Cloud music and double dipping

The appointed time has come, so why isn’t everyone stomping their feet and screaming out at the top of their lungs about the evils of the recording industry and how we’re handing them the end game without batting an eyelash?

Ever since the first MP3s were distributed the Internet in the late 90s on IRC and eventually into the mainstream with Napster, the main cry against DRM and the music industry’s continual lobbying for more power over the Internet was, “the RIAA won’t be happy until we have to pay every time we listen to a song!” Now, we’re practically there. While we aren’t paying per listen, and I doubt we ever will as long as there is such a thing as personal property (and we can still buy CDs through Amazon and Best Buy), “enhanced cloud services” are probably the closest thing we’ll get to paying the recording industry each time we hear music. We’re paying the music industry a recurring fee to listen to our already purchased music through the cloud.

It would be one thing if we were just paying Apple for the service of storing and streaming (as the regular cloud-based music lockers with Google and Amazon), but Apple has made a deal with the labels that pays them money to allow the service to exist. Apple has negotiated concessions like exchanging lower quality files with higher, and likely will substitute various quality AAC to facilitate streaming to 3G devices – playing a 256kbps or a 128kbps AAC makes a big difference if you’re AT&T’s network.

Why the industry isn’t trying to jump on board faster, I don’t know. Its a huge no-risk, all-reward opportunity. People who already have pirated music are still listening to those tracks now, at home and on their iDevices, while people who legitimately pay for music are going to pay again to store that same music in the cloud. As far as cloud music services go, fighting piracy is really an orthogonal issue – cloud services wont make pirated material any more or less attractive.

But for the rest of us, it amounts to paying a tithe to the record industry for the privilege to listen to music we already own. At least its not forced on us.. yet. Another 10 years and ubiquitous high speed Internet could leave us with no downloads of any kind – everything always in the cloud.

Way OT: Scott Pilgrim Movie Timeline

This is really really really off topic. But I was really bored tonight and without a car.
So I determined the movie version of Scott Pilgrim takes place over at least three weeks (from late March until the third week of April). There are two distinct Fridays mentioned in the movie – Julie’s party and the concert where Sex Bob-omb opens for The Clash at Demonhead. Then after that, the next firm day of the week found in the movie is Thursday (from the AMP v AMP poster against the Katayanagi twins), so thats at least 20 days. Plus the days before Julie’s party. The shortest time span is March 30-April 21, with slightly longer timespans possible.

***

Earlier in the week:
Hanging out at Stephen Still’s house, band practice

Next day:
Hang out with Knives after her school day is over – arcade, thrift shop, music store, Scott’s house (outside)
Ramona dream

Next day: (this might be Friday, just earlier in the day)
Library
See Ramona
Band practice

Friday April 1, 2005 *
Julie’s party
Scott talks to Ramona

Saturday:
Email from Patel
Scott orders amazon movies
Hanging out with Knives again

Saturday or Sunday afternoon:
Band practice

Tuesday:
Amazon delivery
Date with Ramona

Wednesday morning:
Wake up with Ramona, invite her to Rockit “tonight”

Wednesday:
Rockit concert
Fight with Patel
Spent night with Ramona (“first and a half base”)

Thursday April 7 *
Break up with Knives
Band practice
Dinner with Ramona
Fight with Lucas Lee

(nearly a week goes by)

Wednesday
Envy calls
Knives shows up
Encounter with Roxy
Coffee shop – encounter with Envy, Ramona

Thursday April 14th *
Wake up with Walace, Other Scott, Jimmy
Band practice

Friday
Open for Clash At Demonhead
Fight with Todd Ingram

Late Friday night
Pizza pizza
After party
Fight with Roxy
Fight with Ramona

Tuesday [note: not shown in movie, mentioned by Stephen on Thursday, April 14]
2nd round of the TIBB, presumably Sex Bob-omb wins

Sometime between Saturday and Thursday
Band practice

Thursday April 21st **
Concert/battle Katayanagi twins

Later that night (????)
Gideon battle

* Dates extrapolated from the only hard date in the movie, see **

** This is the only hard date in the movie – on the AMP v AMP poster, the date says Thursday, April 21st, 10:00PM Sharp – FWIW, the two closest years with a Thursday April 21st are 2005 and 2011. Every other date is calculated from this poster

***

I have too much fucking time on my hands.

[Update 1: added 2nd round of TIBB]