Music Ventures: cloud computing locker services psonar social features streaming music
by Rob
The online music locker service and more - Psonar
If you’re looking for a place online to store and stream your music from why not give Psonar a try? I will admit up front that it’s built mainly by a few of my friends so I may be a little biased but I’ve been using the service for while and I think it’s really quite good.
Psonar are in the business of storing your music on the Cloud, that way it’s backed up - no dropping your iPod in the sea on holiday can destroy your music, all you have to do is log back in and download it - so that’s the basic locker service covered. There’s also streaming so you can listen anywhere, this even works on mobile devices which is very cool. The search features are getting there so you can find other music that’s in the cloud that you might like and finally there will be social features so that you can share music with your friends and others.
It’s still at quite an early stage but most of the core technology is there and they just need people to use it in force so that they can tune the interfaces and make sure they are building exactly what people want, why not give them a try? It’s a chance to really influence how the system works. It doesn’t take two minutes to signup and get started - the more music they have in the cloud the better the service becomes.
Good Hunting
I agree that the iPod example isn’t that good but when these services really come into their own is when your music collection is partitioned across several devices, where most of your music is on your computer and you have a subset plus a few extras on your mp3 player and yet more on your phone, add to this office computers, netbooks, second computers and maybe even second homes. When you have all these different devices services like Psonar where you can move music about come into their own - not only is it safe but it’s transferable.
The subscription based services miss a vital point that is the reason that I haven’t used them as such, ownership - I want to own the music that I’m using. Yes it’s cool to listen to a few things that someone else has and if I like it (and can afford it!) I’ll buy it. It’s like lending someone a CD.
When your music is in the cloud then you can do what you like with it - it’s your music. With services that actually store your music rather than give you access to music you can download and use it when you want rather than having to be online all the time. Spotify had a tough time at the start getting people to subscribe to this model and some recent research has shown that people still want to ‘own’ their music.
I’n not convinced. I agree with the owning music thing, but I don’t really see how that helps the cloud argument. For starters, the service allows you to search for others’ music you may like digitally anyway - which is going to be limited to however many users are using the system and have uploaded music pubically, and also hampered by user’s spelling different songs differently - how will it know Mariah Carey, Mariah Carie, MariahCarey and Maria Carey are actually the same artist?
With Spotify you can actually download a playlist at a touch of a button (with a subscription) so your music will keep playing when you are in that tunnel or completely offline. For example, if I am working on my work laptop on the train, I have all the music from my playlist available and next time I am connected to the net it will check that playlist is up to date and download any new files to my local machine. Same with the iPhone/Android version.
I’m not convinced about the legalities of Psonar - what do the music industry think of it? Not to mention the average Joe doesn’t even know what a ‘cloud’ is - they would need educating or the product would need some form of re-marketing depending on whether Psonar are aiming for the mainstream.
The main use I can see Psonar being abused for is storing someone’s illegal downloaded music - if someone has 10,000 MP3s they could stick it on the cloud and strictly speaking they wouldn’t have them illegally downloaded on their computer anymore. But then where does the law sit on this? Does Psonar become liable? And is this really a good business model?
Disclaimer: I work for Psonar (although opinions expressed are my own).
There is a lot of hype about streaming services at the moment, but I think music ownership is here to stay.
Apart from anything else, Spotify and last.fm can’t stream anything without the label’s permission, meaning there will always be holes in their catalogue. If Spotify have 90% of the music you like, this might be enough to justify buying a subscription but it isn’t enough to persuade you to throw your CDs away. If you keep just the CDs that you need to plug the holes in their catalogue, you’re faced with the fact that you can’t play your music in their player or their music in your player, so you have to swap between applications all the time.
On the legal side, Psonar is committed to protecting the rights of the copyright owners. People could upload illegally-downloaded music to our service, but this won’t make the music available to anyone else, and won’t absolve them of responsibility for having pirated them in the first place. As far as I know there is no such thing as a 5-download limit in law: Apple’s original FairPlay DRM used to enforce such limits, but that was an arbitrary choice made by Apple to demonstrate compliance with the spirit of the law.
One aspect Rob hasn’t said much about is the social networking side: Psonar aims to provide social tools for discovering (and purchasing) music in other people’s collections, and talking with like-minded people.
Dealing with misspellings and alternative names is an additional technical challenge, but perfectly achievable in practice. Last.fm is notoriously bad at this, and it doesn’t seem to have done them much harm.
Thanks for your response Tim. Maybe I’m not understanding the business model correctly.
My understanding is that I would buy a CD, upload it to Psonar, and then other people would be able to buy it off of you? Presumably when I buy it off you, you give the music industry some percentage?
What happens if a user edits the track before upload? Would an artist be particularly happy if I rapped swear words on top of their song?
