I don’t think flawless universal wireless highspeed bandwidth for the masses will ever happen. So if this is true the OP’s model can never happen.
What I can see with increased capacity to store information digitally it may be possible to store, in encrypted format, all the songs that are available on a portable device. You will have a subscription service to unlock the songs you request. Such a device would connect periodically to update your subscription status and download any new music.
kanicbird that is basically the model we have now. That is pretty much exactly how the Microsoft DRM stuff works now. I could use most of the 5 services I have listed with my iRiver and PC.
These subscription services are used by a pretty small subset of the people that listen to music with computers or with portable devices that can use them.
What is wrong with them.
Won’t play on my ipod. This is DRMs/apples fault but mostly DRM. It is a completely nontrivial problem to deliver messages to people you don’t trust with the message. It is really more trouble than it is worth to jump through the hoops to listen to DRMed music in my opinion. This could be fixed with legislation. Mandating licensing for DRM technology so that every body could use one scheme. France is currently trying to get Apple to open up Itunes. But it would really be better to get rid of DRM and go to a system of TV tax like the British have if you want to start mandating things. Not that I think either is all that likely but who knows.
Poor selection. I have a hard time envisioning all music being available on such services but I can see 90% of what people want being available. You will never please everybody but this can certainly be vastly improved.
Low quality encoding. I don’t really buy into this one but others in this thread say they don’t like it. This one is really easy to fix just up the bit rate of the encoded music. This gets cheaper and cheaper every year and bandwidth gets cheaper.
In short my basic belief is that DRM is really the problem with these services and the only one which I don’t see a realistic way to solve. DRM is what is holding these services back. After all the vast majority of music is sold in a non DRM encumbered format, CDs.
Subscription style services are the only economic model that require DRM to work. The only way subscription style services can work is if you can shut off somebody’s music if they drop the sub. Otherwise, what’s going to happen is people are going to pay the $10, download every song they could possibly want onto local store and then drop the sub and listen to cached versions for the rest of the time. At 160kbps, you could store the equivalent of the entire 1 million song catalog of itunes onto a 3 terabyte HD taking 1 month to download at 10Mbps average transfer rate. Where’s the incentive to pay any more than that if you have the entire world’s music at your fingertips?
Oops, itunes has 24 million songs, not 1 million, the basic point still holds though.
The only problem with that is that it’s very easy to track spikes in traffic and the money trail is pretty clear. If Paul McCartney stands to benefit, it’s a pretty safe bet to go investigate him.
See, in my model, there will be no downloading – it will be a thing of the past (see my OP).
What it looks like you are talking about is audio streaming, which is downloading, so if the above comes true, downloading will be required.
Hence the problem with your model.
As I stated above ‘ubiquitous’ wireless broadband will never happen. There will always be dead spots, overloaded networks, and limited bandwidth problems when we are sending information through EM waves, as well as interference problems. There are also delays when acquiring a wireless signal, as well as power consumption problems maintaining a continuous wireless signal.
People already complain about limited battery power of the Ipod, just think how much shorter that life will be if the Ipod had to maintain a wireless connection while it played.
I can see a model where music you like is precached into your subscription service device and played directly from there. If there is music you want besides what you have in the device, you can request it be transfered to it, via a audio stream, and then it is in your device’s memory from that point on, but this assumes you are in a area where you can get a wireless signal. If you are in a area where you can get a good broadband signal then you should be able to start listening right away.
But a system where your music is stored in some server somewhere and you just access it via audio streaming only is just not happening.
You can’t get data onto your computer any way but by downloading it. Lay people try and make the distinction between “browsing” the web and “downloading” content but whenever you visit a webpage, you download that page into your cache.
If you have streaming music, it’s always going to be possible for someone to save the stream onto their hard drive for good. The music decoding code is meant to delete the music as it plays but the only way to enforce this is via… DRM.
Actually I think the OP’s model will happen for TV, not portable music. I could see a time where you can watch anything at anytime on your scedual. You subscribe to a ‘cable’ like TV service, and instead of having 100 or so TV channels you just have a menu featuring every program, with search options by category, or likeness to another show. New shows will be available and added to the shows you can pick from as they come out. And it would work just as the OP states. You select that you want to watch a particular ‘Gilligan’s Island’, the information is streamed via your home broadband connection (fiber, DSL, cable, plasma conduit) and you watch it, starting right away.
I can also see this backfiring and cause more disinterest in TV, as I have found that more channels don’t equate to more viewing satisfaction just more channel surfing and a higher level of expectation .
And why can’t this happen with music? Seems to me that the distinction is with the media player; a TV isn’t equipped to download. Music players of the future could have the same design, yes?
Sorry, but while I acknowledge the limitations in understanding the specific technologies, it seems technologically feasible to have a media service whereby audio is played locally but the data used for that audio is not available for download. The advantages of such a system are so apparent (to me) that I can’t believe we won’t find such a solution.
