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The Webernets

AMAZON CLOUD PLAYER TO RECORD LABELS: “FUCK OFF!”

 Thursday, April 14th, 2011 at 12:30pm by

Amazon Cloud PlayerYou people are retarded. I really shouldn’t have been shocked at the averse reaction to my post about the new Amazon Cloud service, but sometimes I forget about the little Internet bubble I live in. People, listen up: in 10 years we’re all going to look back on today’s music collection habits and laugh at how we wasted all that money, time, energy and hard drive space worrying about storing music files because we felt a need to have them in our “possession.” Just like many of us have already realized how silly it is to amass gigantic CD collections that take up tons of space when we can still enjoy our music just as much while storing it on something the size of a book (note: I am not advocating piracy here, just medium of choice). And just like horse-and-buggy proprietors realized 10 years after Ford rolled the first Model T off the assembly line, “Hey, maybe there’s something to them there automobiles after all!”

I’m not wondering aloud whether this will happen with regards to music ownership/listening… I’m telling you that it definitely will. We will all stream our music “from the cloud” in a matter of time, and we’ll all wonder how we ever got along without it. Increased bandwidth will allow for excellent audio quality (HD cable, anyone?), it’ll be way easier than searching for and waiting to download a torrent, and it’ll be cheaper because there won’t be any physical media costs, shipping or middle-men taking a cut. And do give me the “What if the Internet goes down?” shpiel, because if that happens our entire world economy will collapse anyway.

But none of this will happen before label owners do their best to slow down the move to the Cloud in order to eke out every last cent the recorded music industry is good for. The latest fracas involves content owners (labels, publishers) arguing that Amazon should have to buy licenses from them in order to run the Cloud Player, because supposedly serving up music in this manner constitutes “streaming” even though it’s only for personal use. What a steaming, hot pile of bullshit. Thankfully Amazon isn’t caving in, as they clearly enumerated in a letter to said content owners [via Metal Insider]:

There has been a lot of discussion as to whether Cloud Drive and Cloud Player require licenses from content owners.  Here’s why they do not:

(1) Cloud Drive is a general online storage service for all digital files, not unlike Google Docs, Microsoft SkyDrive and any number of other internet file backup services.  It’s your external hard-drive in the cloud.  It requires a license from content owners no more than those other internet file back-up services do and no more than makers of external hard drives for PCs do.

(2) Cloud Player is a media management and playback application not unlike Windows Media Player and any number of other media management applications that let customers manage and play their music.  It requires a license from content owners no more than those applications do.

It’s really that simple.

There has also been speculation that we are looking for licenses for Cloud Drive and Cloud Player. We are not looking for licenses for Cloud Drive or Cloud Player as they exist today — as no licensees are required. There are, however, potential enhancements to Cloud Drive and Cloud Player that would require licenses and that we are interested in — like the ability to replace multiple copies of the same music track uploaded by different customers with a single server copy that could be used for all customers with the same track.  Licenses permitting us to do that would save storage costs and would be good for customers because they would reduce the number of tracks customers need to upload to Cloud Drive themselves.

Expect to hear more from us on potential licensing in the near future – and please let us know if you have any questions in the meantime.

The Amazon Music Team

Seems pretty clear-cut to me. Regardless, I’m sure a flurry of lawsuits from content owners aimed Amazon’s way is sure to follow. It’d be great if we could all just move ahead with music technology at a natural pace dictated by what’s convenient and popular… but nope, the old way of business must be protected AT ALL COSTS because HOW COULD ANYBODY POSSIBLY MAKE MONEY IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS WITHOUT LABELS AROUND?? Oy vey. Worse, this battle isn’t over a true Cloud Player (everything on demand all the time), but just a personal music storage locker of sorts. I think things are going to get much worse before they get better.

-VN

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  • spankster

    Thanks for staying on top of this stuff for us, Vince.

