Setting a precedent
E-commerce giant Amazon launched its Cloud Drive and associated Cloud Players yesterday. They allow you to upload your content to your personalised bit of Amazon's remote storage, and then stream that content to other devices.
According to a number of reports since the launch, the music industry is not happy about this development, but seems unsure what, if anything, it can do about it. Reuters heard from Sony, which made it clear that it wanted Amazon to reach a new license deal that covers the streaming of music, but that it was keeping its legal options open.
All Things D explores whether a license to sell MP3 files precludes the provision of an ancillary cloud service. It also asked Amazon what licensing agreements it has with rights-holders covering this new service, and got this response: "We do not need a license to store music in Cloud Drive. The functionality of saving MP3s to Cloud Drive is the same as if a customer were to save their music to an external hard drive or even iTunes."
That seems to be the crux of the matter; it's already possible and legal to both upload music to the cloud and access it from secondary devices. The genie is out of the bottle on that one and, as Amazon says, how is this so different from using a networked external hard drive of iTunes?
So, legally, I can only assume the aspect of this service that offends the music labels is that Amazon is facilitating the consumption of its content on multiple devices, without them getting anything extra. In other words, the problem seems to be with the Cloud Players rather than the Cloud Drive. But having said that I just uploaded an MP3 to Evernote and was able to play it back on my Android handset within minutes.
My gut instinct is that, once more, the music industry will find itself swimming against the current of innovation on this one, as it has ever since it argued that home taping is killing music in the 80s. The music industry would like to have complete control over the distribution of its content but that has been impossible for decades.
Having finally come to terms with that, it has focused on mass-distribution mechanisms - especially peer-to-peer networks, and has had considerable success. But the problem is has with Amazon's service is that it's not about mass distribution, which is presumably why Amazon didn't bother offering the music industry any more cash.
And that, of course, is what it all comes down to. Not only has Amazon forked out, it apparently didn't even enter into dialogue with the labels. This will be especially galling to the music industry as it's apparently in negotiations with Apple and Google over licenses for similar ‘music locker' services, and the precedent set by Amazon will undermine their negotiating position.
Business and legal precedent is being set by this move, and I suspect the music industry will once more just have to grin and bear it.
