Hello all,
Just a quick thought I had today. I am quite excited about the prospect of iCloud and can't wait to make use of having my music wherever I want whenever I want without having to worry that my external HD doesn't blow up. Further to that I am quite happy to pay for the privilege.
But I did have a thought. whilst a lot of my music might get lost in time, or perhaps simply go out of fashion. There is also a lot of music by classic artists that one assumes future generations will still want to listen to. Your Black Sabbath's, U2's, Lynyrd Skynyrd's, The Beatles among countless others, will always have appeal because they make genre defining music. Classic sounds that don't get old.
In the past vinyl's and even CD's will have been passed down in the family ( i know that i have a few of my families old vinyl's in the collection, this isn't really feasible with password protected encrypted iTunes accounts that will die with me. Even if I was to back up the music on a hard drive? Do i really expect that drive to have a 20/30 year life? No. I don't even expect it to outlast my life time. I could back them all on to CD. But then with the added cost and time consumption i might as well just buy CD's from now on which completely misses the point the ease digital music allows us.
I suppose that those big marquee artists will be making money for their labels for a long time coming. As far as i can see it's 1 nil to the record labels. Again.
What do you think? Do you think that your children/grandchildren will be missing out by not having your old records. CD's and tapes? Be cool to hear your thoughts on this or any stories about vintage music you 'came in to'.
Mikey
i do think cloud based record collections is a huge step forward, especially in terms of storage and access on the go.
ReplyDeletetry as i might, i can't quite let go fully of physical formats, it somehow feels 'safer' but i guess real safety would come with knowing everything would remain online in the eventuality of fire or theft perhaps
but i guess we'll always get to a certain stage when a format will become redundant if the music can no longer be accessed, be it vinyls, tapes, minidiscs, cds or mp3 files
Yeah. That's the conundrum i feel. it's nice owning / opening a fresh new boxed set. the smell the feel. But as you say, ultimately isn't it better knowing it's safe somewhere in the proverbial sky?
ReplyDeleteit's just a shame that all that money, those years collecting mp3's will effectively just vanish. Where as in the past your parents record collection told a story of where they were in that moment in their life. they seemed somehow almost as valuable as the photo collection.
Don't get me started on photos btw. Will my great great great grandchildren know what i looked like? Questions indeed.
I guarantee that Apple will have a clause written in to their terms and conditions which will mean you lose all your music when you die. Evil, money grabbing bastards.
ReplyDeleteI have very good reasoning to this comment:
My house got broken into and they took all my vinyl: I claimed on Mom & Dad's insurance.
Years later, my house got broken into and they took all my CDs: I claimed on my insurance.
Years later, my hard drive died and I lost shed loads of music: I emailed Apple, they said tough, if you'd lost all your CDs you'd be in the same position. I pointed out that I was insured against that. They said tough luck, should have backed up.
Whereas Apple have a valid point, yes I should have backed up, my point fell on deaf ears. I argued that they knew exactly what I'd bought legally, so why couldn't they give it me back. They said 'read the terms and conditions'.
Their cloud based service will be no better and I doubt very much future generations will be able to legally own your music collection.
Cynical? Hell yeah, had my fingers burned.
Tina
PS: On another note, I wonder how long it will be until people inherit social profiles and internet properties. This I find a really intriguing...
By the way, haven't logged into my Motley Screw login for years, since I gave up Roller Derby. It just did it by default. It's Tina Saul, my alter ego died when I dislocated my shoulder!
ReplyDeleteWOW thats really shitty. That was the one thing thats always pissed me off about iTunes. Theres quite a bit of stuff that i have lost over the years just by my computers dying and what nots. Always annoyed me you can't re-download stuff you already own. it's not like they don't keep a list anyway.
ReplyDeleteI will say this in Apples defense and this is the reason i will be using the cloud.
Under the new system they have basically declared a music amnesty in that all music you put on the cloud (i might add you don't even need to upload your music, the cloud automatically matched your music using gracenote or something to that effect) you will be able to download forever to as many devices as you wish.
Further to this, that includes music you didn't download from iTunes. AND any music you didn't download from them, say you got it in a shitty format form a questionable blog? Well Apple will match that with high quality files. It's a big win for record labels. Because people will download illegally like it or not. They might as well get paid something for it if only a little bit. and if the cloud takes off the way iTunes did then it won't be a little bit. I suppose we are talking mega money. To me it looks like they have found a way to monetize illegal downloading. Pretty smart if you ask me.
p.s please lets go skating together. I will bust out my inlines and we can roll around hyde park with Slayer on our ghetto blaster, drinking stubbies and throwing the bottles at yuppies. it will be mega!
p.p.s. Internet property is an interesting thought. Cause i guess none of us really "own" it. We are at the mercy of servers etc... So how would that be passed on?
ReplyDeletei'd heard about this 'amnesty' and wondered how it affected either things they can't find or alternate versions/outtakes/remixes and the like, will a cloud simply provide a sanctioned and sanitised version of your collection?
ReplyDeleteshould make an interesting prospect if myspace, facebook and whatever else may follow has it's profile preserved and archived so that future generations can access them
btw, i do still try and get a number of photos printed and in an actual photo album each year, more selective and much more fun to pass round than to expect someone to scroll through a hard drive
As far as tracks it doesn't recognise it will require you to manually upload them yourself. And that will eat in to you 5GB free space. But still with iTunes immense library i can't see that being too much of an issue.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of online photo albums that can be passed down. Thats an awesome idea. Like a constantly updated family tree that is accessible online.
It's also nice to know that some people are still collecting photo's.
Skate, skate, skate! I'd love to, haven't been for ages and let's face it, there haven't been many days where this summer has made it possible to skate.....
ReplyDeleteNo... But imagine how they feel in Finland? So it's not all bad. The weather here is like California compared to our poor Finnish cousins.
ReplyDelete