“Leveraging their ubiquitous iTunes software Apple plans to upgrade their users almost overnight to a cloud music service in an ambitious move to beat Amazon and others to a cloud music service,” Robertson writes. “Record labels are wary to give Apple even greater dominance which is why Apple’s new strategy is designed to sidestep new licenses from the major labels.”
“After talking to a wide variety of insider sources it’s clear there is no upcoming Apple subscription service and Apple has far different plans… An upcoming major revision of iTunes will copy each user’s catalog to the net making it available from any browser or net connected ipod/touch/tablet. The Lala upload technology will be bundled into a future iTunes upgrade which will automatically be installed for the 100+ million itunes users with a simple “An upgrade is available…” notification dialog box. After installation iTunes will push in the background their entire media library to their personal mobile iTunes area,” Robertson writes. “Once loaded, users will be able to navigate and play their music, videos and playlists from their personal URL using a browser based iTunes experience.”
Robertson writes, “Apple will link the tens of millions of previously sold iPods, Touches, AppleTV and iTablets to mobile iTunes giving users seamless playback of their media from a wide range of Apple branded devices.”
Read the full article – recommended – here.
this makes no sense. how could people upload dozens (hundreds) of GBs of data into a cloud?
what makes more sense, is any purchase on iTunes is stored on the cloud for playback on any internet connected device. this is much different from the article is suggesting.
Makes perfect sense and would welcome it big time.
Wiil they steal my porn?
@ mike g. Did you actually take time to read the article? If you did, you would not have made that statement. You have unfortunately displayed your keeness to be the first to post on an article. Not clever!
I hope it’s an only option and we can still do local storage. That would seem like a great idea back when iPhones and iPod touches were limited to 8gb and 16gb. Now we have a 32gb iPhone with a 64gb iPhone 4thGen probable in a few months. We also have the 32gb/64gb iPod touch (though I’m not sure we’ll see a doubling to 128gb in 2010). I have more than enough memory and don’t really need the cloud.
I don’t imagine you’d need to upload your library as iTunes already holds the track (most). You’d just be uploading your data that tracks what’s in your library.
Perhaps the reason apple built the billion dollar server farm in north Carolina?
you people are idiots if you can’t understand what’s happening here
@mike g…
I know this, some guy from the early 2000s finally got in front of a Microphone by trying to ‘spoil’ the Apple announcement.
Renting Music is weak, but Renting Movies, etc, could be very cool. Crazy bandwidth tho.
Ed,
That’s smart, and a lot like I’d expect Apple to do. Anything you own that’s available on iTunes could then be streamed to your music device via the web. Stuff you own that isn’t would then be stored locally.
And no more downloading new purchases, which would limit Apple’s costs big time.
Good job!
There is no need to actually upload songs to the server. For example, if 2000 people have purchased the same song from iTunes, they only need a reference to the song in each user’s account. When the user needs to play the song, it will play from Apple’s server.
This would be brilliant not only for music, but also for movies and all digital content. One of the main reasons that I don’t like to buy movies from the iTunes store as opposed to rent is that I don’t want to fill my hard drives with content that I may watch once a year. But imagine if Apple kept track of all my purchases and I could play them at will at any time without local storage. Brilliant!
oh, I see. so apple would store my purchases for me? I wish they did this with other software, like iWork, so I could share it with my friends more easily. I would just need to log into my mobile me account from my friends computer and select iWork! I get it now!!!!
And the networks will slow to a crawl with all this new increased bandwidth!
@mike g
Don’t be ridiculous, Apple already ties your appleID to only up to five computers max so what you are proposing is not possible.
If they also announce a new ilife upgrade I think it will be a MobileMe for iLife. The cloud will replicate not only music but photos, created music and videos and keep them in sync. you can either keep every thing in sin or stream it where you want. Friends or another laptop your contact is accessible worldwide independent from platform
The big question here seems to be
: will Every song on your computer have to be uploaded to Apple’s cloud, or just the fact that you have that song? While I agree it really makes sense to only upload proof that you have that song, remember — we’re dealing with the music industry here. So yes, Apple might have to upload millions of copies of the same song just to get around licensing restrictions from the music industry. Weird.
Not so easy there Mike g.
I am sure IP addresses and certain limit of “authorized devices” towards each account will be a loophole you will have to jump.
I have been wanting this for a long time, as it will also save you the time from worrying about if something did happen to all your local storage devices including back ups. I had my apartment catch fire and i lost all my computer hardware backups and all. Stupid old lady next door.
I predict that Apple’s new technology will allow you to store your music in your own head and listen to it through an output device such as a “guitar” or other musical instrument, and it will be called “i’M with the Band”. For expert users there will be a plug in called “i Got Laid”.*
Listening experience may very based on the user’s musical talent.
Apple recommends that you use an anti-virus app from makers such as Trojan or Durex, as the security innate to the Mac operating system will NOT protect you from THOSE kinds of viruses.
I agree with mac. They are going to do something like a flickr killer, except it will be more than that. It will also do movies you do from iMovie ’10 as well.
Also, I kind of think Apple will introduce something that will take Time Machine and allow you to backup ALL your files to your .me account. Plus, they might also do something like a “Me anywhere” where they use all that cloud stuff to allow users to take their stuff where ever. It would tie in with iPhone OS 4, and the Tablet.
I mean, the thing that is a pain in the ass is keeping things “SYNCED” between a mobile device and the computer. Using the “cloud”, Apple will allow iPhone/iTouch/iTablet users access to their files. Where ever they are. Synced. With Time Machine abilities (so you can see changes made, when they were made, etc).
That is what the cloud stuff is going to be used for. Not music subscriptions or some stupid ass ability to access your “tunes” anywhere. Steve Jobs does not believe in renting music.
@Rev. Dr. – Brilliant.
On topic – Um, folks, there are plenty of places where one either has little or no connectivity to the cloud. If the majority of my music and other media are only there, and I’m, oh, maybe camping or something, then I have zero access to that. And I may be odd, but I enjoy listening to my music while hiking. Sometimes.
I’m sorry, but I’m happy to sync, and store, my own files, so I hope this will be wholly optional.
Of course this will be optional. And you won’t >delete< your library to have it stored somewhere in cloud-world lvl 9. It will be syndicated there.
A thought: What prevents me from uploading my mind-blowingly large music and video library, and sharing the URL with the world? Apple will be a torrent killer too?
The original article clearly states:
“An upcoming major revision of iTunes will copy each user’s catalog to the net making it available from any browser or net connected ipod/touch/tablet.”
and…
“After installation, iTunes will push in the background their entire media library to their personal mobile iTunes area.”
Sure looks to me like everybody’s music files would be uploaded to the cloud, which is just plain nuts. Can’t happen. Even Apple doesn’t have that much server space.
R2 has the best point. I don’t get this. Why do you need to upload your library to the cloud when you already have it on your ipod? Isn’t that the “brilliance” of an ipod, that you take all your music etc with you wherever you go? Really: how often are you at a place where you have web access but you don’t have your ipod? What is the advantage? It seems less convenient to me–now I have to be concerned that I’m connected before I can listen to my music? Honestly, what is the benefit of this technology? Someone please give an example of a situation where this would be better than just listening to your ipod. Thanks!
the cloud is just the 21st century equivalent of the 20th century centralized processing approach: ibm os/360, cdc 7600, etc. i didn’t like it then and my opinion hasn’t changed.