Music Lockers vs. Subscriptions: Music Ownership in the Cloud Era

Reports say that Apple might introduce a cloud-based music storage and streaming service. It would compete with Amazon's "music locker" service, and beat Google to the market too.

Music lockers -- online storage of your music collection -- are not new. Michael Robertson, founder of MP3.com, started such a service, called Oboe, in 2005. The appeal is threefold. First, storing your music in the cloud makes it accessible anywhere. Second, there is the backup safety factor. Third, with the right apps you can stream your music files via multiple devices.

So even though iPods and other portable music players can accommodate large libraries and are portable, local storage and playback is still a nuisance when your mobile lifestyle includes several devices.

Music lockers hint at the "celestial jukebox" concept, which theorizes an on-demand music library in the cloud that users can access from anywhere. In the Apple/Amazon/Google models, the celestial jukeboxes are many, built by individuals, and consist of individually owned songs. The grander celestial jukebox vision imagines one universal music library accessed by many, rather than many jukeboxes, each accessed by one.

Universal celestial jukeboxes already exist, and have for many years, but usage has not taken off. Rhapsody is a veteran in this business, having launched nearly 10 years ago in 2001. I have been a Rhapsody subscriber since the beginning, but I'm writing this as a Rhapsody advocate secondarily, and primarily as a true celestial jukebox advocate.

The a-la-carte style of online music store (iTunes and its ilk) is old-fashioned. The model is analog at the core, wrapped in digital clothing. The concept of personal storage makes it old-fashioned, and moving that storage to the cloud doesn't modernize the concept of ownership upon which it is based.

That is really what the cloud represents: a different concept of ownership. I pay Rhapsody a monthly subscription fee to get my ears on the entire library of 11-million tracks. I don't even remember what it costs; 12 or 15 bucks a month. I have an MP3 player optimized for Rhapsody, so I can drag-and-drop from the service to my device. Other apps bring Rhapsody streaming to my smartphones. The web site is a full-featured app in itself, and carries all my settings onto any connected computer in the world.

Most people don't like this deal, because it's not true ownership. Drop the subscription, and you lose all your music, because it's not really your music. I get that. But here's the thing. It feels like ownership, and in the end, that's what counts to me and the minority loyalists who embrace music subscriptions. I feel like I own 11-million music tracks, because I can access them, transfer them, and listen to them as if I had bought them on iTunes.

Let's imagine I did buy them on iTunes. I'd be at least 11-million dollars poorer right now -- and believe me, I can't afford it. How much have I actually spent? Over 10 years, at $15 a month, I've dished out $1,800 for ownership rights to a vast celestial library available anywhere, anytime.

This argument isn't new. In fact, I'm a little embarrassed to be putting it down yet again, when I and so many others have said it all so many times over so many years. The market rules. If people don't like the value of music subscriptions, Rhapsody and others will continue to struggle uphill.

But if Apple is making news with a prospective music locker, which is merely a personal hard drive in the cloud, it's time again to point out that the cloud isn't just about storing what you own. The potential of the cloud is to redefine what it means to own things. For me, access is the new ownership.

 

 

 

Follow Brad Hill on Twitter: www.twitter.com/BradHill

Comments

[Sundialsvc4]

10:01 AM on 04/26/2011

My sense of the matter is that it does come down to a problem of "location-free persona authentication."

(I started to fix that typo and add the "l," but "persona" sounds good. Maybe I just invented the latest buzzword by pure serendipity. My fifteen minutes, please.)

We need to sell music, movies, and everything else. We want to sell it to individuals no matter where they are. Right now, we're stuck in the mode that is expressed by the old saw of the VP of I.T. who's standing next to an ATM machine on a stormy night, muttering, "It's ME, dammit!"

"It's ME, dammit!" Yep, that's the root problem that we need to find a solution to.

