Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tex stuff. My name is Chris Polette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as always a senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Nobody comes to visit me in my little cloud. I
Speaker 1: don't know why. Maybe because I'm cutting muffins of all
Speaker 1: the songs. You chose that we're talking about clouds. That's true.
Speaker 1: We were going to talk about Amazon's much heralded new
Speaker 1: cloud service because it's completely unlike everything else that came
Speaker 1: out that's a cloud service. Yes, except well there is
Speaker 1: there is one unique element, or at least it's it's new.
Speaker 1: It's new enough to talk about, right, It's not like
Speaker 1: it's something it is, uh that also has been done
Speaker 1: over and over again. Actually, I think the thing is
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about this because so many people
Speaker 1: are talking about it, um because it isn't for the
Speaker 1: most part, all that groundbreaking in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: but people are still talking about it as though it
Speaker 1: were a revolutionary thing and I think in a way,
Speaker 1: it's the mindset behind it and the fact and that
Speaker 1: one that one special instance, and if you're if you're
Speaker 1: new to what we're talking about and have absolutely no
Speaker 1: idea what we're prattling on about this point, it's called
Speaker 1: cloud drive, and that's a a cloud based service. And
Speaker 1: we talk about cloud we're talking about internet storage. So
Speaker 1: rather than using the hard drive on your computer or
Speaker 1: an external hard drive that you plug in your computer
Speaker 1: or maybe even on your network at home, the files
Speaker 1: that you save to this service are going across the
Speaker 1: Internet to be stored on in this case, Amazon's hard
Speaker 1: drives computer. And the reason you would do this, there's
Speaker 1: actually several reasons. One would be that, well, you know,
Speaker 1: there's most of us just have so much storage, and
Speaker 1: you start to accumulate enough stuff. You have, as George
Speaker 1: Carlin would say, not enough places to put your stuff,
Speaker 1: So you gotta find more places for all the stuff
Speaker 1: you got, and uh, that's a great routine. And uh,
Speaker 1: and that cloud storage is a great way of finding
Speaker 1: places to put your stuff. So you are effectively putting
Speaker 1: your stuff in someone else's house, that's one thing. So
Speaker 1: you're getting your you're able to offload storage. But another
Speaker 1: reason you might like it is because, unlike some of us,
Speaker 1: these cloud storage companies tend to have lots of of
Speaker 1: backups and redundancy built into their systems so that if
Speaker 1: something goes wrong, you don't lose your data. Because if
Speaker 1: my hard drive crashes, I lose that stuff. Right, anything
Speaker 1: that's stored locally on that hard drive, I could potentially
Speaker 1: lose forever. That's right. There's also leads us to the downsides.
Speaker 1: And if you have been listening to tech stuff for
Speaker 1: years now, you know that we when we talk about
Speaker 1: cloud computing, in cloud storage, we were going to talk
Speaker 1: about privacy. When you have multiple copies of your information
Speaker 1: stored on someone else's computers, um, then there is the
Speaker 1: possibility that that information could fall into someone else's hands
Speaker 1: and if it's not encrypted, could be or or not
Speaker 1: encrypted well enough, um or if the person is really
Speaker 1: really good at cryptography. Yeah, and we're talking crazy good
Speaker 1: because most of the cryptography that's been use out there
Speaker 1: is is strong enough to defeat all but let's say
Speaker 1: a government's uh resources, Yeah, the most the most sophisticated
Speaker 1: uh crackers. But yeah, I mean, if if you're storing
Speaker 1: this information out there and it's not secure enough. There's
Speaker 1: a possibility that you could put your financial records, or
Speaker 1: genealogical information or kids photos are all kinds of stuff
Speaker 1: that you probably don't want everyone else to have in
Speaker 1: the hands of someone else, and that that is why
Speaker 1: some people avoid using cloud storage. And there's also the
Speaker 1: chance that there's also the thought that if there were
Speaker 1: any loss of connectivity for some reason, you would then
Speaker 1: have you wouldn't have have access to your data anymore.