Look at digital cable. The system itself (absent a storage device e.g. Tivo) can browse and even request specific media without being able to store anything locally. Why won’t this work for audio?
There is just no way that this will turn out to be true in the long run. It may take a long time to get there, but there will be a time when everyone is constantly connected to a digital information network, no question. The issues you raise are really minor hurdles.
The point was streaming and downloading differ mostly in that the application stores stuff locally. The data must be transfered to you and DRM schemes are put in place to prevent the receiver of the data from doing unapproved things.
Addressing this and other points you brought up:
Why I see it for TV more then music - TV’s are fixed devices, so they can have a hardwired high speed connection, portable devices can’t/
Power consumption issues in ultra-portable devices (ipod size), battery technology is not advancing all that fast - though micro fuel cells may bridge this gap - but say goodbye to rechargability and back to disposable ‘batteries’.
Audio streaming is much worse, bandwidth wise then downloading. First every time you play a song you have to re-stream it, second you need to connect at a high priority level (current internet doesn’t even have priority levels), and get information in real time.
As for the availability of the EM spectrum, if we are going to be sending all this information, not just music, but navigation, traffic, weather, smart car systems, communications, ect, I really don’t see how everyone can be a part of it, the EM spectrum is only so large. One way to perhaps overcome it is by using the cellular technology - but still in a large metro area with everyone listening to streamed music (or video) via wireless on their way to work, while on a congested highway or a train - no sorry not enough bandwidth.
My plan would be that this is just part of your ISP bill. If you want to be connected to the internet, part of that monthly ISP fee will go to pay royalties. And all reputable ISPs will collect royalties this way.
Of course there’s no difference between “streaming” and “downloading”. They’re the exact same thing, except a stream isn’t saved to your hard drive, just to your memory, and you tell your computer to throw away the information after you’ve listened. Sure, there could be some software/hardware solution where you can prevent people from saving streamed music, that’s what DRM is all about. Except these schemes will always be a pain in the ass, because they’re trying to prevent a computer system from doing something that is a trivial task…save a file to a hard drive. Which means no more general purpose computers, you’d have to make today’s desktop computer illegal to really kill “piracy”. And the idea is to throw out DRM completely, to stop fighting technology but embrace it instead.
Of course, you can save video as well, people do it all the time. Your TIVO or VCR allows you to download a streamed video, and play it back as many times as you like. So why aren’t movie companies terrified that people are getting HBO for a month and taping every movie shown? Because there’s always new movies, and after you’ve seen E.T. 30 times you’ll probably want to watch something new. Music is different, you can listen to the same album 100 times without getting tired of it.
If you toss out the “streaming” model, you toss out the fear that people will “download” music. You don’t CARE that people download that file and listen to it 5000 times on their local memory. The only information that needs to be sent is that the file was accessed 5000 times, so the creator of the file gets 5000 shares of this month’s royalty fund. A couple of gigs of memory on your player and you’ve got a full day’s worth of music. You only need to download something new when you change your playlist…your device downloads it and plays it from local memory until you delete the item from your playlist. Sure, for some things it’s much better to be sitting at home at your home media center with a broadband landline if you want to be sure of getting CD quality music. But if you’re listening on headphones on a mobile device you don’t need CD quality music. If you want to search out obscure tracks in CD quality you might get–gasp!–gaps in service if you rely on a wireless connection to a mobile device. But all you have to do is wait until you get home and you can download those obscure 1920s jazz tracks to your heart’s content, and preload them on your mobile device for later listening.
But this requires throwing out DRM, throwing out the concept of “copyright”, and embracing a world where it doesn’t matter where a file is stored or how many times you access it or where you got it from, as long as you agree to upload usage information for royalty purposes. And the fee for this isn’t from a separate subscription service, but rather just part of your monthly cable TV/ISP bill, which will probably be the same entity, and you can’t save money by opting out any more than you can save money by opting out of cable channels you don’t want.
This is a great suggestion – exactly the kind of thing I started this thread to find out. Thanks!!
Which still requires DRM. How does the player know the difference between the file you got from the server and one that’s not in the database?
And of course TV and movie companies are worried about people’s ability to copy digitally broadcast material. That’s why HDCP exists (which is a terrific mess) - it prevents you from plugging in any device which doesn’t comply (i.e. one which would let you copy or locally store the shows on your own terms).
Here’s a really good example of why DRM is a really stupid idea:
http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/04/sony_dvds_infec.html
The article continues to say that the tech support line knew about the problem, and suggested a firmware update in the consumer’s player. When will that be available? “We don’t know.”
Sony seems dedicate to shooting themselves, not in the foot, but the mouth.
I saw that DVD thing on slashdot. How do you even update the firmware on your DVD player? Do they mail you a DVD with the update? Your best bet is to get it of bit torrent.