Here we are on the eve of another Apple event. There is never a shortage of hype surrounding these, but this one may have a bit more than normal because of the possibility that it could be Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ first public gig since returning to the company following a lengthy and very serious medical leave of absence.
But it’s entirely possible that Jobs won’t be leading this event. And it’s starting to look more possible that what’s thought to be the key product, iPods with cameras, may have to be delayed. And that tablet computer seems pretty unlikely. And The Beatles on iTunes is far from a lock. In other words, there are a lot of possible ways that Apple could disappoint with this event.
But Apple doesn’t like to disappoint, it likes to surprise. And that’s why I’m holding out hope for a big one: iTunes in the cloud.
Now, the likelihood of Apple announcing this on Wednesday seems fairly small. After all, even if Apple has to delay the launch of it iPods with cameras, it will still likely announce them at the event. And it likely has a new, more social iTunes 9, and its new “Cocktail” music format ready to be announced as well. All of that would seem to be enough for what will be a relatively small event in San Francisco — especially if Jobs does take the stage.
But, as myself and others have noted before, iTunes in the cloud is inevitable.
An Expansion Of Music
When iTunes was confined solely to music on your desktop, life was good. There was a lot of talk about how subscription-based streaming services would kill the pay-to-download iTunes model, but that never happened. Instead, iTunes continued to dominate the landscape.
But things are evolving. The new hotshot in the music space is Spotify, which despite not being available in the U.S. yet, has plenty of people going gaga. The interesting thing about it is that everyone praises its user experience and being second-to-none, including yes, iTunes. Spotify has raised a ton of money, and counts some some of the major music labels as investors, and also just launched an iPhone app. As Apple is attempting to make its software more social, you had better believe they are watching the reaction to Spotify closely.
And iTunes itself is evolving. As we are likely to see on Wednesday, Apple and the music labels are pushing for these new “Cocktail” type album downloads that feature much more than just music. A key component is likely to be video, which obviously takes up a lot more space than music. That, alongside Apple’s move earlier this year to a fully iTunes Plus (DRM-free) store, has meant that the space needed to hold all of this music has been going up.
As most people have computers these days with large hard drives, they have been able to handle iTunes music on their machines without much trouble. But a push for more video — especially if it’s HD video — will mean more storage that is needed. And that’s before we get to the real keys to the iTunes in the cloud idea: Movies and television shows.
iTunes’ Video Problem
Apple has obviously been increasing its movie and television show library over the past few years. It now has a fairly robust offering, including many shows and movies in high definition (HD). But have you ever really looked at the size of those files? Anyone who has more than a few of them likely has, because you were probably forced to, as you were running out of room on your hard drive.
Let’s look at the most recent season of ABC’s show Lost. If you bought the HD Season Pass of the show on iTunes, that’s 28.2 GB of data on your hard drive. That’s one season. Of one show.
Say you also bought last season of The Office (a 30-minute show versus the hour-long Lost), that’s 19.43 GB. Those two shows alone — again, just one season of each — have nearly 50 GB of your hard drive tied up right there. Throw a few HD movies (usually 3 to 4 GB each), and maybe a few more shows and you’re going to need hundreds of gigabytes for all of these. And God forbid you want the other 4 seasons of Lost or The Office.
The way to combat this problem right now is to do what I did: Buy terabyte external hard drives. But let’s be honest, most average consumers are not going to do that. If and when they see that their entire hard drive has been eaten up by season 3 of My Name Is Earl, they’re going to be upset. It’s probably more likely that they’d simply delete the content. But should they really have to do that for content they paid for? Of course not.
Apple’s Options
That leaves Apple with two options:
1) Offer television show rentals. This is certainly something it could, and may do, but it would be a short-term fix.
2) Move iTunes fully to the cloud.
Actually, iTunes is really already is in the cloud — kind of. If you delete a piece of content from your machine, Apple will allow you to download it again (at least once). This is more or less the idea of how iTunes in the cloud would work. Rather than storing all your media locally on your machine, it would be stored on iTunes’ servers in the cloud — which again, they’re already doing.
