“They’ll no doubt get used to it; it’ll be just another thing they do, like sending thousands of text messages per month or spending hours upon hours on Facebook,” is how one blogger explained the inevitable shift from owning to renting music. It’ll just be another thing they do—not another thing they experience, not another thing they hear, not another thing they feel, but another thing that they do. As the cliché goes: we’re not so much human beings as we are human doings. And it’s never before been truer. Today, we do a lot of things and much of this is to do with that big bulging ubiquitous cloud hanging overhead.
And I’m not employing the cloud here merely for my own metaphorical purposes; “The Cloud” is referred to often, and particularly by IT types, to explain cloud computing, which is how the Internet bundles various virtual services so that they can be accessed simultaneously from a single source. Wikipedia adds that: “users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure ‘in the cloud’ that supports them”—supports them? How about controls them: lack of knowledge, expertise and control, as we all well know, puts the users, the listeners, the doers, in a dependent, controllable position. But who cares who’s controlling who--and who cares whether we're too placated to feel--when these are all just some things that we do?
The Cloud--that enormous amalgam of interconnected programs and applications--is expected to bring every piece of music ever recorded available into one omnipresent cloud so that it is easily accessible to any individual with a wireless connection willing to pay a monthly fee. Streaming a never-ending collection of playlists on the desktop, laptop, and the Web-ready mobile device, subscribers will be able to listen to whatever they want, whenever they want, and, soon enough, wherever they want.
They can flood the canals with streams of sound. They can listen while they dress, eat, drink, commute, walk, sit, eat, walk, commute and dress. They can listen without pause. And they can grow so accustomed to relentless listening, they can disconnect from the fact that they are infinitely technically connected, and thereby dependent. And it will all be so easy because it will all be strangely taken care of for them. “The benefits of having an unlimited collection in the cloud are eventually going to outweigh the hassle of organizing a local collection,” one person wrote in response to the blog. “…As long as you have what you need at your fingertips, why do you care if you own it?” commented another. And another: “The cloud is coming. The advent of (rental) streaming anything/anytime is inevitable. Mass acceptance will not be far behind (as soon as speed and reliability of access, and quantity of content is acceptable).”
All in favor of streaming are in favor for the very same reason: convenience. So long as The Cloud will make listening to music easier, they’re for it. So long as they can listen without the hassle of thinking about listening, they’re for it. So long as they can keep a never-ending stream of music around while partaking in all the other things—each of which is just another thing to do—that they feel they must do, bring on The Cloud. Or not: “I can picture in years to come, a whole street full of ‘cloud listening music lovers,’ stopping in the street, looking up to the skies, wondering why their music just stopped (network went down),” commented another reader. The pacifier popped out. The music stopped. And the dependents cried. If you think about it, that might not be such a bad thing.
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