Cloud music is still the future for Apple, Amazon -- really
Given recent headlines about cloud music, you might be forgiven for thinking that the feature is huge with consumers. Word came Monday that Apple has finally caught up to Google and Amazonand begun to stream songsfrom the company's cloud. The following day,CNET broke news that Amazon is very close to reaching agreements with the top four record companies that would let it run a licensed cloud music service. Music industrysources also told CNET that Google and the labels continue to discusscloud licenses. Interesting news. Now here's the reality: Consumer adoption of cloud music has beenlackluster, multiple music industry insiders tell me. The cloud has notyet led to a spike in interest or music sales, the sources told CNET.Data from The NPD Group supports that conclusion, said Russ Crupnick,the research's company's senior vice president and industry analyst. "Despite the hullabaloo about cloud music, it hasn't gotten tractionyet," Crupnick said, "I looked at our latest numbers and unreleaseddata, and only about 6 percent of the Internet population has evenused something like [cloud music]."Related storiesAmazon getting cloud-music rights, may match iCloud (scoop) Amazon's Cloud Player enters the App StoreComparing Apple iOS 6 with Android 4.0, Windows Phone 7.5Amazon Cloud Player for iOS gives you more options for musicThat data suggests that music listeners are happy with the options they have now. Crupnick suspects that few people own enoughmusic to max out their local storage, which would fuel the desire to store filmand music libraries remotely. Representatives from Apple and Amazondid not respond to interview requests and Google declined to comment.So why are the big music stores bothering to upgrade their music clouds?One reason may be the iPod. Apple and the company's iconic digitalmusic player proved music is a powerful driver of hardware sales.People want to listen to their jams on their mobile devices. Appledidn't care if the company's margins on song sales were thin. All themoney was in selling iPods.Music has been a vital part of digitaldevices ever since. Keep in mind that in addition to being the Web'stop retailer, Amazon is now very much a hardware maker.The "cloud," of course, is the term used to describe where digital stuff "lives" when consumers store theirfiles on a third party's servers rather than on their own PCor mobile device. While this type of data storage is old to techies,it is still relatively new to mainstream America. Heck, among the bigthree music stores, the cloud feature is barely a year old.Amazon was first to launch cloud music with the initially unlicensedCloud Drive and Cloud Player. Google later offered its own anunlicensed cloud-music service. Apple's system was the first to debutfully licensed.The benefits of a licensed service didn't appear to be that compelling-- at least at first. The one thing Apple could offer that Googleand Amazon couldn't was a feature called "scan and match." Apple could scan a user's harddrive and fill their digital lockers with songs from the iTuneslibrary -- eliminating the need for users to upload their songsdirectly to the company's servers. That also prevented Apple fromhaving to store a billion copies of "When the Levee Breaks."Amazon's free Cloud Player app on iOSLance Whitney/CNETDelivering a single copy of a song to millions of users without alicense is a copyright violation, according to the record companies.Apple offers free cloud storage for songs purchased from iTunes butcharges $25 a year to upload songs purchased from other stores,acquired from friends or from illegal peer-to-peer sites. One insidersaid Apple got a great deal from the labels with Match. The companycan give pirated music clemency for about $2 a month.Maybe. While Applehas ballyhooed the growth of iCloud (the service has acquired 125million users in the first six months since launch), the company hasbeen silent about how many people are paying for Match.Obviously, Amazon feels the need to match iCloud's Match. Accordingto music sources, Amazon will charge for at least part of its version of Match.At this point, it looks like an arms race. Apple has Match so Amazonhas to offer it. Whether consumers will eventually care one way or theother is anybody's guess.
