Cloud Music

So now that the major players are represented with Apple's announcement today, it's clear that cloud music has yet to intersect with streaming music. All three (Amazon, Google, and Apple) require some form of ownership, either via music services or download, before you can listen to the music. True streaming services like Mog, Spotify, or Rdio don't require file ownership and do provide some downloadable content, although it goes away when you unsubscribe.

What cloud music does provide is backup offsite - it's not going to replace my RAID NAS drive at home as far as storage and redundancy, but it does mean you're not going to lose what you buy (theoretically, depending on the service). And Apple's match service does save a ton of time, although it doesn't back up files that are on iTunes. The $25/year charge theoretically helps compensate artists for stolen tracks, too. I'd want to see the accounting on that, though. Something tells me the money won't make it all the way back through some pipes.

To be fair, the only service I've used to this point is the Google music beta, and it's serviceable. For now. They did put a free Warrant track on my account when I asked for the free metal song pack, though, and that's just wrong.

Shorter me - I like the way this is going, and Apple's iCloud product has a lot to offer. But it's not all there yet.