Is Possession Nine-Tenths of the Digital Music Law?
There is a range of services enabling us to access music by 'streaming'. Services like Spotify and Grooveshark offer cheap and convenient access to a vast catalog of music.
Music streaming is an easy way to hear new music, create playlists and impress friends with your knowledge of the music scene. It doesn't, however, give you ownership of that music or decent access to it outside of a robust Internet connection.
At the risk of sounding like a control-freak, there really are key benefits to owning my music and storing it locally on my home computer, and music streaming has yet to compete in these stakes. Here are some of the key issues with music 'in the cloud'.
Quality
Streaming music over the Internet does not, potentially, give you the same sound quality as running it from your own network. You just can't get equivalent quality from streaming as you can from lossless ripped CD files. Let's not even begin to consider the difference in quality with any HD music you might have.
Of course, some probably don't mind too much about this level of quality. If you are playing music through small speakers or on basic headphones you might well have your priorities in healthy order too. However anyone with reasonably expensive hi-fi equipment would do well to consider this issue a little further.
Control
The service through which you stream your music will ultimately determine how its organized; the look and feel of your music. For some this may be helpful and take away the hassle endemic to large music collection organization. For others it will restrain not only basic organization but also creativity and freedom in shaping your music collection; such as categorizing genres, displaying titles and artwork.
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