Speaker 1: I recently had this problem. It's a big pain in
Speaker 1: the neck. Yeah. So if you use cloud storage for
Speaker 1: lots of your stuff and you for some reason, maybe
Speaker 1: you forgot to pay a bill, or maybe the actual
Speaker 1: internet service provider has suffered some sort of failure and
Speaker 1: for some reason or another you're not able to access
Speaker 1: the Internet, well, then you're not able to get to
Speaker 1: all of your files because they're stored remotely on some
Speaker 1: other server. Right now, for consumers, that is you and me,
Speaker 1: or at least most of us. Um we already have
Speaker 1: lots of really well known and pretty well regarded services,
Speaker 1: people like dropbox and Sugar Sinc And Box dot net,
Speaker 1: people like even even things like Google Docs. If you're
Speaker 1: talking about specific types of documents, spreadsheets and presentations, and
Speaker 1: are all cloud services? Yes, and and Amazon has been
Speaker 1: doing this too for a long time, offering uh, storage
Speaker 1: solutions primarily to two companies corporate customers. Yeah, but this
Speaker 1: is so you at this point you might say, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: what what's what's so new about this? Uh, this cloud
Speaker 1: drive allows you to store all kinds of documents. You
Speaker 1: could put word processing files up there, anything that could
Speaker 1: really any file format pretty much. But they really intended
Speaker 1: to serve as a music locker. Yeah, this is the
Speaker 1: brilliance of this system. So Amazon's had this cloud storage
Speaker 1: in place for a couple of years. In fact, when
Speaker 1: we started talking about cloud storage, probably two years ago
Speaker 1: when we were first starting the podcast, Amazon was one
Speaker 1: of the big providers that was leading the way in
Speaker 1: cloud storage, but they had not happed into the general
Speaker 1: consumer until they thought, why don't we combine this cloud
Speaker 1: storage with our amazing MP three store where you can
Speaker 1: buy m P three's from Amazon, and we can package
Speaker 1: it in such a way that it's really attractive to
Speaker 1: Amazon customers and make a service out of it. So
Speaker 1: it's not just a storage service, but is some sort
Speaker 1: of transmission service as well. And it's it's they. I mean,
Speaker 1: you couldn't have asked them to do a better job.
Speaker 1: They not only did they really make a big splash
Speaker 1: in the news, they scooped other major companies that are
Speaker 1: trying to do something similar right now. And when I
Speaker 1: say major companies, I'm talking Google and Apple. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: um Now there are again other music locker sites. And
Speaker 1: what a music locker is, um, I think primarily of
Speaker 1: groove Shark. There are many others, but um including one
Speaker 1: that was purchased by Apple um la la. But what
Speaker 1: it is is you start an account. And I've I've
Speaker 1: always been kind of weirded out by this because it
Speaker 1: seems so like sort of a dubious uh in terms
Speaker 1: of licensing sort of situation. You sign up for an
Speaker 1: account with one of these services, and the service allows
Speaker 1: you to upload your own music to the service. Now,
Speaker 1: in the case of groove Shark, you can actually listen
Speaker 1: to the music that other people have uploaded on the site.
Speaker 1: And that's where it really gets kind of complicated. Well,
Speaker 1: the artists are getting a cut, according to groove Shark,
Speaker 1: so you know that that apparently, and they have licenses
Speaker 1: with the major music labels. So they are are apparently okay,
Speaker 1: but it took me a little while to go. I
Speaker 1: am not going to get in trouble for using this site. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, if you if you use Amazon's cloud drive,
Speaker 1: you can upload music that you have purchased on encrypted
Speaker 1: music in a c r M P three format. If
Speaker 1: you buy music from Amazon from that MP three store
Speaker 1: that you mentioned a moment ago, it'll go straight to
Speaker 1: the cloud. It goes straight to the cloud and you
Speaker 1: can you can download it, but you can also find
Speaker 1: it in your your cloud store cloud storage. Yeah, here's
Speaker 1: the brilliance of this. So let's say that you decided
Speaker 1: to purchase an album from from Amazon dot com and
Speaker 1: it goes into your cloud storage. You can download it
Speaker 1: immediately if you want to. You can wait, you can
Speaker 1: go download it off another computer. All you have to
Speaker 1: do is log into your Amazon dot Com account. So
Speaker 1: and as soon as you have an Amazon dot Com account,
Speaker 1: you get five gigabytes of storage space and in a
Speaker 1: cloud drive for free. Yes, just for being an Amazon
Speaker 1: dot Com customer. You don't have to purchase anything. No
Speaker 1: five gigs for free. If you buy an album, you
Speaker 1: get twenty gigs for free for a full year. Yes,
Speaker 1: and uh, all you have to do is then what
Speaker 1: you would have to renew it from that point and
Speaker 1: essentially Amazon charges a dollar a gig per year. Actually
Speaker 1: is it? Do you have to buy a full album?