[TrippyWeekender]

09:47 PM on 04/25/2011

Whether it's $12 or $15/month, it still adds up to paying for access, not ownership and access isn't foolproof just yet. Plus you'll never use 11 million songs. It's like buying a Ferrari for the drive to the corner store. That's where cloud music services miss the boat. A scalable pricing structure would make initial entry more appealing to early adopters. But as we've seen before, they usually prefer a flat fee. Each service also guides the user toward more robust participation in a different manner. Here, iTunes is way out front with their Genius service and comprehensive, easy-to-navigate website. Amazon actually has a very cool service in Sound Unwound but does a poor job incorporating it to their cloud service. Newcomers such as MOG and Rdio have good ideas too but remain fringe options at this point in their product cycle. Like the others, Last.fm and Pandora "think" for you but that remains a hit-and-miss prospect lacking a human interpretative element. Too often, more of the same isn't better -- it's just more of the same. Meanwhile Google with all their muscle is still on the sidelines. Many are curious what Spotify will do domestically, if and when it comes here. Like everyone else, they'll find the struggle to break out challenging. The bottom line on all these: mass adoption is a long (and expensive) road to profitability.

[Sundialsvc4]

10:03 AM on 04/26/2011

I still have the first compact disc that I ever bought. The $28.00 that I paid for what was at that time an electronic novelty still gives me the same Lionel Richie music that I paid for, no matter what eventually happened to the more than one dozen computers I have owned during that same period of time.

So, that electronic disc has had the long life-span that I intended for it when I bought it, all those years ago, whereas every single computer I have ever owned (except for a handful of lovingly maintained antiques that I collect ...) has been at most a two-year asset.

No, we still have a long way to go.

[Miiiike]

11:34 PM on 04/23/2011

I can't trust the cloud. My entire flickr account was permanently deleted, along with my yahoo email and the photos I had backed up there. I was hacked by a method so simple a kid could have done it. In fact, a kid may have done it. To prevent it from happening to others though, I am not going to reveal how it was done. 2500 photos and all my emails gone forever. I may be able to recover about half of my photos from various sources, but it will take a lot of time and they will likely be a much smaller size.

Where are my original photos you may ask? After I uploaded them to flickr, I sent them to a relative for safekeeping- she promptly lost them.

My point is, anything you put in the cloud can be compromised. It's great that I can access my notes and information from around the world, but without several backups either on line, hard drives, or hard copies, it is far to fragile to depend on. But don't take my word for it- just do a web search for Dropbox and Amazon's recent bungles.

[Sundialsvc4]

10:09 AM on 04/26/2011

I have backup discs on media that I can no longer read. (Although I did back up those media.)

Digital music (etc...) distribution systems still have not found ways to address the very real concerns such as the ones you describe.

My instincts still tell me that the "print on demand" model may yet prove to be the solution that is most satisfactory... provided that the printed material actually has archival-quality permanence, which present day recordable media do not.

It really is a reflection of the bigger problem that is discussed quite a lot in the archival community. (For instance, check out the "Public Vaults" exhibit at the National Archives, with its large display on the impermanence of present-day digital media.)

I have LP's that my grandfather gave to me, and I can still play them today. This kind of permanence and durability is important.

I have computers bought a dozen years ago that are "beyond worthless."

Whatever "the solution" might be, it must come down to one of three things:

(a) Tie the collection to something of true permanence, that is not "the owner's computer."

(b) Provide durability based on "endless backups," and assume the subscriber's heirs don't really care.

(c) Persuade the subscriber not to care to possess a durable copy; that, somehow, the corporation itself will be "durable."

[Sup Dooder]

04:55 PM on 04/22/2011

Love this. Been a Rhapsody subscriber since October 2003 and have never looked back. Never bought a song on iTunes or AmazonMP3; never needed to, and I don't need these cloud services either.

[jdubs77]

04:42 PM on 04/22/2011

It seems like Rhapsody was the solution for you. They may have been first with cloud "access" but I think it took Apple's slow but steady march of complementary hardward and software (ie iPod > iTunes (software) > iTunes (store) > iPhone > Apple TV > iPad) to lead people in a roundabout way to realize cloud storage is best for the mobile lifestyle. In 2001 MP3's were still a new concept to most people, and I think going from owning CDs to "owning" music in the cloud was too much of a leap at the time.