    It really would be great to let the market dictate the growth and direction of music technology, but I believe you are absolutely right in saying that won’t happen for many moons due to [greedy] industry dinosaurs that are grasping at straws these days.

  • kmfcm

    I love the idea.

    LOVE the idea.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Vanderven/502827008 Mike Vanderven

      the cloud idea has been around for a decade. its only a matter of time before the industry has the resources to do it, and now we do.

      this is not a new idea. everything will be moving towards living not he cloud, including OS’s, not just music. Soon, we’ll be logging into a Web 2.0 OS, that will connect us to our own personalized desktop, no matter where we go.

      I personally enjoy collecting CDs, so I’ll go on doing that.

  • Kye

    Digital music would be a great solution if most people selling it didn’t offer it in shit quality. Digital files, clouds and the like are fantastic, but fuck the future of music when the whole goddamn world is more concerned with convenience than with every song sounding like it’s being streamed off fucking YouTube.

    • msv81

      At this stage in the game, asserting that “most people selling it” do so in shit quality is an erroneous statement. Both Amazon and iTunes, the clear frontrunners, sell digital music in high quality (Amazon MP3s come in the highest quality VBR (V0), which is essentially akin to a 320k MP3, less maybe 3-8 MB over the span of an entire album; iTunes sells their music in MP4).

      I’ve also gotten my digital music from a couple of miscellaneous, no-name sites run by 2nd and 3rd tier labels, all of which provided the MP3s in 320kbps. I even purchased/downloaded an EP from Napster recently because the release was specific to that site and the provided quality was 256kbps.

      If anything, I’d have to say “most people selling it” offer digital music at high quality now. Yeah, there was definitely a time when 128kbps reigned supreme as the quality of choice for retailers, but everyone has pretty much caught on regarding the need for high quality.

      And please, don’t give me the whole “it needs to be lossless of it doesn’t sound good” argument because it’s bullshit. While I have nothing against lossless files if they’re someone’s preferred method of digital music quality (by all means, download/rip in lossless if you want), anyone who claims the superiority of lossless vs. 320kbps / V0 / M4A is basically speaking out of their ass. There’s something called psychoacoustic transparency, which, when achieved, results in lossy digital files that are perceptually indistinguishable from the lossless source.

      Though transparency is subjective, the common understanding is that it can be reached around 192kbps. Personally, I think 320kbps or V0 are necessary, but point being, the advocacy of lossless audio files is little more than an argument pertaining to individual preference, not audible fact.

      • msv81

        For the record, before someone tries to jump all over me for the last part of that response; I am fully aware that CDs have a bit rate of 1411.2 kbps and FLAC files are in the range of 800 kbps – 1300 kbps, so clearly the quality is in actuality better than a lossy file.

        But, with the normal range of human hearing being 20 Hz – 20 kHz, psychoacoustic transparency can be reached around 192kbps since MP3s properly ripped in that quality have a high-end cutoff around 18-20 kHz and anything higher than 192kbps cuts off at higher than 20 kHz, meaning those higher cutoff points are outside of our range of hearing anyway.

        • http://www.facebook.com/people/Vince-Decker/100002225040320 Vince Decker

          psychoacoustic transparency sounds like a cool band name.

          • Obsequium Mindris

            thanks for the tip….xD

        • builtforsin

          Here to call bullshit.

          I bet you (you personally) can tell the difference between a 320kbs file and spinning a CD. I can. Anyone that is listens to music regularly (on higher quality sound equipment) and is a critic of recording can. And if you can’t, you probably got dicks in your ears.

          (I was going to be technical, but the troll seemed to make more sense.)

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Adam-Armour/1776262813 Adam Armour

            @ builtfosin

            Hear, hear. I’ve listened to most of my favorite albums in both retail CD format and 320kbs and I can, without a doubt, hear a difference. And that’s coming through my crappy car speakers.

          • msv81

            I’d love to see you be able to consistently tell the difference between a CD and a 320k MP3 in a blind test because results have shown that most people can’t.

