Amazon Launches Digital Music Locker, Even As Legality Is Still In Question
from the did-they-obtain-licenses? dept
Well, this could get interesting. While there are already a few digital music lockers on the market -- including services like MP3Tunes and MeCanto -- there's been plenty of talk over the past few months about the "big players" entering the market. Most of the focus has been on both Apple (which bought and shut down the music locker service Lala) and Google, but Amazon beat both companies to the starting line and launched its service a few hours ago.The question that's most interesting to me is whether or not it's paying for licenses, and at this point, it's unclear. We've seen, for example, that the record labels are not happy about these services, with EMI in a legal fight with MP3Tunes. On top of that record labels are demanding additional fees and licenses, even though these lockers only allow people to store and stream music they already have. Whether or not Amazon paid any licenses is unclear. The News.com article linked above says "as of last week the online retailer giant had not obtained all the necessary licenses, but that Amazon might announce the service before all the negotiations were complete."
But here's my question: what necessary licenses? Why should anyone else have to pay a license to let me store and stream my own music? Update: Hypebot has more, saying that Amazon doesn't believe it needs licenses, and some of the labels (but not all) are upset. Specifically, Warner Music is pissed and is contemplating legal action, but other labels aren't quite as upset.
As for Amazon's actual service, I have no idea if it's compelling, but I will say it's rather silly and pointless that they're making me reupload music. I already have an Amazon S3 account which (among other things) I use to backup all of my (yes, legal and authorized) music. What would be great is if I could just point this new Amazon Cloud Player at my existing music that is already stored on Amazon's servers, and then stream it from there. But that does not appear to be an option. Instead, I would need to reload all of it (and since I have a lot more than 5 gigs of music, I'd have to pay multiple times for it. And, with anyone else launching a similar service, I'd probably have to upload it again and again.
Let's be honest here: that's not really a cloud service. A true cloud service would let me store my music wherever I wanted, and then point whatever streaming player I wanted at it... But, of course, I'm sure the record labels would want another bunch of licenses paid up in full before anything like that is ever allowed.
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Filed Under: cloud, digital lockers, music, streaming
Companies: amazon, apple, google, mp3tunes
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Queue TAM calling Mike a pirate.
I mean, nobody would ever pay for THAT much music, right?
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20031031&mode=classic
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Good question.
But I have another one, what do they offer that I can't do it myself?
I sure can put up a server in my home and stream whatever I want to any equipment I want, why would I pay to have less functionality?
Another question, why I can share music with a friend in my house but I cannot share that online with him? that doesn't seem right does it?
This seems like the kind of arbitrary rule that is just asking to be ignored by the masses.
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I hope they didn't pay any license fees
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http://www.icecast.org/
http://ampache.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flumotio n (The GPL server is free)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edcast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidsoap
http://www.vide olan.org/vlc/streaming.html
Can they compete with that?
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this is 2011, right? I didn't magically get transported to 2001, right? I'm allowed to use whatever OS I see fit, right? Right?! Obviously not in amazon's world.
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Re:
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Here's another issue...
I'm not sure about other cable companies, but I pay for a mid-tier package whose upload speed is capped around 256K/sec. Even if it hits that, how much time would it take to upload several gigs of music? I've had issues with timeouts just uploading single tracks to my blog, much less several hundred files at a time. So some of my hesistancy to use this (along with various cloud-based backup services) is simply logistics.
(Aside: will this post get trolled despite the fact it deals with legally purchased music? It seems it might, simply because someone's always looking out for additional licensing fees. Speaking of which, if you stream your music over at a friend's house, are you now liable for public performance fees?)
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Seriouslly Mike? The $?
Maybe the prices are a bit high (I'm not to familiar with cloud computing/space costs), but they seem very reasonable.
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Re:
I think the rationale of copyright supporters is that it's ok to "share", as long as there is a loser, meaning, it's ok that you lend (and, therefore, lose access to your copy) your CDs or books to friends and family, but it is not ok if you make copies for them. If you want new copies, you must pay someone (the rights holder) to make you a copy.
Basically, in a nutshell, this system requires that you always pay someone (that holds the magical copyright) to make you a copy. My opinion is that there are a few wasted steps here, but I better pipe down or someone will blast with a barrage of insults me for "supporting piracy".