If you bought a television show, movie or even song, you’d be able to stream it from Apple’s servers. Or, if you wanted to take it on the go, on your iPod or iPhone, you could download it and store a physical copy locally. There would be no risk in deleting content locally when you were done with it, because Apple would have a copy for you to obtain again.
Concerns
Now, this idea is so obvious that it has to be coming, right? Well, there are obviously some concerns as well. First, security. The music labels and television and movie studios would want assurances from Apple that no one could “game the system” and get access to content for free. With iTunes in the cloud, Apple would likely have to partially rework the 5 computers-at-a-time system for iTunes that it uses right now (for DRM content), but something similar would probably be intact.
The second concern would be cost. Apple undoutbedly spends a lot of money now serving music and movies over iTunes, but it’s for the most part a one-time deal, where a user pays and then downloads the content. If you introduce streaming into the mix, costs will go up. But perhaps that is part of the reason behind Apple’s new massive 500,000 sqaure foot datacenter in North Carolina — which will be one of the largest in the world.
Untenable
The fact of the matter is that any way you slice it, iTunes current model is untenable. Even if you opt to get standard definition video content from the service, we’re talking ten to a dozen gigabytes of storage needed for just one season of a television show. Movies are still over a gigabyte a piece. If you buy as much content as Apple and the studios would like you to, you’re going to fairly quickly get into the hundreds of gigabytes and then terabytes range. I should know, I’m already there.
Meanwhile, there’s a movement underway to more portable machines that feature smaller amounts of storage. Obviously, there are netbooks, but you can also be sure that Apple’s tablet device, when it comes out, will not have a terabyte of storage. And Apple itself has been starting to push faster, but smaller capacity, SSD drivers in its laptop lines.
The larger point is that while it’s great to own your own content, most customers likely do not want terabytes of data cluttering up their machines. It becomes a huge management burden. And if you get a new machine, transfers are a hassle.
There are some other short-term solutions, like the aforementioned TV show rentals, but long term, the only viable model would seem to be Apple holding all of this content for us on its servers. Streaming a huge collection of movies works beautifully right now for Netflix via its Watch Instantly service. Apple would need a download component to supplement its portable devices, but it likely can and will be done.
Months ago, there were rumors of such a service called “iTunes Replay” for iTunes 8, but nothing ever came of them. But since then, Apple has launched services like HD movie downloads — the need for such a service is only getting greater. And it will continue to.
Apple chose to use a Rolling Stones’ lyric as the tagline for this event, “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it.” Here’s to hoping that they work in another Stones’ lyric as well, “On my cloud, baby.”
masa sih gan
it’s time to cloud!
Cloud is a perfectly acceptable option for most but it won’t be for me.
As long as there’s an option to download my media whenever I want to any computer I want (as long as its authorized).
Ummmmm…… LALA lets you do both.
Looking forward to this! iTunes definitely needs an overhaul but how social will Apple be prepared to make their model. I suspect it will be small steps towards a bigger objective (reshare, Last.fm scrobbling etc)
Cloud for multimedia (i.e. large files) only works in countries that have very cheap broadband – i.e. the US. Broadband is relatively expensive in the rest of the world.
not really. first, the US is somewhere in the midrange in bandwidth cost. second, these countries are where the money’s at so it makes sense to invest.
source: http://www.dslr...2f56e0/OECD.jpg
This is stating the obvious, but it is good to see it in plain english.
What alternatives are there?
You should move to North Carolina.
It’s really the sensible move if you truly care about iTunes.
I just wonder how mobile carriers will handle this massive streaming coming from all over: You Tube, online radios, Spotify, iTunes, Facebook… than internet phones like Skype, Jajah…
Its rapidly increasing every day, mobiles are getting faster and faster and are able to stream more and more
Im paying my mobile flatrate for internet 25€ a month and Im pretty sure if I use all these services that my carrier will be in minus with me.
