The End of CD's

[t4mh]

Reading this thread about "The Cloud" brings up some questions in my mind. The whole thing sounds fairly comprehensive.

How do you think "The Cloud" will affect music for libraries and that whole end of the business that is completely aside from the Artist/Label/Listening/Buying?

Do you think that all media ( like movies )will be streaming from something like "The Cloud"?

If this is true do you think the present media delivery "companies", content providers, will fight the whole thing tooth n nail? Or is there money for them to make thru this delivery system. Most networks make their income from advertising. Seems like all this would go to "The Cloud".

Given that there is "A Cloud", will this mean that I can no longer have my music on my website? Or will websites and hosts be enveloped also?

Just wonderin'
Keith

[eliotpister1]

I get a kick out of how ambiguous "The Cloud" is! It sounds very spiritual and ethereal... kinda creepy.

Maybe this argument will be moot in a few years when a rich web experience is in every man, woman and child's pocket or purse 24/7. Right now, i've heard we're at about 20%. At that point, all your music, photos, movies are with you wherever you go. When this happens, looking back at the days of having CD racks or bookshelves in your home will seem quaint and cute, but totally antique.

As much as I'm one of the old guard (is 37 years old considered "old" yet?) who still reads magazines, buys the newspaper on Saturday and likes to alphabetize his CD's on the shelf where all his friends can admire them, I'm a dying breed. My kids and younger cousins all have an iPod now (with music they have downloaded illegally, but let's not get into that, and the only CD's they have are the ones the parents gave them at Xmas.

Right or wrong, the future is Media'less. In other words, the days of physical format like LP, 8 Track, cassette, MiniDisk, CD, DVD, are loooooong gone. Still, it is kinda shocking to hear that CD's are THAT dead that Best Buy is actually discontinuing selling them now. I sure hope long-time supporter of Taxi - Discmakers - has diversified themselves!

[guscave]

Reading this thread about "The Cloud" brings up some questions in my mind. The whole thing sounds fairly comprehensive.

How do you think "The Cloud" will affect music for libraries and that whole end of the business that is completely aside from the Artist/Label/Listening/Buying?

I don't think it changes it too much. Good client relationship will always be a must, but access to the content could be enhanced.

For ex: say a library has an app that their clients can download to their iphone or blackberry. The app is available for the client to search for any type of music based on search criteria they input into the phone or hand-held device. They can easily listen to their search results anywhere, anytime they want. Once they find the song they need, they can buy it right there through the app and have it delivered in which ever manner they want.

The advantage to this is that the client doesn't have to look through mountains of CD or flash drives or sit in front of their desk-top surfing through the libraries website.

[fusilierb]

Reading this thread about "The Cloud" brings up some questions in my mind. The whole thing sounds fairly comprehensive.

How do you think "The Cloud" will affect music for libraries and that whole end of the business that is completely aside from the Artist/Label/Listening/Buying?

Do you think that all media ( like movies )will be streaming from something like "The Cloud"?

If this is true do you think the present media delivery "companies", content providers, will fight the whole thing tooth n nail? Or is there money for them to make thru this delivery system. Most networks make their income from advertising. Seems like all this would go to "The Cloud".

Given that there is "A Cloud", will this mean that I can no longer have my music on my website? Or will websites and hosts be enveloped also?

Just wonderin'
Keith

I'm sure you already know this, but "the cloud" just means a datacenter. You will always have the option of hosting your stuff on your website, but unless you actually have a webserver setup in your house somewhere, you're website is "more than likely" already being hosted by a large datacenter somewhere, which means its already in "the cloud". In that sense, everything on the internet has been "in the cloud" for a long time.

What today's cloud talk really is about is the idea of local storage versus datacenter storage. It's the difference between keeping your personal files and applications locally on your machine or trusting all that to a huge datacenter somewhere.

As far as advertising goes, think about hulu.com. It's a cloud based service that streams content on demand for free using ad's to pay for it all.

B

[t4mh]

Certainly Bryan! So we already have clouds. I thought everyone was talking about A Cloud like it was one supreme thing thats gonna come along like a new technology and change the world. But if I'm already doing it, no big deal...

Thanks for the clarification
Keith

[fusilierb]

I Still, it is kinda shocking to hear that CD's are THAT dead that Best Buy is actually discontinuing selling them now.

That actually REALLY surprised me also. I knew they were dead to me, but that chain is HUGE. That's a big set of writing on the wall there.

B

[elser]

Apple's .Me accounts are a type of Cloud system. You get 10GB of online storage, an email account, web hosting, and a bunch of applications that are kept on Apple's servers so that you can access them from anywhere on any computer. It's pretty cool, they've doing it for about 10 years and all the really smart guys i.e. Stratfor, The Economist, The Motley Fool are saying it's the future.

[fusilierb]

I've been paying for .me for a few years now. It is cool. Worth the money?? Only because it seamlessly keeps my 4 mac's and two iphones in perfect synch over the air! My new phone broke and they replaced it at that mall Apple store. They gave me a blank device, I logged into mobile me and before I left the store I had every contact, email, calendar event and photo albums that my last one had. That's cool!!!

This service is weak by apple standards though. I fully expect this to be a huge part of their next endeavor, which is going to be a huge cloud based itunes/mac access device.

In my experience, Apple is slow and measured, they have the next ten years planned out and won't release anything until it makes perfect sense to them and works flawlessly. With the sole exceptions of Apple TV and mobile me, which I fully expect to really blossom over the next year.

I still don't understand how I became such a fanboy over the past three years (as a windows only guy for over 23 years), but these guys are tight and focused and their stuff just works great out of the box.

B

[Hookjaw Brown]

My son just finished training with Hewlett-Packard as a tech for the new generation of full color photography grade printers going into Wal-Marts. High quality prints can be made from any digital format or off the web for about $0.05 each. The printers run about $60,000 and are connected the the 'Cloud'. He showed some prints downloaded off of Facebook......wow is all I have to say.

For those who wish to store on the 'Cloud' and print at will the copies to hold in your hand, the time is now.

[billg1]

I Still, it is kinda shocking to hear that CD's are THAT dead that Best Buy is actually discontinuing selling them now.

That actually REALLY surprised me also. I knew they were dead to me, but that chain is HUGE. That's a big set of writing on the wall there.

B

This was even more shocking . . . what a difference a year makes!
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/i ... E2B1B8B161