Speaker 1: I think if you, I think you have to buy
Speaker 1: a full album to get the twenty gigs. That was
Speaker 1: very smart on their on their part, because somebody was
Speaker 1: suggesting that you could go buy one of the sixty
Speaker 1: nine cent songs, get twenty gigabytes for a year for
Speaker 1: sixty cents. This is the other really cool thing about
Speaker 1: it though, Right, Okay, so you have that five gigabytes
Speaker 1: of space. That's a lot of space. That's up to
Speaker 1: a thousand songs, more or less depending upon the you know,
Speaker 1: how how high quality they are and how long the
Speaker 1: songs are. I mean, granted, if it's meat loaf, it's
Speaker 1: probably more like six songs. Because that dude just never
Speaker 1: never shuts up. Man. I would do anything for love,
Speaker 1: but I won't shut up. I love. By the way,
Speaker 1: I was both the food item and the artist. Oh man,
Speaker 1: so happened to Saturday night? Anyway? Yes? Sorry, I got
Speaker 1: a little off track there. Where was I? I had
Speaker 1: five gigabytes of storage. So you've got five gigabytes of
Speaker 1: storage starting off for free, right, but if you buy
Speaker 1: a song for Amazon dot Com, it doesn't count against
Speaker 1: the five gigabytes. That's right. Yeah, any any music that
Speaker 1: you buy from Amazon dot com. Say you have a
Speaker 1: your your accounts empty, and you're getting ready to buy
Speaker 1: an album. Yes, uh so you you're you're going to
Speaker 1: get the twenty gigabytes. And let's say it's it's nice
Speaker 1: round number that the album is a hundred fifty megabytes
Speaker 1: worth of music. That hundred fifty megabytes does not count
Speaker 1: toward the twenty gigabytes. That's conditioned to You can just
Speaker 1: keep buying music from Amazon dot com and you will
Speaker 1: never fill up that space no matter how many gigs
Speaker 1: of music you have if you bought all right, So,
Speaker 1: twenty gigabytes holds about four thousand songs more or less
Speaker 1: unless it's meat loaf and already did that joke. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So twenty gigabytes about four thousand songs. So let's say
Speaker 1: you bought five thousand songs. You went on a spree. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so you bought five thousand songs. Well, because Amazon dot
Speaker 1: Com does not count those against your your cap. You
Speaker 1: can have all those in your cloud drive if you
Speaker 1: bought them all from Amazon dot Com, unless, of course,
Speaker 1: you bought them before, right, that's a problem. If you
Speaker 1: bought them before, then what you're doing is you're uploading
Speaker 1: to the cloud and that does count against your cap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I do have a few albums that I have
Speaker 1: purchased from Amazon service, and I I don't get those
Speaker 1: retroactively added to my locker with Amazon doesn't know that
Speaker 1: necessarily that although I'm sure there's some code in there somewhere,
Speaker 1: but Amazon does not quote unquote know that which MP
Speaker 1: three's were ripped from the CD, which ones were purchased
Speaker 1: through iTunes. Of course that wouldn't be an MP three necessarily,
Speaker 1: but uh, or which ones were bought off Amazon dot
Speaker 1: com or some other service. So you even if you
Speaker 1: did buy other songs from Amazon dot Com before, those
Speaker 1: are not going to be grandfathered in. So here's where
Speaker 1: it starts to become a music specific effort, because um,
Speaker 1: you know the services that I mentioned earlier, people like
Speaker 1: Dropbox and box dot net and sugar Sinc. They the
Speaker 1: basic accounts with those the free accounts generally about two
Speaker 1: gigabytes worth the space, um, and they don't discriminate what
Speaker 1: kind of file types you can save in their right
Speaker 1: and and um, well i'll talk about that a little
Speaker 1: bit more in a minute. And yes, those of you
Speaker 1: who have accounts with Dropbox will know that if you
Speaker 1: get other people to sign up in use your name,
Speaker 1: than you get extra space. But yeah, starting out, you
Speaker 1: get to two gigabytes with the space, so you're already
Speaker 1: more than doubling that. But that this is a brilliant
Speaker 1: marketing move for their music store because it is encouraging
Speaker 1: you to down buy and download those uh music files
Speaker 1: from Amazon's MP three store. Yeah, if the lower prices
Speaker 1: weren't enough for you, then this will also help. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the big that's the big differentiation there between the
Speaker 1: cloud drive and other services. Now, if you want more
Speaker 1: space other than the twenty gigabytes that we were talking
Speaker 1: about for buying music, um, you can buy that essentially
Speaker 1: a dollar a gigabyte. Yea. It comes in increments um,
Speaker 1: which are D two hundred, five hundred and a thousand gigabytes.