I would say that streaming costs plus weak batteries are main blockages which we need to overcome before reaching the position where we live on clouds
They can’t and won’t.
iTunes & Apple, Welcome to the Social.
And people were laughing at the social aspect of the Zune when it first came out… and now people are hyping the social aspect of the iTunes.
Having said, it does make sense for iTunes to go to the cloud… Spotify may have done that first, but with Apple’s power they might be able to overtake them.
how is itunes social? i tried talking to it but it didn’t respond
though the Zune marketing team recognized that “social’ technology was an emerging phenomenon, but they were very meta about it.
Instead of saying “let’s grab a beer” they say “let’s socialize”
…and “squirting” music through an adhoc wifi network ended up not being all that compelling., especially when many tracks weren’t even authorized for this.
and bragging about Wi-fi without a browser was **[self -censored]**
What about the Apple OS? I think that both an Apple OS and iTunes in the cloud would be an interesting move.
What’s Next with the Apple OS X:
http://www.loom...the-apple-os-x/
dude, i ‘m not holding it up until apple releases the iToilet
You can already search all the iTunes Appstore online (in the cloud powered by Amazon Web Services), via this new search engine.
See: http://uquery.com
There are lot of jobs in medical billing find a school to get a degree in few months more info http://bit.ly/ESUNX
This is just stupid. Try to stream a HD-Movie over a Standard 54g Wireless Connection. It’s no good… And most of us own Internet-Connections smaller than 54MBit, most of us in the range between 8 and 16 MBit.
So the Movies have to be resized and recompressed to allow them to be streamed. And then Apple could just offer mkv oder divx compressed movies at about 4-8 GB of size.
I just want the physical file on my homeserver. I don’t need to transfer them anywhere, I just plug new harddisks in (which is getting cheaper every day)
I don’t know, what this obsession with the cloud is. Why should Apple stop to offer reliable Service with Limelight and Akamai and use some techno-hype which hasn’t proven its reliability and stability yet??
I do via Netflix. It looks great, not Blu-ray great, but great.
The question is how many people in your neighborhood could do so at the same time?
It’s all sunshine and roses if only a few people per fiber node are doing it. If 1000 people in a fiber node are trying to stream HD simultaneously then you’ve got a problem.
Most people will still choose to use downloads versus the Cloud for several years to come. As has been noted by Netflix and Blockbuster people want their media. That way the have it in hand and play when they want (airplane, at the park, cabin, etc…), not just when they are connected.
This is by no means a new phenomenon either.
People have always chosen to have in hand versus out in someone elses hand until the other hand is validated and performs to their advantage. We still have a long way to go in the US (bandwidth, security, cost, cloud reliability, etc…) before that corner is turned. Reliability (i.e. EC2 outages) before it is able to support and maintain a business with 10’s of millions of iTunes customers. But, it has to start somewhere…but for now it will only help the Early Adopters. Enertaining, but a ways off! Great article though.
Right, well as I lay out, there would be an option to pull it down when you need it. I never said this would be all streaming. For Apple to continue to move its devices, it couldn’t be…yet.
This is the most cogent explanation here about why this premise is short sighted. When technology makes moving around video content as fast and ubiquitous as the current paradigm is for MP3 then you might see a move toward the cloud. But even then I highly doubt it as the greedy leeches in the content management industry will find a way to make it inconvenient as they always do.
Delay in iPod with cameras? No clues of Apple Tablet? It is really going to be a disappointing event. As event get closer the plans get changed.
Well, at last what is going to be the remainder on the day of event is ?! iTunes to the Cloud? Is this sure?
Before I make my point about the article I would like to say I HATE everyone using the word “cloud” to replace a phrase that really means something along the lines of external or 3rd party managed service.
True “cloud” technology is far different from what the mainstream or even non-mainstream media reports it to be, and what most people think it is. Its a common misconception similar to the “design for web 2.0″ misconception – where pople assume it means gradients, shadows and reflections everywhere.