            I won’t completely deny the possibility of you being able to do so, though, as some people have perfect hearing and yes using high quality equipment does help, obviously.

            I, for one, cannot tell the difference between a CD, FLAC, and 320k MP3 – most of the time, anyway. But I’ll be the first to admit my hearing is fucked. I’ve been to hundreds if not thousands of shows in my life thus far and I’ve worn ear “protection” to exactly none of them. Stupid, I know.

          • Scourge441

            Most people I’ve spoken to with high-end audio equipment can’t tell the difference between lossless audio and a high-bitrate mp3. And if you’re like me and you’re listening through $7 JVC Gumy earbuds and a laptop, you sure as hell won’t be able to tell a difference.

            Now, I won’t be jumping on the cloud bandwagon just yet, but most people don’t have the resources to tell the difference between mp3s and CD-quality. As awesome as it would be to stream FLAC, it’s just not necessary.

          • msv81

            Again, for those two people who claim to be able to easily hear the difference between 320k and CD, audio transparency is largely subjective and dependent upon individual perception.

            Which means, unless you’ve performed a blind test for many different albums, there’s no evidence to suggest your preconceived notions about CD being better aren’t what made you perceive it to be better.

            Sure, it’s very easy for somebody to pop in a CD, listen to track 1, and then immediately after play a 320k of the same track, perceiving the CD to be of better quality. Try the same thing without you being in control of choosing which is which. I guarentee you can’t tell the difference in at least one example. I mean, the double blind test has been performed in this very same manner many times over and it has been shown that many people – some would even say most people – can’t tell the difference between the two formats.

        • Chip Northcutt

          There is a difference you can hear related to masking effects and dynamics. Perfect by spec and good sounding are not allways the same. This is not conjecture but truth, almost anyone can hear if it is demonstrated in an a/b comparison. The difference is sometimes miniscule and sometimes great.

        • Dave

          Words of truth. Everyone becomes a PhD level audio engineer/phony audiophile when file format discussions come up… fact is if you are playing it over your shitty smartphone you are limited by the device anyways…

      • Adam

        All great points, but I think “Kye” was just saying that streaming music services still sound like junk and have a while to go before they start sounding good. I’m sure they’ll figure it out eventually, just like you pointed out iTunes and Amazon both upped the quality of their downloads, but right now it sounds like shit!

        • Anthony

          even when I rip CDs, I rip them to 192 kbps. Anything higher than that, quite frankly, is a waste of space to me. Maybe my hearing is fucked up, but I really can’t notice a difference between the stuff I have in 192 and the stuff I have in 320.

  • chainchomp

    “(note: I am not advocating piracy here, just medium of choice). ”

    way to cover your tracks duder, ash would have your nuts!

  • Brian R.

    totally agree with almost all of this, except dismissal of ‘when Internet goes down.’ that DOES happen, and not in a ‘the world economy is going to collapse’ but things go wrong with your Internet provider, you aren’t in a Wi-Fi hot spot, etc. And then, your music collection isn’t acccessible to you. And that’s not cool. Agree that ‘cloud computing’ is the future, but i’m not there yet in terms of trusting my music collection to it. I’m still good with my little IPod and my cases of cd’s stored in boxes in a closet!

    • Sandy Duncan’s Glass Eye

      This is where I find myself landing, except I’ve already sold off 90% of my CDs. While I would certainly make use of the ‘cloud’, I still feel the need to retain some sort of physical ownership of the art, whether it’s a CD or an mp3 file. The possibility of the ‘cloud’ going down, who owns said cloud, who’s liable for content on the cloud, privacy concerns, censorship concerns, etc., etc. keep the cloud concept from being as wonderful as it first seems. It’s coming, no question, but the access v. ownership issues of the content aren’t even close to being understood, much less resolved.

      I seem to recall a news story a few years ago where a lawsuit caused Amazon or Apple to effectively reach into people’s e-readers to delete a book the customers had already purchased and thus owned. I don’t feel comfortable subjecting my music library to the whims of the court system.

