The High Note

I have been fairly outspoken on the Cloud issue as it pertains to the Music industry, detailing my own disdain for the way it is being discussed, adopted and drooled over. Let me be clear, I am not saying the Cloud will not happen. I am obviously aware that it is, in fact, a reality with Amazon, Google Music Beta and soon Apple will join the fray.

If Apple goes "one click" purchase, no DRM, stored in your itunes store, international cross-regions allowance of download,  without requiring updating to the latest itunes build they will gain heavily. But, I'm sure you can see some of their problems on the horizon with content control and licensing issues. 

What I am saying is this: it is not THE solution (especially for anyone not affiliated with a Major label) and it might well turn people away from music consumption (especially for anyone not affiliated with a Major label).

Here's why:

Think about your use of media. Have you ever had an mp3 take a while to load online? How about a video buffering problem? How about a webpage slow to load because of a cdn adserve screwup in scripting? Have you ever been to a major city  (pick one SF, NY, CHI) where your wifi or coverage signal was less than what it is advertised, where Youtube would not work on an iphone, where you had to have locally stored media at a conference because the connection was so slow? 

Now, keep in mind that all of us in this industry only make up a small sliver of the people using bandwidth currently. Further, most people in the music industry on the business side, and certainly the tech side, use Macs. We often forget how many music lovers are still on PCs that can be ravaged with viruses and basically rendered unusable in a weekend causing extreme downtime. We also forget how few people have iphones or smartphones in general. We also tend to forget that nearly 70 million US adults do not use Credit Cards. 

Have you ever seen "server full" or "timeout" on Xbox Live? Are you one of the millions who have not played your ps3 online because Sony's network is down?

We also need to keep in mind that there will not be 1 Cloud. there will be many. So, if your music includes a Sony track but you are on Amazon's cloud and the script call goes to Sony's cloud for the "digital gold master" what happens?

If many of us were truly honest, broadband is not what has been promised. Dedicated, reliable, always on and up. Just search the hastag #comcastic if you don't belive me. I'm sure Cox and Time Warner all have the same issue. 

When the Cloud for music consumption is ubiquitous it will strangle bandwidth even further. Expect huge buffering errors, loss in downloads or uploads and having to retrace steps, security breaches, credit card information loss. Ever hear of your local record store or even Wal-mart getting breached related to music purchases? Me neither. 

Oh yeah, and what will you do in a power outage? That old boom box and yes, ipod, has battery capability. The Cloud, your connection to it and the company which owns that road (broadband provider), does not have a backup system. From a business standpoint, small downtime is expected, but keep in mind that a music fan has no patience for such technical details. 

And this is a really serious question:  What happens if the RIAA or PROs win, shuttering Amazon and Google and eventually Apple? This is a real possibility. Remember mp3.com? Just take a look at the Limewire case which may result in billions of fines. No one will cry about those users because they are assumed to be guilty, but what happens when transparently legal users are denied access to their music because of licensing issues?

The current copyright law does not address streaming and digital file copy definitions. Early adopters will have just wasted their time or the price will be too high to bear from a licensing standpoint. 

So, what will be the result of all these problems. I'm guessing less adoption and fleeing en masse at the first sight of a major interruption. Sony, you listening?

But the bigger issue is that if it doesn't work, it will look like another "format replacement" cycle to normal music lovers. Just another scam in a long line of scams to get fans of music to buy the next thing- something else, anything else. This will result in fans going back to their CD collections or locally owned itunes library which are filled with mainstream music. This will drive some (many) fans away from new music discovery and back to what they know, which will eventually become irrelevant. 

Most importantly, it will unfairly shed a bad light on everyone in the music industry and we are running out of chances to convince fans that we care about them as people and consumers.