Last week Amazon announced its online music streaming service called Amazon Cloud.
On paper it sounds like a great idea.
You no longer have to waste storage space on your computer for media, and you don’t need a carry an MP3 player with you to listen to your digital music library — you can just use your cell phone to access it.
But we’re a long, very long way off from the full potential of cloud entertainment being realized because of bandwidth problems.
The era of unlimited data plans is over. Internet and wireless providers like to pretend there is a finite amount of bandwidth in the world, like oil. Unless it’s carefully rationed — through capping and throttling usage — it could all be used up and none of us will be able to get on the internet. Of course, this is all crap.
The problem is not limited bandwidth, but limited broadband infrastructure. For years ISPs have been making huge profits by having us pay for bandwidth that we never use. It’s similar to cable TV — you pay $100/month for 300 channels you never watch. Suddenly, bandwidth is being used.
On the wireless front, the number of people with smart phones and devices with wireless access (e.g. tablets) dramatically grows every year. And streaming services, most notably Netflix, have changed internet usage behavior patters — instead of accessing the internet intermittently throughout the day to check facebook and e-mail, people now stream movies for sustained periods of time. Streaming music collections will be a further drag on the whole system.
Things are only going to get worse.
ISPs have shown little interest in making much needed improvements to their infrastructure. Instead, they are lobbying Congress to end Net Neutrality so that they can limit the content users are allowed to access on the web. In major cities where the large number of concentrated smartphone users brings everyone’s 3G connection to a crawl, ISPs are selling signal boosters — so even though you’re already paying for 3G, if you want to experience actual 3G speeds, you have to pay for additional hardware.
ISPs have no incentive to build out their infrastructure.
All the wireless networks have similar bandwidth problems — no one is offering substantial faster speeds. And on the land-line front, your options are typically between your local cable company and the phone company’s DSL service. And while I don’t have any proof, I’m sure that all of these corporations have colluded, agreeing not to build out additional infrastructure too fast.
So let’s get back to streaming entertainment.
Internet service providers either want you to pay through the nose for the kilobyte or not use their service at all. Now that unlimited data plans are being phased out, pricing schemes that charge by the megabyte when users go over their monthly data limit will discourage the use of streaming services. In fact, Netflix recently cut the picture quality for its Canadian customers because so many users were going over their monthly bandwidth cap. Americans should take pause. This is a sign of things to come.
And if the pricing doesn’t keep people from streaming, then it’s going to be the slow connections. I was in Philadelphia and New York this past weekend; at times the 3G internet just didn’t move on my iPhone. So try to imagine continuously streaming music files while walking around or jogging.
Finally, streaming audio on demand represents yet another example of technology watering down quality.
When it comes to audio playback, most people would consider me a dinosaur. I have a surround sound system with speakers meant for music, and I primarily buy CDs and SACDs vs downloading songs. I simply like to sit back, relax, and listen to music in high quality sound. Even if bandwidth issues are resolved, streaming music services will continue to encourage people to primarily listen to music over headphones while on-the-go.
Music listening is no longer a leisure activity but background noise.
