of way -- sounds like a play/set of moves right up apple's alley

It's not real Cloud Music until it's performed by Brian Eno — or perhaps it's more similar to gas music?

I prefer the original "cloud" music - Nuages by Debussy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturnes_(Debussy)

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