      • http://www.facebook.com/people/Vince-Decker/100002225040320 Vince Decker

        yes! the internet dont always work at the speeds we like, so i suppose we would need some killer, all-around connection. i dont know enough about it, but when i wanna listen to music, i want it right then and there. i dont want to wait til im in 4G or whatever the fuck that means. im trying to live in the colorado mountains, and many conditions prevent good connections.

      • Brian R.

        yea, good points about ownership, potential censorship, etc. And yes, there was some thing about books being taken out of e-readers due to some lawsuit or something?

        i don’t know, maybe i’m old school, but i still see my 160GB IPod as the perfect solution. i mean, i have stuff on there when i put it on shuffle and i won’t even know what song it is!? how much stuff do i need if i don’t even remember stuff i actually own!!

      • http://last.fm/user/melocure ryanb

        Let’s add one more thing to the physical vs digital argument: geographical regions and licensing.

        I’ve been bitten in the ass more than enough times trying to purchase electronic releases from Beatport, Juno Download, etc., but was unable to because nobody was licensed for distribution in the USA. I can at least import CDs. (And, on top of that, should the purchase be considered a mistake later, I have an artifact I can sell later and hopefully reclaim some of the cost.)

        Cloud players are convenient for lots of people, but because of this and the problems you and Brian R. mentioned, it’s not (yet) for me.

    • phoenixdan

      The other issue to be concerned with is if ISP’s start heavily throttling bandwidth to certain web sites. Net neutrality is still a major concern and if ISP’s get their way, having a cloud based media storage may be something they (ISP’s) will be willing to provide bandwidth for if it isn’t something of their own. The internet may not crash but if enough clout and money gets thrown around cloud streaming could conceivably be crippled.
      Also, how would I stream my music in my car?

      • Agony

        This. It’s not just the labels we have to worry about. And it’s not “if”. AT&T and Verizon are already capping their internet and mobile services, which will hamstring streaming. I agree this can be the future of music, but it’s not the future just yet. I’m not going to pay extra to use the things I already paid for. But kudos to Amazon for telling them to stick it.

  • Biclops

    There’s definitely a basis for maintaining physical copies, though, and it comes down to ritual. Some people actually like to maintain a collection, some folks truly appreciate artwork and unique packaging (crack the skye tunnel book, anyone?), and sometimes, the mere fact of preparing your music to play is enjoyable (LP resurgence?). That’s not even mentioning the ongoing sound quality debate. This isn’t the same as switching to VHS to DVD, the difference is a lot more dynamic than it’s being made out.

    • Brian

      Amen, Biclops! I am quite proud of my massive CD collection. I don’t yet have all the shelf space to display all of them, but I still love it. And I listen to them too, sometimes, especially after I first get them.

      But, with a large physical library comes a large digital library. If i was to have all of albums on a cloud, I can’t imagine it loading or being searchable in a reasonable amount of time on a mobile device. On a computer, maybe, but when I do home sharing from my computer to my iPhone it takes almost 2 minutes to load the whole library…and that is on a good wifi! Over 3G, or a spotty 4G? No thanks…I’ll take my iPod.

      • Max

        I also like to have my huge CD collection, but I find that I am using the physical CD’s less and less. As soon as I get a new CD, I listen to it first on a CD player, then rip it to my computer. After that it goes on my shelf, where I may very well never touch it again now that it is on my iPod. I may be the last of a dying breed, but I appreciate good CD art. I also feel more secure owning a physical copy that is backed up on my computer than only the digital one.

  • QRQD

    I personally think that a system similar to Video Game download services like Steam would be the best route to go – you have an account which stores what music you have purchased, and you can stream/download it at any time.

    The download option needs to be there though, as no-one wants to have to worry about their internet connection cutting out while they’re listening, and mobile listening is an important option to have (and don’t say wireless, it’s way too temperamental).