Back to the article. My point is this:
1.Moving iTunes into the “cloud” i.e. allowing all your digital content to be stored and managed by Apple in its Data centre’s and accessed by users on demand does not pose as much problems for Apple in terms of storage as is it does to the existing networks that you use to access the content with respect to bandwidth. There exist very clever storage solutions which track, tag and present essentially the same content, differently to multiple users.
So having iTunes content for each of us in the “cloud” could mean that Apple does not need to change its current storage infrastructure so drastically. It simply needs a storage management solution possibly at an application layer where the content can be presented to different users i.e. streamed and made available to download. But at its very core the content will not be duplicated for every different user. (Apart form backups)
2. The issue here is bandwidth. Each time you wish to access your content, even though Apple only charges you once, you will be charged multiple times by your ISP (or this service will spawn different charging plans).
I dont know where you live and what ISP you have M.G.S, but if you can download and/or stream your content multiple times in a space of month, and not rack up an astronomical internet bill…..please tell me about it.
So you face a network infrastructure problem. I dont think AT&T or any other core network provider can accommodate your idea at present. Also, moving forward, if you want true integration of a device such as iPhone with the “cloud” and your iTunes, do you really expect the ability to be able to download/stream your content from the cloud to your device on demand? Sure it would take hours? if not days?
I dismiss your article as an idea completely at this point in time. I see apple taking baby steps and allowing you to “sync” your devices through iTunes as the way forward for the service.
This “sync” service I envision to run on your native (home pc/mac) installation of iTunes and for it to act as a server where your content is held and accessible by your other devices. Essentially iTunes becomes you media center management software of choice.
What a great idea. After they had so much success rolling out mobileme, lets push itunes up to the cloud. I’ve brought the president of AT&T, Seth here, with a fun informative video to expain why nobody can access their music or tv shows.
Hell, it’ll even kill the unconnected ipod. The device that single handedly resurrected Apple.
I’m sure Seth is happy for the huge promotion you just gave him.
Just a small footnote to my previous comment. When you move something into the cloud, as an enterprise for example, what you are doing is migrating a component of your technology to a service which is most likely 3rd party managed, in order to cut costs to your enterprise (outsourcing anyone?).
It is also very likely that the service you wish to move into the cloud (or from here on in obtain as a cloud service on demand) is not your core competency and/or not your main business stream as an enterprise i.e. not your bread and butter.
The cloud services for an enterprise is like jam (in addition to their bread and butter.) That is they compliment their primary competency and or line of business or enable them to conduct business.
Moving a component into the cloud also removes a complexity layer of both technology and management. As far as you care it is a black box. You dont care how the service comes to you as long as it does.
Alternatively if your enterprise wishes to provide a “cloud” service, that is change its route to market, that is change the way its customers buy its products…then its not really a “cloud” service is it. It may appear to be to its customers, because instead of them locally managing their content between devices, it is now done by Apple and presented via iTunes. But to Apple is it a different delivery mechanism.
So lets be very careful about “cloud” technology and the “cloud” service (or what is better termed managed service).
Also lets distinguish the “cloud” from 2 different perspectives – from the perspective of the enterprise (proving a cloud service and utilizing a cloud service), and from the perspective of the customer.
Otherwise we’re really aiding in making this the next buzz word of the information age.
iTune was already some kind of Cloud.
The large size of “season passes” to TV shows and movies isn’t as much of a problem because many people I know have portable hard drives and many more don’t have a problem buying them. It’s not a very difficult technology to get a hang of even for relative technophobes.
The positive development of massive media downloads is this will cause a large number of people to increase their bandwidth usage and hopefully put bandwidth-limiting ISPs such as Comcast in the spotlight to change their policies. I have stuck to the belief that 250 gigabytes for a media-savvy household family isn’t very much. Throw in online backup services and a Canon 5D Mark II with HD video and monthly bandwidth suddenly becomes a finite commodity that must be managed carefully.
Cloud-based streaming doesn’t make this problem any easier. Actually multiple plays of the same content will cost more bandwidth. So the question that should be asked is not if Apple will move to the cloud because of limited hard drive space on consumer computer but whether our American ISPs will allow us to move into the future with high bandwidth usage.