Speaker 1: So if you want a thousand extra gigabytes you need
Speaker 1: a terabyte of storage, yes you can. You can buy
Speaker 1: that for a terabyte of money about a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year, a grand a cool grand um. So you know,
Speaker 1: it depends on what you're going to be storing in there,
Speaker 1: what it's worth you to do that. But keep in mind,
Speaker 1: although we're talking a lot about music here, you can
Speaker 1: still store other files in that cloud drive. It doesn't
Speaker 1: all have to be music. So if I bought an
Speaker 1: album from Amazon dot Com got twenty gigabytes of storage,
Speaker 1: I could fill that twenty gigabytes up with video, or
Speaker 1: I could fill it up with documents if I had
Speaker 1: that many. I can't imagine having twenty gigabytes worth the documents.
Speaker 1: I don't want to either or pictures. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can fill that stuff up anyway you want. And of
Speaker 1: course you can keep buying music off Amazon dot Com
Speaker 1: and it won't count against that cap um. But there's
Speaker 1: another element that kind of makes this an interesting and
Speaker 1: somewhat controversial move on Amazon's part, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: the cloud drive. Like we said, not really that that
Speaker 1: groundbreaking because cloud storage has been around for a few years,
Speaker 1: but the cloud player, which again not necessarily groundbreaking, but
Speaker 1: the implementation of the cloud player into this Cloud Drive ecosystem,
Speaker 1: along with the Amazon on dot Com store, makes us
Speaker 1: a really compelling and powerful tool. Now, the Cloud player.
Speaker 1: What that allows you to do is play music that's
Speaker 1: stored in your cloud drive on any computer that's connected
Speaker 1: to the Internet or on any Android device. You just
Speaker 1: have to download the right MP three app and and
Speaker 1: you can stream music from the cloud drive to your
Speaker 1: computer or device. So effectively, this well, for one thing,
Speaker 1: it's a huge shot across the bowl of Apple. And
Speaker 1: the reason I say this because it doesn't It means
Speaker 1: that you can make your smartphone, you can turn it
Speaker 1: into an MP three player, and you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about filling up your smartphones memory with songs because
Speaker 1: all the songs actually live on a server and you
Speaker 1: can have you know, five gigabytes where the songs are
Speaker 1: more if you've bought them from Amazon, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: affect your smartphones memory like your storage at all. Now, uh,
Speaker 1: I want, I want to make a couple of things clear.
Speaker 1: Of course, this is similar to many other types of services.
Speaker 1: You know, the serious are serious XM has you know
Speaker 1: a player where you can listen to satellite radio over
Speaker 1: the internet. Um, You've got people like Pandora, you've got
Speaker 1: last dot FM, you've got Rdeo streaming streaming radio stations.
Speaker 1: You can use groove Shark if you are if you
Speaker 1: are a subscribed member, you pay for a subscription, you
Speaker 1: can listen to your groove Shark music on your player. Um.
