Wireless networks and music services were thought to be converging to create cloud-based music services, allowing us to access whatever media we want within seconds from anywhere. That day is further off, now that AT&T has ceased selling unlimited data plans for smartphones and Apple iPads and implemented monthly data limits: 200 MB for $15 or 2 GB for $25, expandable for $10 per gigabyte.
As apps conceived with the iPhone in mind -- especially data-hungry music, video and magazine services -- migrate to other platforms, unlimited wireless data plans could become a thing of the past for all but enterprise users whose plans are covered by (and subject to) corporate policy. Sure, there are hot spots all over the place, but being mobile isn't just not being home, it's actually being in motion -- and unless your plane, train or automobile has Wi-Fi, you'll be relying on 3G.
Paying $15 per month for wireless data provides just over seven hours of cloud-based music, even considering the highly compressed audio codecs used by mobile streaming services. It's probably not enough for a single week of commuting -- and that's assuming that you do nothing else with your wireless data plan. Add video, magazines, web surfing, apps and e-mail to the mix, and the dream of accessing any song from anywhere remains exactly that, even with the more generous $30 per month plan.
Music services typically charge $10 per month so that they can cover licensing fees, and $40 per month is too much to pay for music in the cloud. The vast majority of us already refuse to pony up $5 per month for web-only unlimited music or $10 for unlimited mobile music services (Rhapsody, Napster, MOG, mSpot, etc.).
Smartphones and tablets don't need digital rights management -- they are DRM.Many of us have no need to exceed AT&T's data limits today -- but that's because most of us don't use cloud-based music or media services. In addition, data-intensive digital magazines such as Wired magazine's first edition, which would consume about a quarter of a $15/month user's monthly allotment as Twitter user etchalon tweeted via his iPhone on Wednesday, are a recent phenomenon.
These data limits will have real effects on how we access music, video and other large data files from mobile devices, but they're also about perception. It would feel irresponsible to fritter away one-seventh of your monthly data plan on a single hour of music, when it means you might not be able to check your e-mail in a couple of weeks. Even if you never actually run up against that limit, the very idea that it exists will prevent people from engaging in data-intensive, entertainment-oriented activities in the cloud.
Ultimately, limiting mobile data won't kill cloud-based music and video services. It will change the way we use them. Wi-Fi connections and mobile data caches -- rather than mobile data connections -- will be our main links to media in the cloud for the foreseeable future.
Rhapsody, Spotify and other cloud-based music services allow users to cache thousands of songs, albums and playlists on their smartphones or tablets using any accessible Wi-Fi network -- generally as much as the device's memory will allow -- as part of a monthly subscription. Until now, that feature has been handy for the subway, highway and other places where 3G connections are spotty or nonexistent. In a limited-wireless-data world, caching through Wi-Fi becomes a dominant feature in any media "streaming" app.
Cloud-based music will look a lot like the old world, where you had to move music from your computer onto a supported portable device manually. The main difference, which often goes unnoticed, is that that same behavior is much easier with smartphones than it was with MP3 players because smartphones and tablets don't need digital rights management -- they are DRM.
When you sign into a music or video service on your phone or tablet, you pass a tiny bit of data, with almost no effect on your monthly limit, up into the cloud to authenticate your usage of the service and let you play data stored on your phone (not your MP3 player), which you transferred automatically through Wi-Fi (not manually with a USB cable).
Now that wireless data realities are setting in, it's clear that the cloud will not enable dramatic progress when it comes to accessing anything you want to see or hear from anywhere, in seconds, but it will enable mobile media subscriptions to music, video and magazines that don't suck. Now, we'll find out whether anyone wants to pay for them ... on top of whatever they're already paying for their limited data connections.
Photo: taivasalla/Flickr
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