How do you compare MP3 A has been legitimatly purchased against MP3 B? The system you have for stopping illegal uploading and reselling is going to have to be robust, including manual moderation. What’s to stop me saying this MP3 is my band when it’s actually the Kaiser Chiefs? 4 guys from Sweden were fined £2.4m and given 1 year in jail just for hosting the links to other people providing the files. You guys are hosting the files too.
There’s a reason why only 90% of music is available on these services - the music industry doesn’t want people to have the other music digitally. As soon as you start including them (which let’s face it, you will have to for royalties) they are going to want greater control - in terms of quality, price and what’s available. I can’t see Apple suddendly deciding it’s ok for you to start selling The Beatles album I’ve uploaded for example.
Last.fm may be poor at title renaming, but it was also one of the first of these sorts of services. Now it’s popularity means it doesn’t matter so much about these basic issues.
Perhaps I’m missing something? I guess, all I’m saying is I don’t see where the market is for another way for getting music in a world of iTunes and Spotify, and I’m not sure where the law lies either.
But I have to presume that you’ve done your market analysis and that you’ve spoken to your lawyer and the relative people in the music industry about this - so good luck! I’m all for up and coming ideas!
Couple of points of clarification for Andi Smith:
1. Labels are not getting enough margin out of Spotfiy, We7 etc - speculation at MIDEM (the industry trade show) last month was that one or more of them will fold. Track downloads are much more profitable than streaming (especially if the latter is free and ad-supported).
2. Labels see legal action against pirates (Pirate Bay prison sentences in Sweden and UK/French proposals on “3 strikes and you’re out”) as more effective than encouraging streaming as an alternative.
3. Psonar sells music using standard digital distribution. If the track is not available that way, then we offer physical CDs - we can’t sell rights we don’t have access to.
Hope these help fill in some of the gaps!
Martin
I’m a user of mp3tunes - only because I’ve spent a long time getting my music on my PC, and it pretty much is my only copy. I like mp3tunes because it is cheap, and it can stream to my android phone.
However, sorry to put a downer on psonar, it looks like a fab site, but I’m not sure about the pricing on psonar (well, clearly not the free version, but that comparison version for features) - mp3tunes was boarder line too much (I’ll explain in a mo), psonar is more expensive for a non established service… I said mp3tunes was borderline, to be 100% honest I’m not uploading for streaming (added bonus), I’m uploading for backup - why not pay for dropbox instead and then I can backup everything I have as well. I’m sure it won’t be long before some clever sod links in a music streaming app to the dropbox api (at worst, I can install the mobile app, and select a directory to download).
There is even a music locker service on 7digital, so everything I buy online from them, I can get again if I need it.
I agree with Andi, if I want music on the go, I’m happy with spotify & last.fm - I’ll even do with normal radio - I can get most of my music off spotify, and at the end of the day, I still have my mobile mp3 player (streaming doesn’t work on the london underground, dodgey on the go, etc.)
However, if psnoar was to embrace the huge social networking area that is becoming prominent, it could be onto something….
Hi James,
I’m glad you pointed out about the social component - it’s one of the key pieces of Psonar over and above the basic locker/manage your music across all your devices/streaming anywhere.
We have some great ideas which don’t exist anywhere else on the web and plan to make psonar the most powerful place for on the web for social music/discovery.
Watch this space…
Richard
An interesting idea, but I’m not convinced it’ll ever become big. The industry has changed and this idea seems really outdated.
Let’s start with the idea of dropping your iPod in the sea. To get music on to your iPod, you have to have a computer to install it from. Chances of both the computer and the iPod being destroyed in the same instance are slim.
But we’re moving in to a world where people don’t necessarily own music anymore. With the advent of services such as Last.fm and Spotify streaming music on an ad or subscription based model coupled with the use of cheap 3G packages and WiFi available on mobile phones, I can create a music playlist and access it anywhere - phone, music player or PC without having to even consider transfering the music once.
I make a playlist at home, it’s already available on a different PC for playing as soon as I get in to work. I can send my playlist to my friend and all they have to do is click a link.
The music industry is going to push for these subscription based services more and more as it is reducing piracy more than any previous purchasing model - so many people I know who previously illegally downloaded MP3s are actually paying for services like Spotify. What’s more these services are now beginning to make a profit in most markets.
The idea of a service in the cloud where you can download music to somewhere again and again means you would quickly use all of your 5 or so legal licenses granted when purchasing a track. And while it may be good for start-up bands releasing their tracks, that’s not where the audience will be - that’s what mySpace is for.
Maybe I’m missing something, but to me Psonar seems like something that would have been a good idea a few years ago, yet already seems really outdated thanks to the direction the music industry is currently taking.