I'll try anything if it's free. Which may be why I have one album on Amazon music, a thousand or so songs on Google Music and all of my music collection on iTunes.
This all started years ago, in the dark now forgotten times before the iPhone was released, with an iPod, a white one, that could hold 32 gigs of music. It didn't take me long to realize this thing was amazing and the future. I took hundreds of CDs, downloaded them to my computer and I was off.
Eventually I sold the CDs to FYE and felt somewhat secure with my music on two separate hard drives. Secure enough I suppose. Well, sometimes I wake up with cold sweats because a lightning strike could destroy thousands of dollars worth of music.
So that brings us to this spring when everyone realized that music should be stored on the Internet and accessed from multiple devices, iPhones, iPads, Google pads, droids and I assume, 5 years from now Windows Phone 12.
Anyway, I tried the Amazon service first uploaded one album saw that it was going to take an hour or so each album and said, "ta heck with this."
Google music came out next. The service can run in the background of your computer while you are doing other things. First, Heaven help you if you want to do something else with your internet connection, Netflix comes to mind, while this thing is running. Second, I ran it for the better part of a week all day and all night and only got 1,000 or so songs up to the cloud.
That's just no good.
Google, buddies, I hate the music cartels too but either make a deal or take them to court over this. I think you have a good case against a group of companies that believe they still own my music even after I bought it. But until you fix this it's just not worth it to spend what I guesstimate will be two months to get my songs to the cloud.
That brings us to iCloud. First, even though iCloud isn't released until the fall you can already do iCloud stuff with purchased music. I checked my phone and found that I could see and download stuff I bought from the Apple servers for free.
It felt great to get something I wanted without having to plug a cord into my phone's butt. It still took some time. It's not instant, think of it as downloading a song, or an album or a video you just bought from iTunes to your phone. But its minutes not hours.
Apple says that in the fall they will put all (ALL?) your music on iCloud for $25 a year. They made a deal with the cartels and they say they will be able to do it instantly.
One of my friends said they don't want to pay to do something with their own music that should be free. My response is that's pretty cheap and if I have a secure way to host my music forever (or for the next 10 years till someone builds a better mouse trap) and an easy way to send it to any Apple device I own then I'm in.
There are a couple of other caveats. For the most part iCloud is vaporware. It hasn't been released so who knows if it will work or if it will work well. I'm hoping for the best.
Second, and this is way more important than it seems, I can't find the delete button. When you download music, music videos or whatever to a device, that music takes up space on the device hard drive. Right now, I can delete apps, photos and videos off my phone without plugging my phone into a computer. But I can't do that with music, music videos, podcasts or other iTunes stuff. That means I'll still have to plug in the phone when I want to get rid of old music to make room for new music. Or at least, if I can delete music from the phone I don't know how to do it. If you know how to do this please send it to me on Twitter @sbradycalhoun.
Finally, and my friends at Techdirt already ranted about this earlier this week no you cannot use iCloud with other devices made by other companies. Hello Link.
I see the point in the rant. I mean I would love to live in a world where my XBox, Apple TV, Direct TV DVR and my someday to be purchased iPad all work together easily. And, of course, I'd like to live in a world where people who want to switch back and forth between droids, windows phones and iPhones can move everything around with ease.
But I doubt that will ever happen for the same reason that I will never be able to go to Burger King and get a Big Mac. These people are fierce competitors. They want you to buy all of their devices because they want to make money. Apple makes money when you buy their devices and services. Google gives you free stuff cause they make money by tracking your behavior and selling it to advertisers (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Currently, I'm drinking the Apple-aid. Most things I have owned from them work and work well. But I like my g-mail account and I like Google docs I just don't like them enough to keep them when I move into the iCloud.