    • msv81

      The current incarnation of Amazon’s Cloud is exactly what you’re talking about here. I recently made some digital music purchases from the site and I got the automatic popup asking me if I would like to utilize the Cloud service. Once I hit “yes”, I realized it was a storage site that allows you to go back and download the purchased music again and again from anywhere.

      If these types of services are actually the future of music, I wholly agree with you that they need to retain an option to download the files. Vince has been going on about this shit for over a year now (if not more) and I’ve continuously argued how I still prefer having everything I want on my 160GB iPod. I’m not going to change my mind about this anyway, but I’d be a lot more open to using the Cloud if it allowed you an option to download from anywhere because THAT is convenient as all hell.

      • QRQD

        Nice. I didn’t actually know how it works because of Amazon’s annoying “US customers only” thing. A shame, since I’d much prefer to buy from Amazon than Apple, since mp3 is far more widely supported than AAC.

  • metalhead616

    I like CDs
    ;-P

  • SP420

    Sorry, my music stays safe and secure on my HDD, not some server farm 3,000 miles away. Call me paranoid but current consumer cloud services, to me, are a solution for a problem I don’t have.

  • Ulversatile

    just get an external HD.

    why put your files on someone elses server that you have no control over?

    all this cloud hype is garbage. books started disappearing off Kindles because people didnt physically own their media. the same thing could happen with your music, dont be so naive.

    i wonder if amazon donated some money to metalsucks to push this trash.

  • Vakarm

    Kudos to Amazon for stickin’ it to the record labels. However, i still believe this service would be for the casual listeners, not the serious followers. I personally like enjoy “owning” music, insofar as it’s just “possessing a copy”, be it digital or material.

    And space isn’t a problem for me. You know those giant CD cases that hold 200 cds? well i basically throw away the plastic casings and store my discs in those. It takes a fourth of the space, and i get to keep the discs AND the booklets.

    Audio buffs will always prefer vinyls too. I love vinyls.

    • CrownofWorms

      I thought this cloud thing was nothing new. I’ll continue with CD’s and Vinyl as the other half of posters on this article. I like too have cases but I’m getting off-point.

      I agree that this is basically more focused for casual music listeners(ala Radio listeners) than the demographic on this site.

  • the rob

    so can you place any file in this “cloud” ? or just one’s you purchased from amazon?

    this is a cool idea, but i still do care about having a physical copy of albums. but i use my mp3 player daily at work and what not. im using a cloud service right now with my playstation 3, which works great. so ill look into this.

  • dan

    i see 1 major problem with streaming from the cloud as my primary source and im surprised this more people dont mention this. a lot of my music listening is done while commuting to work, which i do by subway. until there is a way that i can connect to this cloud while underground, i still need personal storage i can take with me.

    • Dave

      Great point. It’s probably not for you – not yet anyways.

      This kind of thing is usage specific.. I drive in my car to commute for work, and use the Cloud Player pretty extensively.

  • Jooka Bocka

    This article makes some ridiculous statements… Completely ignores the idea of portability, iPods, etc., maybe their ability to stream will improve significantly but still, it’s nice having your files there , no loading, no need to be in a wifi hotspot like when you’re in your car with the iPod plugged into the jack, or at a party.

    Although the worlds collective internet won’t go down, mine has stopped working plenty of times because of technical problems, went a month without internet, and thank god I had all my music on my computer….

    And fuck, I love listening to records.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Matthew-Vulpes-Lagopus-Miller/1678236297 Matthew Vulpes Lagopus Miller

    Sounds awesome. Till I remember the 150 gigs worth of tunes I just lost cause my hard drive took a shit. Reminds me of why I like to own a physical copy of stuff.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Nihil-Quest/100000267200294 Nihil Quest

    It’s a matter of time until the thinking changes. I remember when I first got on the internet (on a dialup). I started to save all the pictures of my favorite bands on a hard disk. Before that I could only see them in magazines once in a few months or years so it seemed natural. Now I can only laugh. It’s hard to even believe pictures of musicians were something hard to get and precious. I’m sure the same thing may happen to music. Some of you raise some valid concerns but I’m sure time will solve them. High speed Internet will be just as accessible and reliable as phones.

