In This Issue: Cloud Technology, the Future of Digital Music?

Mike Bertino

​In case you missed it in the music section this week, writer Ezra Gale talks with industry insiders about this whole "cloud technology" issue, getting the scoop on how close we've gotten to shifting entire record collections from our closets to Internet companies. Gale writes:

"The Cloud is coming to steal my music collection!" It sounds like a bad horror movie, and yet it might be true. The common way to listen to music has changed relatively slowly over the years, from records to CDs to downloadable files, the last format being one we were supposed to stick with until we all got used to it. But the reign of the digital download may turn out to be shorter than we thought. Downloads could go the way of the forlorn CD, felled by something even more ephemeral: the cloud.

If you read Google's press releases the way some people scan box scores, you know the basics. The term is short for cloud computing, the general concept of storing and accessing data remotely rather than on your computer, phone, or hard drive. It isn't exactly new. The practice has been around for years, with "antisoftware" applications like Salesforce, and Web-based e-mail accessible from anywhere. But the extent to which the cloud is affecting the way we listen to and own -- or, perhaps more importantly, don't own -- music is just beginning to be felt.

Industry insiders disagree on whether the cloud concept will replace the downloaded file. "Labels had to deal with the disappearance of the CD, and now they're going to see the complete disappearance of the download," says David Hyman, CEO of MOG, a Berkeley-based music subscription service that relies on cloud computing. Others aren't quite so bold. "To say downloading is going to disappear is a stretch," says Neil Smith, vice president of business management at San Francisco's Rhapsody, one of the oldest music subscription services, which was launched in 2001.

Still, no one disputes that cloud computing is changing the way we listen to, access, and purchase music. "Where we go from 2010 forward is going to be very heavily driven out of the cloud," says R.J. Pittman, director of product management at Google. This means a shift from ownership to subscription, from buying individual albums or tracks to buying regular access to everything, whenever and wherever we want it.

To read the full story, click here.