No. No way.
If I don’t have a copy of the file, then I don’t own it, and I’m not interested in paying-on-demand or rental/streaming.
Data “in the cloud” is data you do not own.
I have a feeling you’ll feel differently about that in 5 or so years. The difference between a physical hard drive in your house and one somewhere in the U.S. accessed via the Internet is not as wide as you imagine. You think the cloud can fail and you’ll lose you data, but at least it’s backed up there, which is more than many who keep data at home can say. Ask anyone who has ever lost a large amount of data on their home machine if they wish they had it on the cloud.
Not at all. I can trust the cloud, but I distrust the corporation behind it.
I don’t trust Apple or any other corporation to give me access to the data I’ve “bought” from them forever.
DRM was bad enough, in that they gave you the download but tried to maintain control. Now you want to not even have the download anymore? Makes no sense.
Under absolutely no circumstances will I ever pay money for data that I can not get a permanent copy of. If my data is in the cloud, then I want that cloud to be under *my* control, not the control of the company whom I’m buying the data from.
We’re really just talking about storage here, right? No fancy services (other than some access mechanism) – i agree for it to be credible, given the whole amazon taking back your 1984 book, the ‘cloud/storage’ needs to be independant – not least of which because media you buy from iTunes is unlikely to be the only thing you want to store (centralise)…
There’s value in independant storage – backed up, synched etc (i’m not affiliated with dropbox, but i love their service)
IPTV!
Well… IP streamed content intended for TV experience viewing.
IPTV is a collection of multicast (broadcasting) and unicast (video on demand) with all the complexity that only a telco could love.
We wish!!!
While I think the cloud might eventually take over the performance of the cloud to an end user is not sufficient to handle the files you say are too large for local use.
Also S3 and other cloud storage options are going to need to come down. If you get into the TB range of data in a cloud you can buy a TB hard drive every month for the price of the cloud storage. The economy of scale is just not there yet.
You would need a large deduped cloud storage solution where you aren’t charged per MB stored before. Someone like libsyn or something that only charges at a regular monthly fee instead of a per use fee.
Well obviously Apple wouldn’t use S3, they’d use their own system. But yes, costs would be an issue, as I mention. Not sure if Apple would charge for this or not. Still services like Netflix do it without charging on top of their regular fees.
Presently, Netflix is subject to the whims of a third party CDN (Limelight) so having ownership and control over that potentially variable operating cost is key.
As I was saying earlier in my stream about the movie industry freaking out about Redbox… “Wait til they are on fiber connected backbones”.
This is a good idea for iTunes. The Amazon Video on demand service already offers viewing “on the cloud” or downloading capabilities.
http://www.amaz...p;node=16261631
As I buy most of my music from iTunes, it is an obvious choice to be used as a media player in the living room. The key issue I have with iTunes is that it has not been designed to be viewed from a TV in a living room. It is not optimized to be viewed from any distance over a meter or so. Text size even on large size is simply too small. The iTunes store font size is ridiculously small to be used with TV.
http://mymediae...ty-with-itunes/
Cloud is good. A good example of how this could work, although there are huge differences in file sizes, is how Amazon handles Kindle content.
It is stored locally on my Kindle 2 when I want to read it but if I’m done with it I can “delete it” which will remove it from using up storage on my Kindle but it does not prevent me from accessing it. If I want to read it again I simply select it again from my content list and it will be downloaded again.
The best part is that if my device is lost, stolen, or destroyed I can purchase another and have all my content readily available to download again…not just one time like itunes which is stupid.
If Apple would adopt a similar model it would be a huge bonus for the consumer.
My guess is that they will change the name of itunes because it is no longer tunes..now it is tunes, videos, and apps. They will probably change the name to iMedia or something like that
So long local storage. This remians me of the time when people kept cash at home under a tile, unsure about banks. Eventually we needed so much space and it was so much easier to loose it (getting it stolen) that we now use banks for all our money except some cash from unclear origins.
