Music%20and%20the%20Cloud

Some folks say you date yourself technologically by the way you access music. Do you still pop in CDs? Do you buy and download music from a service like Apple iTunes? Do you access a music streaming service such as Rhasody or Pandora?  (8-track, cassette and vinyl users...umm...well here's your chance to learn about something new)

 Music and the cloud is what this page is about. It seems the next wave of the future, already lapping at our shores, so to speak, is music streaming services. A music streaming service is different than an iTunes-like service which allows users to purchase, download and own music. Users of music streaming services pay for access. The prediction is that there's a move from owning music to simply accessing music. In a way, the idea is rather like old time radio except that users select what they want to listen to and when. Maybe a better analogy is an old time juke box: Pay for what you want to listen to and play it but you don't take it home with you. I don't know if there are any solid numbers on the money that's been made so far. With that said, lots of companies have made the plunge into developing an online music streaming service. We'll have to wait and see what happens.

 Some of the services out there now are
 * Spotify
 * Pandora
 * Rhapsody
 * Napster (Yep, it's still around)
 * Mog
 * Groove Shark (Uses Flash, which is a problem for iPhone and iPad users; not a problem for users with smartphones on the Android platform)

 By the way, Lala used to be a music streaming service. It was acquired by iTunes but discontinued on May 31, 2010 (!!!) The rumor is that Apple is working on rolling out a new version of Lala. It may be that iTunes and Lala will be rebundled together into a service that allows users to access instead of own. There's also a rumor that Google will be headed that way with its Android platform

Some of the services are not available outside certain countries due to licensing constraints.

 Many of the online music streaming services out there now allow users to embed (I guess is the right word) music sharing applications in social networking sites to allow music sharing. What's your friend in Walla Walla listening to? Visit that friend's Facebook page and hunt for that person's music section. If your friend is into music in the cloud services, it's likely that you'll be able to access the same music your friend is listening to!!

Pandora is free. It is very radio-like. Its software "recommends" other songs to users based on their listening history. (hmmm) Mog requires a monthly fee which entitles a user to select and access anything from its vast database.

So, where do you fall? Are you of the **owning-it** generation or of the **accessing-it** generation? (Do you care?)