The World According To Carp

Music streaming versus downloads?

I think a lot about the future of online music lately. This morning I read this piece in Wired about Google’s supposed and suggested music strategy which basically states that going into the cloud with our music will solve a number of problems related to keeping files locally on your computer:

“But we’re approaching a major inflection point in the short history of digital music, a time when we stop administering our own music collections on local hard drives, and instead build them online, where they can be accessed on a multitude of connected devices — smartphones, netbooks, tablets, computers, televisions, bookshelf systems and cars — without the tedium of managing each and every file transfer by hand.”

Confront that vision with this one by Cory Doctorrow:

“People will go on using streaming services, of course. They may even pay for them. But people will also go on downloading.”

Cory then goes on to describe a number of arguments in support of his view. On one side, he claims that people are collectors - think Seth Godin’s souvenir theory: “People love souvenirs… a souvenir reminds them of the idea they’ve already been sold on.” - and on the other hand he mentions a number of technical issues that aren’t going to be solved in the near future like spectrum scarcity, coverage issues, and DRM.

I also believe in Cory’s vision that it’s going to be a combination of ways to enjoy music: locally and over the Net. What do you think?