Speaker 1: And some people have pointed out that you can do
Speaker 1: this with the regular storage services as well. You can
Speaker 1: get access to your if you save music to your
Speaker 1: drop box, you can listen to that music too. But again,
Speaker 1: the effort is different the way they've structured it, the
Speaker 1: way Amazon is structured. Yeah, it's it's somewhere in between,
Speaker 1: and it is definitely if you There are people I've
Speaker 1: found in discussions about Sirius XM because I was satellite
Speaker 1: radio subscriber for many years, who wanted to listen to
Speaker 1: their own music, so they preferred their their MP three
Speaker 1: player to a satellite player because they wanted that control. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's going to appeal to people like that. You
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't want somebody else programming my station
Speaker 1: for me. Yeah, that's great for some people, and I
Speaker 1: don't want that. It's really gonna appeal to people who
Speaker 1: either have very specific musical tastes that are not catered
Speaker 1: to on regular terrestrial radio or even even some digital
Speaker 1: radio stations. It will also appeal to people like us
Speaker 1: who are getting older and our musical tastes are becoming
Speaker 1: cemented and we don't like new things because they scare
Speaker 1: us and get off my lawn. Hey, I like my
Speaker 1: Lawrence Wilke playlist, Thank you very much. Yes, you're cutting edge,
Speaker 1: living there on the edge of life. I one nanna
Speaker 1: and tiny. Oh wait no, I'm sorry. So some of
Speaker 1: some of our listeners have no idea what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so I barely do. But now that that's
Speaker 1: the significant different princes the amount of storage space that
Speaker 1: Amazon is offering people. Now, Uh, I was kind of
Speaker 1: wondering how I was going to get this app because
Speaker 1: I was I'm very interested in this offering. I wrote
Speaker 1: a blog post about it, and uh, we're basically covering
Speaker 1: all of that, so you don't need to go read
Speaker 1: it really right now. But um, the thing is, uh,
Speaker 1: it's built into the MP three, the Amazon MP three app,
Speaker 1: which I already had installed on my and you just
Speaker 1: had to update and I had to update the app,
Speaker 1: and there it is the app. Yeah, if you don't
Speaker 1: have that pre installed on an Android device, and we should,
Speaker 1: you know, make it clear we're talking about Android specific
Speaker 1: right now. There are ways where you can take advantage
Speaker 1: of the cloud storage using an iOS device, but if
Speaker 1: you want to listen to the music, you actually have
Speaker 1: to download it to your device. That's one of the
Speaker 1: other things we should point out. Amazon does not restrict
Speaker 1: you from downloading this stuff because it's yours, right. This
Speaker 1: drive is just a storage space. So you've stored music
Speaker 1: in this drive, you can download it as much or
Speaker 1: wherever you like, which that will become more problem later.
Speaker 1: You have a license to use that music, well, the
Speaker 1: songs themselves do not belong to you. Yeah, yeah, that's good. No,
Speaker 1: it's good to point that out. It's good to point
Speaker 1: that out because that's exactly how the companies do it.
Speaker 1: I just like watching that vein in your forehead, Throb.
Speaker 1: But let's say that you don't have the Amazon MP
Speaker 1: three UH app preinstalled on your Android phone. There's if
Speaker 1: you go to the Amazon dot com page and you
Speaker 1: look for their cloud player, they actually have a QR
Speaker 1: code that you can use to you know, use if
Speaker 1: you have a QR code app on your Android phone.
Speaker 1: You can use that and it'll direct you specifically to
Speaker 1: the marketplace where you can get that app. And it's free.
Speaker 1: The app is fhere. You don't have to pay for that.
Speaker 1: There's no subscription for this service. Um. And here's where
Speaker 1: we're gonna get into some of the controversy. So with
Speaker 1: this player being able to listen to this music streaming,
Speaker 1: there's some music companies that are concerned that this is
Speaker 1: violating licensing agreements. Yeah, remember when we were talking a
Speaker 1: few moments ago, or actually Jonathan was talking a few
Speaker 1: moments ago about how Amazon scooped Google and Apple. Both
Speaker 1: of those companies have been known to be working on
Speaker 1: some kind of effort. Well, in Apple's case, it's more
Speaker 1: of a nearly substantiated rumor. They all signs point to
Speaker 1: the the idea that they are going to be doing something.
Speaker 1: Google Music has been known about in some capacity for
Speaker 1: a while, and it's rumored at the time we are
Speaker 1: recording this, and who knows, by the time it goes live,
Speaker 1: it may be public, uh that Google is doing a
Speaker 1: data with its internal employees for Google Music, which is
Speaker 1: supposed to be a similar service to this, a cloud
Speaker 1: music service. Apple, of course purchased La La, which we've
Speaker 1: mentioned I think several times um. And they are building
Speaker 1: a data center in North Carolina, very large data center. UM.
Speaker 1: Rumor has it that it will be used for streaming
Speaker 1: music and or video. Uh so that's been in the
Speaker 1: works for a long time. But what Amazon didn't do
Speaker 1: They wanted to get a jump on everyone else, which
Speaker 1: they did. They also didn't tell the music companies what
Speaker 1: was going on, so and didn't get light Well, they
Speaker 1: didn't get licenses. Let's say this. They didn't get licenses
Speaker 1: to do this, which normally the record companies prefer to do,
Speaker 1: which is why Spotify isn't in the United States as
Speaker 1: of yet. So let's prepare for a Jonathan rant. Everyone
Speaker 1: just settled down because I'm going to get going. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Can I go get a cup of water? You can
Speaker 1: go for as long as you need to. I'll turn
Speaker 1: a light on when it's when it's when, when I'm done.