  • SomeGuyFromCanada

    Great idea really. I do like the having a physical collection though as well. It’s a ritual (like someone stated above), it helps me appreciate an album more. I’m fixing up an old turntable now to starting collecting LPs as well. I also buy stuff that I like after having downloaded it for free, it’s basically my stamp of approval. Sometimes I purchase albums from iTunes too, often they come with extra goodies, and especially stuff that’s hard to find online otherwise.

    I don’t think anyone is saying you have to dump your digital collection on a cloud and get rid of your storage, that’s just retarded. I think there’s obviously still a need for offline portable music players. It’s really just a way to monetize digital music further and make it more profitable for the creators. Torrents are a useful technology that needs to be harnessed more in the mainstream. It’s very fast file transfers.

    I look forward to more companies taking a progressive approach to subscription services in the future. I’d much rather give something back if I can for the content I consume.

    PS. Amazon Cloud Canada FAIL (Why do we always get the shaft?)

  • Erek

    Some people already touched on the internet going down problem. I happen to have that problem all the time. I live in Montana, it’s not a third world country, but fuck if we can get anything above a 1mb connection unless you live inside the cities (there is just over one-million people in the entire state, so the vast majority is cow shit and blue skies, not cities).

    The “cloud” doesn’t exist here. Wi-Fi barely exists here. Vince is a douche bag who has obviously never had to deal with internet connections outside of the cable plugged directly into his ass.

    Additional problems to the “cloud” are popping up again with bandwidth caps and Fair Access Policies (see what’s happening with Bell Canada). What happens when you stream that file for a day and hit your bandwidth cap and are suddenly throttled back into the dark ages? Didn’t think of that? Yeah, I guess you didn’t, because you haven’t had to deal with it yet.

    Finally, as I’m sure has been touched on already, lots of people happen to like collecting tangible items. I love old LP’s, personally. I think they sound better — no, they don’t sound as crisp, or as clear, but their organic imperfections have an appeal to me and I would rather listen to them than digital music.

    So I guess what I mean to say is: pull your head out of your ass, maybe take a road trip outside of the mansion so you can see the rest of the world, and most importantly fuck you.

    • Beauzaque

      Exactly, bandwidth caps are going to kill this deader than dead.

  • John

    I live in a town that has a population of 10,000. There are AT&T and Verizon dead zones all over my town. The city doesn’t provide public Wi-Fi. We only have 3G on AT&T, no 4G at all. Fastest internet connection you can get is 6MB and that’s breaking the bank.

    I’m sure the Cloud is super cool if you live in New York or LA and have an iPhone 4, have a 4G contract with no dead zones, and if there’s public Wi-Fi literally everywhere.

    As for me, I’ll stick with Zune Pass to sample music, and Best Buy/online to buy the actual CD’s.

    And don’t tell me to move to a big city because I can’t stand the selfish and lazy attitude most big city people have. I like my town, I like knowing everybody, and I like working hard.

    Here’s what I have to say:
    Go to shows. Buy CD’s from the bands. Buy merch from the bands. Don’t pay Amazon or Microsoft some lump some for “all you can eat” music. Weed out these shitty bands that populate the scene.

    I love technology, but if being a musician is ever going to be a viable career choice, we gotta do things the old school way.

  • Ross

    Maybe someone can chime in here to enlighten me here, but ever since this whole cloud thing came out I’ve been skeptical for a few of the following reasons:

    1. Memory is cheaper and smaller than ever before. I can get a TB for what? $70? That’s an IMMENSE amount of space that I will probably not fill for quite some time and guess what? It’s only going to get bigger and cheaper. Why do I need the cloud? So I can access my music anywhere? Does anyone think for a second that our cell phones are NOT going to be music players?