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Amazon's cloud isn't secure anyway
So Amazon, rather than launching another service on its platform, should be focused on fixing the glaringly obvious problems with their infrastructure.
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Should have been:
...or someone will blast me with a barrage of insults...
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Re: Seriouslly Mike? The $?
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Let's just call this out for the BS that it is.....
Buy Indie Support Locals
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Why?
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They aren't happy with anything that makes listening to music easier for consumers. If it was up to them, we'd still be spinning 33.3 RPM records that wore out in a year or two.
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Didn't lala.com do this?
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Quote:
Yep only criminals.
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Re: I hope they didn't pay any license fees
They always do want more, and when something is successful doubly so.
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Re: Here's another issue...
Yep, watch your six because BMI and ASCAP are going to sic their hounds on you.
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Amazon S3 and Amazon streaming service already exist, cost next to nothing to use, and give you password timed locking HTTPS URLs so only you can get your music.
Now the're making the service user friendly. (Kinda a shocker really)
Amazon S3 Devs have even said they cant look inside your locker and see your files. As such you can put anything you want from streaming FLV's to MP3's to direct download WMV's.
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What happens if someone decides to drag you into a police station and ask you for all the receipts for the music they find there would anybody be able to produce them?
Store other data in there?
Only if I'm able to encrypt it all into some form of encrypted filesystem first like a mix of GMailFS and StegFS but for that, but it doesn't encrypt the connection to it and it also does not say what the backup policies are, I'm thinking major catastrophe here, if an earthquake hits their servers would my data be safe?
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oops
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What you want is technically easy, but with so much potential for abuse (it could pretty much become the easiest way to pirate) that right holders aren't running to get there.
What you are more likely to see is the "microsoft cloud" that appears on their ads (but isn't all that real) which would allow you to remotely get to your music, but at the cost of bandwidth. Third party storage solutions are nice, but active third party processing may be going past whatever "fair use" rights you might have.
I am thinking in this case that Amazon may be rushing to get into the business only to close it, agreeing with the labels and setting a standard that heads off other attempts to go to "single copy" locker solutions.
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so it lets you re-download purchase. makes it much better.
that and i got miles davis for $3 and streamed it to my phone.
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Amazon is asking to be sued
Does this mean that music purchased through Amazon will become more expensive as the recording industry "penalizes" Amazon for introducing a business model from which they are not getting their "fair share"?
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Re:
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"funny, no wait, that is a little too close to the truth" button.
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Re: Here's another issue...
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Re: Seriouslly Mike? The $?
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Re: Re: Here's another issue...
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Amazon will probably license it
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Re:
I was just reminded of a youtube video I saw one day a while ago, of a guy who built a literal home cinema in his well...home. Cost him thousands, and he also had a separate room for his collection of about 2,000 DVDs and Blu-rays. However, what pissed him off was that even though he had paid for the movies, he wasn't allowed to rip them onto a hard drive on a computer in one room and wirelessly stream them to the projector. His "licences" didn't allow that, and he had legally purchased all these movies.
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Re: Seriouslly Mike? The $?
I don't believe I complained about the price anywhere. My only complaint was in the idea that I might need to pay twice. I'm already paying for my S3 storage.
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MP3.com
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Would they do to your tunes like they did to wikileaks and just make them vanish?
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Absolutely they can. Remember, every single movie on Netflix can be downloaded for free. But Netflix still makes money. Quite a lot of it, in fact, and completely legally.
Offer users a service that they value, and they will pay for it.
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Re: Re:
No offense, but if this is their rationale, it's a completely laughable one.
Long before the creation of the Internet, fans of music were making "mix tapes" for each other. This was not a situation where the original consumer loses access to their copy.
And, of course, it was attacked by the record industry as vehemently as possible. But when all the dust had settled, the music industry eventually realized that making mixtapes helped music sales.
Who knows if they will decide that this time around (or even have the chance to before they fold). But strictly speaking, your opinion doesn't hold water.
Obviously, you're a freetard that supports piracy. LOL!
(not pictured: sarc marks)
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Re: Re: Re:
Try Gnash. It's actually better than Flash, once you get it running (no small feat). Rob Savoy, main developer, was actually given an award at the last Libre Planet for
Gnash.
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