As insiders chew on the implications of Apple’s sudden moves into the cloud computing space, tech writer Lance Ulanoff says in a piece in PCMag that Apple’s Steve Jobs has effectively claimed cloud technology–rapidly becoming known as iCloud–as his company’s own.
Jobs’ track record, Ulanoff writes, is just too good, as each of the latest “i” devices–iPod, iPhone, iPad and in all likelihood, iCloud–has raised the industry standard and set the bar ever higher for the company’s competitors.
“Now that we know that Apple’s iCloud is a real thing, there’s no sense in wondering how Jobs can have the gall to rebrand cloud computing,” Ulanoff writes, adding that he would rather focus on what Apple will do with its new brand.
What does the Apple news mean for the future of the music business? “Streaming content is only the beginning,” the piece says. “Obviously, we expect some sort of cloud-based, access-anywhere music library. Apple may even cave and offer a subscription-based music service.”
But there’s a pretty big catch, according to the piece. “These plans will only succeed if Apple has done what Google failed to do with Google Music Beta: convince the major labels to let consumers store and access purchased (and rented) music from central servers,” Ulanoff writes. “I think music labels fear this not only because they worry about losing further control of the digital bits that make up their vast song libraries, but because no one will ever buy more than one copy of a song again, and if they get subscription access, they’re done buying music–period.”
The only way people would not buy music anymore with this subscription is if they did not want to listen to new music.
Independent music has been – and always will be – the place where all trends start. Most real independent music is not covered by Apple’s expected service.
This service is a great way to make money off of back catalogs and a way to try and con new musicians into believing that the big four are still relevant distribution services.