Music in the "Cloud": Just say No

Since Amazon's announcement of their "Cloud" based music service ("Cloud Drive") the blog-o-sphere has been all a buzz with this hot new idea.

Regular readers of my blog will know that I think "Cloud" services are a trap and only good for the person that is offering the service.

This is no exception. Most of these "Cloud" services are charging something like $10/mo for unlimited streaming. It might sound good on the surface but once you think about it you realize that:

• You'll own nothing
• Your ability to stream will depend on connectivity.. Your bill will not (you'll be charged $10/mo whether you could stream or not.)
• It is fairly trivial to set up your home computer to offer this same service for free and with all the music you already or will ever own.
• These services will most likely insert advertising into the music either now.. Or in the future once people are hooked.
• By connecting to their servers to stream your music these companies will be able to track all kinds of information about you.
  • what you listen to
  • where you listen from (device and location)
  • How often you listen
  • etc

Considering that with less than two hours work you could have exactly this for free why would anyone opt to pay $10/mo. to own nothing, be tracked and profiled, and advertised to. It is just a bad deal all around and people should just say no.

Note: In a future post (soon) I will detail how to set this up for yourself for next to nothing. Certainly for less then $120/year and your privacy

This site by Freemor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://freemor.ca/Contact.htm.