"Cloud" storage

[Abelcito]

Hi there, LINNanians,
I am interested in figuring out when (not if) I can retire my NAS and store my collection on "The Cloud". this would give me independence to play where and when I want - including in the homes of my friends and it would rid me of the hassle to keep my entire system up to date which is not without challenges as we all know....

Thinking about this, between all the FLAC collections around the world there must be a high degree of overlap/redundancy.. Wouldn't it be great to have one "complete", "crowd sourced" lossless audio library which we can all use / subscribe to and pay in a "used by me" not "owned by me" basis? I have invested a ton of money in my +3'000 or so CD collection (all on flac now, CDs collecting dust), take out the redundancy and get folks around the world to enjoy the music (and stop worrying about the required infrastructure today)..

Anyways, for LINN (hope they read this thred), I realy do hope they are focusing on the Cloud & Cloud services, like “Spotify” and what that means for you and me as that's where we moving to (with or without LINN).

[Fezz]

How fast can you upload on your internet connection?? On most internet connections uploading 3000+ albums in FLAC to the clouds would take a VERY long time. Not sure I like the idea of NEEDING an internet connection to listen to my files either... Sorry I know these are negative comments and I do like your idea, but I think local solutions will dominate over cloud solutions for large amounts of data for a while yet.

[stairpost]

I know it's been mentioned many times before but if spotify started streaming FLAC's insted of 320 mp3's i think it would be fantastic, i use it a lot and think it's in the right place to move forward to an even better service.

[Irri]

I agree with you that it does seem a little silly for so may people to store the same music, but I don't see why you would want Linn to focus on this. A DS is a network streamer. It doesn't matter whether the music is streamed from your local network or some cloud based storage.

It's really up to the music companies to move music to the cloud. I don't understand your suggestion that Linn might get left behind if things move to the cloud. A DS is already able to stream from a network.

[Abelcito]

True, guess my point is that the borders between hardware (HW), software (SW) and Services (SVC) are increasingly starting to blur. LINN - as any other HW, SW or SVCs company have to try and figure out what SaaS, