# the cloud



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Anyone using "cloud storage" for their music yet? It's available through Amazon.com, Itunes and Google. 

It's not available in Korea yet, so I'm not up on the details. 

I've been looking forward to this development for a couple of years. We're at a kind of singularity point, where from now on "owning" and "purchasing" music (and books) will cease to be a matter of possessing a physical entity. Bookshelves and CD towers will go the way of typewriters - antiquarian curiosities for quirky collectors. 

There will long be a nostalgia for the days of paper liner notes and so on, but to me this is an almost unambiguously good thing. No more worrying about the physical objects: your collection won't be destroyed if your basement floods (happened to a friend of mine), no more disks to scratch, nothing to lose or break or be stolen, etc... 

Usually I'm not an early adopter of new technologies - I actually take some pride in letting other spend big money on new gadgets that will turn out to have bugs, while I buy cheap old things that work just fine. In this case though, I think I'll be among the early adopters when it comes to Korea. 

But it could well have rocky beginnings, so I'm curious to know about people's experiences with it.


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## Almaviva (Aug 13, 2010)

Yes, I have started using it, and have uploaded lots of opera music which now I can access from my Internet-capable TV.


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## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

I've used it a little, but I don't know how to use it for stuff other than MP3's I download from Amazon, which basically means my only stuff on there are a couple of pop albums and a few comedy albums...I'd like to learn more about it, this seems like a pretty great thing.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

It will be of little use to me unless I can access it while walking to the train. Maybe you can -- I don't know that much about it. Are you able to bookmark your place in an audiobook for instance?


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## Lenfer (Aug 15, 2011)

How do you do *Science*? I am not using the "cloud" for storage yet and I hope I never have to. It may just be that I have read one too many dystopian novels but I would never trust anyone else with my one and only copy of my music or books for that matter. Cloud storage allows things to be easily or mistakenly deleted. Digital Rights Managment (DRM) and Copyright laws already stop people from usisng their music how they please.

I fear with cloud storage will make it possiblie for complete works to be censored if not erased from living memory. I realize this debate was probably not what you had envisioned when starting this thread. I'm sorry if my raving like a mad loon as cast tall shadow over your thread.

The "other" reason I don't use cloud storage is that I live in an aera with poor wifi coverege.


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## itywltmt (May 29, 2011)

The cloud has its pros and cons. Here in Canada, most of our ISP's have download ceilings in the 10's of GB per month, with substantial costs associated with exceeding them This means that a good collection being sync'ed and downloaded off the cloud could have significant costs associated with it...

I myself invested in an external terabyte hard drive, and use it religiously to back-up my collection. That, rrather than teh Cloud, is my fail safe and sync mechanism.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I've been using the cloud for all kinds of files for quite a while now.

With regards to music, rather than bother with putting all my own MP3 files in the cloud, I've gone a slightly different route by purchasing a Spotify subscription. With that, the Spotify library is essentially my cloud-based music collection. It has most of my CDs anyway, so I just download everything from there onto my PC and mobile.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

Bleh. I keep most of my music losslessly compressed (FLAC) for archival purposes, so keeping it on cloud storage would not be a good idea for me. 70+ GB does not upload/download easily. Much better to keep it on my own hard drive.


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