Dave On Cloud Music

For most of my life I’ve been somewhat reactionary to change.  Unless of course, it was in my pocket.  Yet, when it did come around I was oddly quick to accept it once it had taken place, and in some instances, even embrace it.  But still, I have to be convinced that whatever this change brought about would be a substantial improvement on whatever it was replacing.  Questions like, “would I benefit from this?”  “Would I be worse off under this?”  “Is this going to suck?” all get tossed around hastily between the elves in my head like a game of pass the parcel at a nuclear materials handling facility.

One form of change I found myself most ready to accept pertained to media storage formats like VHS and DVD, Cassette and CD, et cetera, et cetera.  I loved the superior fidelity of the CD over the cassette, and I especially loved how a well-maintained DVD would never degrade like the awful VHS video tape inevitably did. I also loved how the skip functions on a CD player saved you from fast forwarding or rewinding in order to skip the rubbish songs.  And of course, there was MP3 – no more carting around discs to play whenever you were out and about – and the fact that I could cart around thousands of songs in my pocket to listen to whenever I pleased made me more excited than a bonobo on speed.  And the zero spin up time associated with digital files also made me as excited as the aforementioned bonobo if it had ADHD to boot.

In recent years, there has been a trend within the technology sector of shifting toward an internet-based technology known as cloud computing, where data is stored remotely on hard drives in ‘server farms’ around the world, rather than being stored on a local device such as a PC or smartphone.  The ultimate aim, as seen by many, was to replace local storage entirely.  Everything you did would be stored in the ‘cloud’, from word documents to photos, to music and movies purchased online, which meant such files could be readily shared and distributed between all devices you had registered with the service provider.

Now, I was initially rather hostile to such a proposition.  I much preferred my data to be stored on my own devices, backed up on my own discs and storage mediums, with me in complete control.  In fact, I still do.  And I have a few good reasons why.  Firstly, the reliability of internet services is still not as consistent and reliable as the electricity supply.  Secondly, the internet is not particularly well known for its security.  Hackers are constantly hacking into computer systems somewhere in the world and there is an ever increasing list of malware programs ready to infect your computer or computing device and turn it into one of the world’s most expensive bricks, rendering it about as useful and practical as a pedal-powered wheelchair.  And thirdly, how long your data remains stored in the cloud all depended on things such as the long-term operational viability of the cloud service provider, and whether the CEO has a penchant for ‘taking the company in a radical new direction’ every few days or so.

One particular cloud concept that initially had me worried was the idea of online music streaming services such as Spotify.  Many tech writers speculated that this would indeed be the future of music – no more CDs or locally stored MP3s; everything was in the cloud and streamed directly to the user’s devices.  And there were plenty of things to worry about as well, such as the finite data limit on my broadband internet connection, the reliability of this internet connection and the fact that I would never be able to buy a recording with any tangible, physical value.  To music buffs like me, an album is not just a recording, it is a physical product with material meaning.  The packaging completed the recording that was on it.  And anybody who did not concur with this position would be flogged with a gunny sack full of hot scones and ostracized to a faraway land to be bullied by spider monkeys.

And whilst I still live in hope that physical albums will continue to be sold in stores until I drop dead, I wouldn’t entirely pooh-pooh the idea of online music streaming either, because it enables me to listen to albums in their entirety before I buy them.  And it also provides me with an almost endless supply of material to review for my music blog (which, for those who are curious, can be found at davebilling.blogspot.com).  So, as long as online music streaming services remain more supplemental and less substitutional, I shall remain relatively content to make use of such services in addition to the ‘old-fashioned’ local storage method that I have treasured dearly since 2005, as well as the even older fashioned direct CD playback method that I’ve indulged in since 1995.  But I’m buggered if I’ll ever go back to those lousy cassette tapes, with their tendencies to commit suicide by being eaten by poorly made tape decks, and their Edison era sound quality.  Stuff that.