Apps Letting You Stream Your Own Music From The Cloud Being Pressured Over 'Licensing'
from the you-don't-own-what-you-thought-you-own dept
When Google, Amazon and Apple all entered the "cloud music" space at about the same time, we pointed out that we seemed to be missing the real point of the cloud. That was, that all of the services required the storage provider's own client app to play the music stored there. As I noted, that's not what the promise of the cloud is. It should be about being able to store data in the cloud and then let any relevant app access that data through an API. It's positively ridiculous that the (all legal, by the way) music I have is stored in multiple places in the cloud. For years, I've backed it up with a person Amazon S3 account. But when Amazon launched its cloud music player, I couldn't just point the player to my S3 storage, but had to re-upload. Then when Google launched its Music Beta... re-upload. The best player in the space may be MP3Tunes, who is the most open and willing to let third parties in. But most of the big guys are limited.So it's interesting to see that some folks are writing third party apps to access music in Google and Amazon's cloud... but apparently Amazon flipped out about the aMusic iPhone app and, as sent in by Jeffrey Nonken, politely asked the developer to kill the app, noting that since Apple doesn't have licenses that "allow" third party access, he has to wait until they have such licenses.
This is, to put it mildly, stupid. If I have legally obtained files, and I put them in a locker where only I have the legal access to them, why shouldn't I be able to point any app I want at it. This would be like saying that if I had a cllient side app playing music on my hard drive, I couldn't then get another app to play the same files... unless the hard drive maker got the right "licenses" from the record labels. How does that make any sense at all?
This is definitely a big problem with "cloud" services these days however, where folks like the record labels think they retain ownership and control of files that people think they legally "own," limiting how they can listen to them. That seems to give the labels much greater rights than are reasonable granted under copyright law... just because the files are stored at a data center, rather than on a local hard drive.
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Filed Under: access, apps, cloud, copyright, licensing, streaming
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The cloud is doomed
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Re: The cloud is doomed
Particularly I prefer simple TXTs, people will be able to open then in 20 years, DOC documents probably not.
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Re: The cloud is doomed
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...
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In a world where the length of the cable matters, this makes perfect sense.
The labels/studios deserve to be handed a "tax" on every single 0 & 1 that might ever be in their copyrighted works, so they just demand you pay a license or they sue you into oblivion, then buy up your tech at auction, then shove in some DRM and call it a day.
I tried for sarcasm... still is far to real... sigh.
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The advantages of it, it is that governments also can't force no one to hand your stored info since there are not single administrators to ask.
Also if they are flipping out about that wait until they see, streaming services that are legal apparently, people can stream live TV to the internet apparently in most regions.
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/96512/how-to-watch-tv-online-for-free/
Say goodbye to affiliated fees, business as usual will not be so for long.
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Hmmm...byte level would be RAID 3
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If any one of the three services are down, you're down.
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Virtual is confusing
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Re: Virtual is confusing
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Real v Intellectual Property
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Re: Real v Intellectual Property
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Throwing up artificial barriers is just going to cause the customer to figure out a way to do what they want themselves.
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I do Itunes Streaming, DNLA, DHCP, and Linux (oh and lots more)
Just something thought you might like to check out...
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I am not associated with the product, just think it's great.
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No need for an entire server these days, a $200 NAS will do the trick.
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/troll
Shit... I must have scored some sort of record here.
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Uh Oh. You might have given some folks an idea right there for the next ridiculous bill to propose.
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What about my old CD's and maybe even cassettes or records; the technology does exist to digitize all of that - where are my licenses RIAA?
I feel ripped off - I have all this music I've bought, but was never provided licenses.
If they want us to have licenses, then why won't they provide them for both new and old music I have?
It's not very well logical to expect people to have something that was never provided.
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On a more relevant note, I believe those lyrics there are exactly what the labels think when they hear about Amazon and Google's cloud storage ideas.
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Yet I picture Kieth Richards when I think about the labels.
Go figure!
http://www.freakingnews.com/pictures/35000/Keith-Richards-35000.jpg
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He is so old, he can remember when the Rolling Stones were just tiny pebbles!
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I use VLC to stream music to Android and other computers.
http://www.videolan.org/doc/streaming-howto/en/
- Open a port in your computer(e.g.: 7070)
- Set up the VLC server to stream HTTP on port 7070
- Use "ifconfig" to get your IP address.
- Use any video player in any device that lets you type a url and type for example:
http://[ip here]:[open port here]
http://127.0.0.1:7070
And you are streaming.
But trust me, once you done it once in front of kids or your wife they will bug you forever to show something to someone at odd times, unless you set ground rules, like no streaming after 8 o'clock at night of before 8'clock in the morning.
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I think he meant ipconfig, but most users connect behind a router of some sort and will need to use https://www.whatismyip.com/ (or similar) to show their outside ip, then configure their router to forward the port selected to the internal ip they are actually at.
Not for the average bear. For the above average bear on Windows there is always IIS.
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Nah! Means he's a geek.... IPConfig = Windows, ifconfig = Unix/Linux and I think he was talking about intra-house streaming rather than out to internet.
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Ubergeek with a cherry on top...
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Re: Ubergeek with a cherry on top...
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No, no he really didn't.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=258rnzeBbAs
Now imagine you have a friend and he is traveling and you want him to be able to see the game with you, well use VLC to stream to him, get your wife to stram it to you.
You need to show someone a live stream of something in the field? you want to show your wife or kids where you are? stream it with VLC to them at home.
But there is a problem, some people want to make it illegal to transmit video on the internet, they say it is to stop criminals what they don't say is that they want to label everybody a criminal to stop anyone from doing something they don't want others to do, so if you send a video to your husband of a game you are a criminal, if they catch people streaming their own videos and start cutting into their profits they will try to claim you can't do that anymore even if it is your own stream and with the powers they will be granted who will fight against that kind of thing?
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I like this idea, personally, and it also means I don't miss games, movies, or anything else when I'm away from home.
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Clouds.
The next logical step would be to make an app that rather than stream from the cloud in place of Amazons app, is to have it temporarily download the songs directly from the cloud and play it as it downloads and delete it when complete or when the track is skipped.
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Re: Clouds.
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Alternatives
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For me that is the big motivation for shifting files to the cloud I upload documents to my skydrive and they are instantly on servers around the world.
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I've been running my own servers for better than 15 years now and haven't had a single failure or service outage yet. If one happens, well, that's why I have backups. I don't think the risk of losing your own servers is big enough to make that the deciding factor.
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Misplaced anger?
Why did you mention the record labels when Amazon appears to be the problem here? The record labels don't want you streaming your own music at all, but I can't see why they would care which player you use. Amazon, on the other hand, does want you to use their player.
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Playing my Music
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Other Providers
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Re: Other Providers
Are you asking about an Amazon app that streams from Amazon storage? Or a third-party app that streams Joe's music to Joe from Amazon's storage? I don't think anyone's up in arms (yet) about the former, and the latter is what this article is about.
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