The same is happening with data. It so much more likelly that your ever expanding personal HD will crash that it makes much more sense to have other professional store it in the cloud, always available, always secure. At the end we only need a small local storage for times when we’re offline (less likelly every day) or for those few pieces of content from unclear origins.
Bye, bye local storage!
the pay per download model is dead. itunes, i hope you like your dirt nap.
Why not just use Zumo drive ????
Cloud is really bad ass.
Storage is and will continue to be much cheaper and more plentiful than bandwidth. Your case here seems to ignore that fact. Read Jim Gray.
so, kinda like the zune pass?
Call it the editor in me, but I counted 2 typos/grammatical errors in this article. Is TechCrunch hiring web editors? If so: http://www.link...om/in/markattew
Apple will never do this. For the simple reason that they don’t make (large amounts of) money from iTunes.
iTunes music is a side-business for the core business of iPods and iPhones. The only reason they are in the iTunes (or App Store, for that matter) business is because it sells (and creates a moat around) more iPods and iPhones.
Apple is not in the business of doing what customers (esp. advanced customers like you) want to do. They are in the business of building in features that they control.
Case in point — iWork.com — their idea of putting productivity apps on the web is to tie them in incredibly tightly with their iWork product, to the point that they are completely useless without the iWork app.
Sorry, if you’re looking for Apple to lead the cloud revolution, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
it’s about time, when are they gonna wake up?
Ifthis was done for tomorow. It would be for iTunes 9.now would that be a brilliant name for apple iTunes 9 on cloud 9
Maybe you’re right.
iTunes in the cloud makes sense when you take in account that the 40 GB version av Apple-TV ships in 1-2 weeks. Maybe they are going to offer an cheap box for just downloading!
So after the orwellian experience with the Kindle, people are still eager to surrender control to a remote server managed by a giant corporation?
Be my guest.
I suppose it’s to be expected of a population happy to post terabytes of personal information on social networks while at the same time fretting about government and corporate intrusion in their private lives.
“Shear me! Shear me!” bleat the sheep.
Umm MG -
Apple doesn’t have the “rights” to stream full length tracks from the Cloud. The labels know that if in fact they give Apple the rights to stream that they have effectively given Apple the keys to the house AND the bedroom.
Now, of course if they do NOT, what is the alternative
The BIG conversation that NO ONE is having is that the future of iTunes is DEPENDENT on the Cloud and the future of the Music Industry CANNOT be dependent on a single third party retailer.
Hit me if you would like to have that conversation.
G
This is horrible in my opinion. Imagine the amount of bandwidth YouTube uses (of the world’s infrastructure). Now multiply that by 100, because full length movies take up 100x as much bandwidth for the same amount of minutes of viewing, because they are higher quality.
There has to at least be some strong caching. Which is your favorite movies basically.
Seriously, the amount of energy wasted in the entire world on streaming MOVIES back and forth between endpoints, is in my opinion huge compared to what we are wasting now on, say, a google search. Why not STORE them locally? People ahve been doing just fine storing movies in their homes and it hasn’t been such a huge hassle. This is going to put a serious strain on our internet infrastructure, and I doubt even Apple’s datacenter will be able to easily stream 100 terabytes per second.
Correct me if I’m wrong but technically speaking doesn’t Apple only need to store one copy of each file in it’s infrastructure. Wouldn’t it be highly inefficient to have a copy of a season of Lost for every customer who bought it? Couldn’t they just all access the one file and essentially share it?
Sure but in terms of energy consumption and resources, it’s really a huge unnecessary drain of resources to stream EVERY TIME. I mean re-downloading is fine, but encouraging abuse of a pipeline which is 100x larger than any site has today, is just putting a bigger strain on our internet infrastructure. Are we ready for it? I guess Apple can push the envelope.
And anyway, I’d like to cache the movies on my computer, so if I’m not connected to the ‘net, I can still watch them.
Wow, 50 words in your second sentence. What kind of storage does techcrunch use to store sentences like that?