Speaker 1: So here's the deal, folks, here's here's how I see it.
Speaker 1: Cloud storage is just an extension of local storage. As
Speaker 1: far as I'm concerned, that data is your data to
Speaker 1: the limitations of whatever that data might be, and you
Speaker 1: can access it whenever you like, as long as of
Speaker 1: course there's a connection there. It's the same thing that
Speaker 1: if that if you purchased an album or ripped a
Speaker 1: c D and that music is on your hard drive.
Speaker 1: There's no difference. I mean, the only difference is the distance.
Speaker 1: Instead of the hard drive being immediately adjacent to or
Speaker 1: part of your computer, this drive is you know, potentially
Speaker 1: thousands of miles away. But it's still just storage. There's
Speaker 1: it's not like Amazon is his broadcasting new music or
Speaker 1: music you do. You did not yourself put into that drive.
Speaker 1: That's not happening. It's not it's not taking the music
Speaker 1: that's in your drive and then sending you new stuff.
Speaker 1: You know. That's kind of like what Pandora does. You know,
Speaker 1: you create a station based upon a song you like,
Speaker 1: in Pandora finds other songs that are similar, but Pandora
Speaker 1: pays licensing fees for that because that's more of a
Speaker 1: broadcast thing. This is really there's no difference between cloud
Speaker 1: storage and having a server that's a thousand miles away
Speaker 1: and having a thousand mile long cable connected you to
Speaker 1: that server to listen to your music. You could have
Speaker 1: an iPod, all right, and you could be listening to
Speaker 1: your iPod. You've got your headphones on, You're in New
Speaker 1: York City, just so happens, your iPod happens to be
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. But you've got a cable that goes
Speaker 1: all the way across the United States of America and
Speaker 1: you can listen to that. Of course, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: stuck on whatever songs on there, because your controls are
Speaker 1: all the way across this country. But that's not the point.
Speaker 1: The point being that it's the distance doesn't matter. It's
Speaker 1: it's storage. It's a it's a drive. It's the same
Speaker 1: kind of drive that's on an MP three player, that's
Speaker 1: on smartphone, that's on a computer. There is no difference there.
Speaker 1: There's they're not creating this performance. It's just you accessing
Speaker 1: a file. So I'm hoping that Amazon can defend this
Speaker 1: and come forward and say, hey, guys, we're not we're not.
Speaker 1: All we're doing is giving them the tools to listen
Speaker 1: to the music they purchased. We're not doing anything else.
Speaker 1: We're not making you know, we're not trying to go
Speaker 1: behind your backs or anything. And it's just the same
Speaker 1: as if they were pushing play on an MP three player.
Speaker 1: It's just that they're pushing play on a smartphone or
Speaker 1: on a computer and they're just accessing a file that
Speaker 1: happens to rest on our servers. But we don't own
Speaker 1: that file. We sold that to them. Boy, that makes
Speaker 1: me mad. Are you done? I? I think so. I
Speaker 1: need more beans well to be fair. As of right,
Speaker 1: I think I was very fair to two. As of
Speaker 1: the day that we're recording this, I have not seen
Speaker 1: anything that suggests that any of the major players in
Speaker 1: the recording industry are in the process of filing a
Speaker 1: lawsuit against Amazon, and I know that they are planning
Speaker 1: on having some discussions with Amazon about it. Now. This
Speaker 1: is the same industry that wanted that that wanted XM
Speaker 1: to remove the ability to record a show that you
Speaker 1: were listening on on your personal They used to offer
Speaker 1: a portable player that you could um record a song.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like a DVR for your TV. You
Speaker 1: could record a program on it and listen to it later.
Speaker 1: And uh, certain people in the industry wanted XM to stop,
Speaker 1: which they eventually did, but there were lawsuits and things
Speaker 1: over whether or not you're allowed to time shift your radio,
Speaker 1: your satellite radio. UM. So yes, of course this, this
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing that's going to be UM
Speaker 1: I think coming out in the next few weeks. As
Speaker 1: of the time we're recording this, uh although um yesterday,
Speaker 1: as of the day we're recording this, we're recording this
Speaker 1: on April Fools Day. As a matter of fact, UM.