    2. I feel like the cloud is going to lead to ISP’s CAPPING usage and charging us for extra. So basically the more we are uploading and downloading the more we’re going to have to pay. The Cloud is just giving ISP’s an excuse to cap usage and charge for overages. And the overages are going to be extensive (depending on how much they cap it) with the advent of video streaming i.e. Netflix. We’re already seeing people being capped now and you can easily go over the limit depending on how many movies you like to watch. Adding music is not going to help.

    3. What are the benefits of cloud? What makes it any safer than say having two different hard drives dedicated to media storage? (Which I currently do)

    4. Is the cloud going to be completely secure?

    I don’t forsee myself NEEDING a cloud. I like to stream movies from the internet, I can get that. But music players are small, have a ton of memory and you don’t need an internet connection to access your tunes.

    • Dave

      1. Yes, but as with most things, it’s what you are buying. $70 1TB drives are large HHDs. Cheap, yes, but they are not terribly reliable. Solid State hard drives are still very expensive – but getting cheaper. Most cell phones use micro-SD cards, which are limited to 32Gig in size right now. But certainly you can get a large amount of storage for relatively cheap.

      2. Great point. My work pays for my phone plan (unlimited data) so I hadn’t really thought about that.

      3. The benefit is access from anywhere you have an internet connection. Not having to move files around. Not losing files.

      4. As secure as making a purchase on Amazon I would think…

      I’ve been using the Cloud Player more than I thought I would… I keep some files on my phone, yes, but I’ve uploaded a few gig to the Amazon Cloud drive and access it frequently.

      Something that is getting overlooked is that the Amazon Cloud is drive space – you can store anything there.. it’s just their music player allows you to access the mp3s.

  • Fish

    Nope. In a year or two the internet will be for the elites only. No one will be able to afford to stream from a cloud as usage will be metered and to expensive for most to use the web like it is being used today. Also, I really don’t like the idea of another monthly fee for cloud storage.

    • Dave

      I checked with the other elites and we don’t want you using the clouds anyways.

      Plus, reading skillz = elite – it’s a yearly fee from Amazon, not monthly.

      • Fish

        It is a yearly fee for now……..The cost isn’t going to go down. Ans save you phony elitism for you teabagger buddies.

        • Dave

          Save your 8th grade dropout understanding of economics for the other pizza delivery guys…

          • Fish

            You need to concern yourself with your understanding.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jeremy-Burtch/697870380 Jeremy Burtch

    I’ll always work with both… digital/streams and physical. Convenience and personal preference. I like having my CD’s, LP’s, DVD’s and Blu-Ray’s on display. I’m proud of my collection. However, I’m just as into convenience and anyone else and I own equipment for digital storage and streaming for when I’m on the go or I want additional content at home. I spend a lot of time in front of the computer trolling for new music. Thanks to my XBOX 360 or my Oppo Blu-Ray Player I can stream the media I “find” from my computer through my home stereo. On the other hand, I can just as easily sit back and chill to any number of my LP’s or CD’s or SACD’s or DVD-A’s and be fully immersed in a much richer sound. I gave up not too long ago on the sound quality discussion because most just don’t care. I do, so I just care for it myself and take from the industry what they give me. As long as they provide me with both digital/streams and physical options, I’m set. My choice.

  • mo biscuits

    you compartmentalized idiot, this is all just part of the conditioning of the concept that we serfs dont get to own anything.

    • Dave

      As an elite, I’m fine with you owning nothing.

      • Giddyup

        as you post on metalsucks, there is nothing elite about you.

  • Giddyup

    http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-lost-data-2011-4

    if you dont trust the link, just google

    “Amazon’s Cloud Crash Disaster Permanently Destroyed Many Customers’ Data”

    this is why cloud computing is a bad idea. you cant rely on others to maintain your shit for you.

    metalsucks, please stop pushing the cloud