Report- The next iPod Touch will have 3G
Report: The next iPod Touch will have 3G
Rumors about what Apple is doing with its iPod line have been on the quiet side over the past few months, but a new report suggests that the iPod Touch is due for a genuinely exciting upgrade later this year.Dutch blog AppleSpot.nl claims that Apple's next-generation iPod Touch will sport 3G connectivity, giving people a way to access data while out on the go without needing to find a Wi-Fi hot spot, just like they do on the iPhone.A translation of the AppleSpot report from a reader on 9to5mac has the source outlet saying it will be identical to what Apple has already made available on the iPad, where you pick the carrier and get going, presumably managing the pre-paid data plan from right on the device. As my colleague Donald Bell noted in a story about the possibility of such a scenario just a few weeks ago, Apple has primed iOS for wireless goodness by cutting the cord from iTunes, and including new features like iCloud and iMessage, the latter of which is a shot across the bow of carriers and their text-messaging plans. The iMessage service lets iOS users text and chat with one another freely, as long as they've got the data for it, and iCloud is the glue that keeps content and settings synced and backed up to other devices and Apple's cloud storage system. Of course with the possibility of a wireless chipset, it brings up the question of what the difference is between such a device and an iPhone proper. So far Apple has further distanced the two products by cutting out a GPS receiver, and offering a lower-quality camera and display. But at the same time Apple has also slowly added hardware features like sensors and cameras to make sure that iPod Touch users can take advantage of (read: buy) applications that will run on both.Apple is expected to unveil its new crop of iPods in September, right around when multiple reports have pegged the debut of the next-generation iPhone. So far the rumors about what's been next for Apple's line of music-focused gadgets have been rather pedestrian, from extra capacity and a capacitive home button on the iPod Touch, to a camera making a return on the iPod Nano. In that sense, this 3G claim--even if it's just a rumor--represents a big, exciting change for the top end of the iPod product line.Update at 12:30 p.m. PT: In a chat with CNET, Wayne Lam, a senior analyst for IHS iSuppli, poured a bit of cold water on this rumor, noting that the parts involved to add 3G connectivity are not just a few extra cents here and there. As a frame of reference, Lam pointed to the 3G module in the iPad 2 costing around $28. "It's a big chunk," he said."If you look at the iPad 3G, it actually resides on a separate PCB (printed circuit board)," Lam said. "So a 3G module in the iPad's case would include the baseband processor and the various power amplifying modules (PAMs) for the various frequencies that it supports. It's quite elaborate and more of a sub-system."Breaking down those same parts on the iPhone can also be a bit tricky. "If you look at the telephony portion of the iPhone 4, it takes up basically half the PCB real estate with the baseband processor, and the power amplifying modules and all the power components that go with it. So it's kind of hard to pull that out," Lam said. Lam said similar 3G parts for the iPhone 4 run a bit cheaper at $24 to $25, though could go as high as $30 if they're part of a separate module. "There's also different ways to achieve wireless connectivity," Lam suggested. "Sprint or Verizon would be promoting things like Mi-Fi that give multiple devices connectivity, but that's a tough rumor to endorse."
Rumors about what Apple is doing with its iPod line have been on the quiet side over the past few months, but a new report suggests that the iPod Touch is due for a genuinely exciting upgrade later this year.Dutch blog AppleSpot.nl claims that Apple's next-generation iPod Touch will sport 3G connectivity, giving people a way to access data while out on the go without needing to find a Wi-Fi hot spot, just like they do on the iPhone.A translation of the AppleSpot report from a reader on 9to5mac has the source outlet saying it will be identical to what Apple has already made available on the iPad, where you pick the carrier and get going, presumably managing the pre-paid data plan from right on the device. As my colleague Donald Bell noted in a story about the possibility of such a scenario just a few weeks ago, Apple has primed iOS for wireless goodness by cutting the cord from iTunes, and including new features like iCloud and iMessage, the latter of which is a shot across the bow of carriers and their text-messaging plans. The iMessage service lets iOS users text and chat with one another freely, as long as they've got the data for it, and iCloud is the glue that keeps content and settings synced and backed up to other devices and Apple's cloud storage system. Of course with the possibility of a wireless chipset, it brings up the question of what the difference is between such a device and an iPhone proper. So far Apple has further distanced the two products by cutting out a GPS receiver, and offering a lower-quality camera and display. But at the same time Apple has also slowly added hardware features like sensors and cameras to make sure that iPod Touch users can take advantage of (read: buy) applications that will run on both.Apple is expected to unveil its new crop of iPods in September, right around when multiple reports have pegged the debut of the next-generation iPhone. So far the rumors about what's been next for Apple's line of music-focused gadgets have been rather pedestrian, from extra capacity and a capacitive home button on the iPod Touch, to a camera making a return on the iPod Nano. In that sense, this 3G claim--even if it's just a rumor--represents a big, exciting change for the top end of the iPod product line.Update at 12:30 p.m. PT: In a chat with CNET, Wayne Lam, a senior analyst for IHS iSuppli, poured a bit of cold water on this rumor, noting that the parts involved to add 3G connectivity are not just a few extra cents here and there. As a frame of reference, Lam pointed to the 3G module in the iPad 2 costing around $28. "It's a big chunk," he said."If you look at the iPad 3G, it actually resides on a separate PCB (printed circuit board)," Lam said. "So a 3G module in the iPad's case would include the baseband processor and the various power amplifying modules (PAMs) for the various frequencies that it supports. It's quite elaborate and more of a sub-system."Breaking down those same parts on the iPhone can also be a bit tricky. "If you look at the telephony portion of the iPhone 4, it takes up basically half the PCB real estate with the baseband processor, and the power amplifying modules and all the power components that go with it. So it's kind of hard to pull that out," Lam said. Lam said similar 3G parts for the iPhone 4 run a bit cheaper at $24 to $25, though could go as high as $30 if they're part of a separate module. "There's also different ways to achieve wireless connectivity," Lam suggested. "Sprint or Verizon would be promoting things like Mi-Fi that give multiple devices connectivity, but that's a tough rumor to endorse."
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