Speaker 1: Greg Sandoval wrote an article in c NET that kind
Speaker 1: of surprised me. I had been talking about cloud Drive
Speaker 1: primarily as a music storage service, but as Jonathan pointed out,
Speaker 1: you can put anything in there. The movie industry is
Speaker 1: not concerned with the same issues that the recording industry
Speaker 1: is because people don't it's not really the service isn't
Speaker 1: really designed to host video the way it is audio.
Speaker 1: There's not The cloud player won't play movies, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it will host it, you just can't access it with
Speaker 1: the same ease that you can the music. Right. So
Speaker 1: they apparently are not in the rush to run out
Speaker 1: and have a talk with Amazon at the moment um
Speaker 1: because it's not as urgent for them, although you know,
Speaker 1: I would imagine they will be keeping their eye on
Speaker 1: it because the potential is there for for them to
Speaker 1: add that capability to the player. And make it possible
Speaker 1: to watch video, um, probably both movies and TV, but
Speaker 1: now on a strong connection to your network. In fact,
Speaker 1: for even for the music, Amazon recommends that you use
Speaker 1: a three G or better connection, so we're talking three G,
Speaker 1: four G or Wi Fi connection in order to have
Speaker 1: a satisfying experience listening to the music, because otherwise you're
Speaker 1: gonna have a lot of buff s fring issues where um,
Speaker 1: you know, the song is just not going to come
Speaker 1: across very very well because the bandwidth you have isn't
Speaker 1: enough to transmit that data smoothly. Um. And yeah, there
Speaker 1: hasn't been any move for a lawsuit yet, but shortly
Speaker 1: after Amazon made the announcement, UH, Sony Music Entertainment and
Speaker 1: Warner Music Group both kind of expressed some concerns, and
Speaker 1: in fact, Brian Garritty from Sony said, we're disappointed by
Speaker 1: their decision to launch without a license, which at least
Speaker 1: suggests that they feel that a license would be necessary
Speaker 1: for you to access your file on a hard drive.
Speaker 1: If they tell me that I need a license to
Speaker 1: listen to my music on my m B three player, oh,
Speaker 1: I would guess yes. That the difference is who owns
Speaker 1: the hard drive. I would guess that that's no. I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not arguing with you, and you're saying, I'm
Speaker 1: guessing for the music industry that that's the big deal.
Speaker 1: If you have let's say a RAID at home, that's
Speaker 1: a ray of independent discs UM for those of you
Speaker 1: who aren't familiar with the term, UH, which is basically
Speaker 1: just a U a giant box with hard drives in it.
Speaker 1: I'm over way oversimplifying that, but yeah, it's you can
Speaker 1: access any of those hard drives over your network. They're
Speaker 1: not part of a computer. They're just a big box
Speaker 1: of hardners. So let's say you have a massive music
Speaker 1: collection and you know it's all on this RAID and
Speaker 1: different discs. If you want to do that, because you
Speaker 1: own the hardware, they're okay with it. I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: for the music studios, they see an opportunity to get
Speaker 1: another license because you are storing it on or you know,
Speaker 1: from Amazon, because they are supplying the internet infrastructure and
Speaker 1: the hardware to you, and that's that's probably the sticking
Speaker 1: point for them. I think I think another sticking point
Speaker 1: though that's that's a legitimate point, and I agree with it.
Speaker 1: I think another sticking point is that some of these
Speaker 1: companies have been known to also be working on their
Speaker 1: own infrastructures that are branded specifically to their labels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so get like a company like Sony, and Sony starts
Speaker 1: building out its infrastructure. Uh, you know, you don't want
Speaker 1: to have to deal with competition from other other companies
Speaker 1: like Amazon. You know, you you want you want your
Speaker 1: stuff to be safe so that you can sell it
Speaker 1: through yours and lock people into an infrastructure because it
Speaker 1: makes good business sense. You know, it's not necessarily the
Speaker 1: thing that the customer is going to go crazy floor
Speaker 1: unless they're a huge Sony fan, But it makes sense
Speaker 1: from your standpoint where you're saying, look, this is a
Speaker 1: great business decision. It's a way for us to guarantee
Speaker 1: that our online music sales are going to remain steady
Speaker 1: or even grow because music sales are kind of stagnated
Speaker 1: over the last few couple of years and um, and
Speaker 1: that's a big concern for these companies. I mean, the
Speaker 1: whole purpose they're in business is to make money, and
Speaker 1: they make money through selling music, and if people stop
Speaker 1: buying music, that's a problem. So it may be that
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that they were looking at
Speaker 1: that that they're they've got a strategy in place to
Speaker 1: really boost music sales, partially by creating this locked in
Speaker 1: ecosystem that's only good for one major label. Uh, but
Speaker 1: if another company comes in and undercuts them, then they
Speaker 1: no longer have that advantage, right, I mean the music
Speaker 1: industry itself. We're not talking about the artists themselves, the
Speaker 1: music industry, the recording industry. We're talking about the big labels.
