Music is a great use-case for keeping data in the cloud. You can have a consistent music library and can use any player client-side. Personally I prefer the spotify "all-you-can-listen" model, but I have a bunch of MP3s that aren't on spotify that I seamlessly stream from dropbox (either to winamp or the spotify client, which allows you to sync local files).
Off the top of my head: You tie your data to one provider instead of simply physical media, you lose discoverability (will your kids browse your album choices 30 years from now?), exporting/importing quality is at the mercy of the provider (for example Amazon dropped several dozen mp3s when I migrated a few gigs to Google), and of course you place your data at the mercy of a business, (is any tech company eternal and/or always interested in providing cloud services?)
The cloud is way overdone, after giving a variety of services a go over the last few years, I'm actually pulling back.
I'm also an Rdio and Netflix subscriber, but running Plex on my server allows me to 'roll my own Netflix' and stream movies and music to my iPad or other computers, or even from my server to any computer in the web browser. I'm happy.
https://github.com/ampache/ampache
https://web.archive.org/web/20130302160313/http://ampache.or...
https://web.archive.org/web/20130306044144/http://ampache.or...
Within the last year the project ditched their website in favor of just using github. However, strangely they didn't migrate any the content from their website to it.
Ugh.. lost me. I don't run Java anything anymore.
There's no reason that The Cloud and Owning Your Files has to be a binary choice. The Cloud can be a great compliment to your local file storage, rather than a replacement for it.
Another example: store your music in Dropbox, which clones it to all your devices (where applicable), and then use Tunebox (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tunebox-dropbox-music-player...) as your frontend. Now you have a 'cloud' music service where you control the content, someone else handles the distribution, and everything is cloned locally on all your machines (for your other players to use). Then you can trivially back up your music files from Dropbox to a local backup (or a third-party backup service if all you want is some form of company-independent redundancy.
[1]: http://owncloud.org
Also with music, I point blank refuse to let music turn into a subscription based service. I still buy CDs when something agrees with my ears and listen to them.
I also quite happily transcribe things to sheet music and play it breaking many a royalty and public performance law. Fuck 'em.
physical media has enormous problems for anything besides long term archival use.
I'm also glad my music is on physical media every time I don't have to pay insane rates for a couple hours of wifi on a flight just to listen to my music, or when I'm killing time somewhere where cell service is spotty at best.
I don't yet live in the future where access to the cloud is a given, and I prefer my devices don't become completely useless without a data connection.
Edit: My primary physical media isn't a pile of CDs—I have plenty of those too, but stopped carrying them the moment I got an MP3 player. Now I carry almost my entire collection on my phone and a whole lot more than that on my laptop. I see nothing wrong with having copies of things in the cloud (remote backup FTW), but I'm not about to take a shotgun to my local disks.
for those of us that consider music as art that is precisely the point, especially re: children browsing their parents collections
Instead, diversify and maintain. I use iTunes Match, Google Music and keep everything locally as well as a backup on my server. It all happens automatically when music is added to the local library. Nothing is lost, and redundant access is gained.
Yes, but ideally, when it's your cloud. Just because all these major cloud players can just stop their service on their whim.
If you are concerned with minimizing monetary loss rather than preserving working copies of your media [1] you can treat that as an argument for choosing a media provider that allows you to pay a monthly fee. If (when) their service gets discontinued you switch to another one; the only problem you would face is migrating your favorites, bookmark, playlists and the like [2].
[1] Which makes sense when the specific things you want to access (watch, listen to, read, play, etc.) are not rare and can be found elsewhere.
[2] Incidentally, this is something you could offer as SaaS. Edit: See http://resp.in/, http://www.getunify.com/, the FOSS project https://github.com/mauimauer/portify, etc.
I don't think this is a good strategy, you are putting yourself at the mercy of content license negotiations that are done by a bunch of idiots with their heads up their asses that you have absolutely no control over. There is no guarantee that the music you "rent" from one service will be available for you to "rent" on another service.
Since when? For start it drains battery much faster. Oh and you know, it does not work offline!
Until network will be more reliable and faster than my hdd, there is not much to discus.