Speaker 1: They make their money from recording the arts, basically going
Speaker 1: out discovering people they think will sell, recording those artists,
Speaker 1: packaging and you know, creating the the uh, the recording
Speaker 1: with the packaging and creating the product and distributing it
Speaker 1: to people, marketing it to radio stations to get them
Speaker 1: to play it, um, and then selling bucks of albums
Speaker 1: or digital downloads. As you know, because we're seeing those
Speaker 1: physical album sales, I mean, those are really dropping off.
Speaker 1: Digital music is also kind of stagnating. So but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you put your your yourself in the
Speaker 1: shoes of the industry itself, it's easy to see why
Speaker 1: they would be frightened by losing control. And if they
Speaker 1: see this as a possibility that they may lose control.
Speaker 1: Of course, they're going to defend their industry because you know,
Speaker 1: that's what they do, So it's not really surprising that
Speaker 1: they would be concerned about what's going on. Then it's
Speaker 1: possible that they could work out um an arrangement with Amazon.
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, you're right, Jonathan, it's it's not giving
Speaker 1: music to other people. If Amazon can demonstrate that, hey, look,
Speaker 1: this is this is highly secure. Nobody's going to get
Speaker 1: access to anybody else's music. It's no different than if
Speaker 1: it was on their own computer. Yeah, if they can
Speaker 1: convince the recording industry of that, um, they may be
Speaker 1: able to avoid having to restructure their offering or worry
Speaker 1: about yeah or or or worry about a lawsuit. So
Speaker 1: it is very possible that through discussion that they can
Speaker 1: they can work something out. They just need to reassure people.
Speaker 1: And you know, when you drop the news on him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry what And I should point out that I'm
Speaker 1: a you know, I'm a real advocate for the consumer
Speaker 1: because I am one sure, if I were a major label,
Speaker 1: I probably would have a totally different argument than the
Speaker 1: one I laid out. Yeah, I mean, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's their livelihood, that's what they do. And so I'm
Speaker 1: arguing for the customer experience, but that's just one piece
Speaker 1: of the puzzle. And I recognize that too. Doesn't make
Speaker 1: me less RANTI though, all right, well let's wrap this
Speaker 1: discussion up. I think it was a really good discussion.
Speaker 1: And and Chris does have a great blog post about
Speaker 1: the Amazon Cloud Drive already, so I would recommend checking
Speaker 1: that out. Go over to our blogs and and just
Speaker 1: click on the little tech stuff thing. You can ignore
Speaker 1: all the rest. And I'm just kidding. All the other
Speaker 1: all the other blogs are also awesome, But if you
Speaker 1: click on tech stuff, it'll just bring up our our
Speaker 1: posts and you can find the one easily that way
Speaker 1: on the cloud drive. And I think it's safe to
Speaker 1: expect that we will see something going on from Google
Speaker 1: or Apple or both in the in the months to come.
Speaker 1: So this is uh, they may actually be happy that
Speaker 1: Amazon beat them to the punch, especially if they get
Speaker 1: punched for it. Yeah, if they get pummeled for it,
Speaker 1: and then Google and Apple can say, hey, let's rethink
Speaker 1: our strategy here so that we can, you know, we
Speaker 1: can avoid the pitfalls that Amazon fell into. That is
Speaker 1: a potential outcome, so we'll have to wait and see.
Speaker 1: If you guys have any comments on the Amazon Cloud
Speaker 1: Drive and Cloud Player, or perhaps you have some request
Speaker 1: for a different topic you would like to hear, Why
Speaker 1: don't you contact us either on Twitter or Facebook. Are handled,
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Speaker 1: send us an email that addresses tech stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com and Chris and I will talk
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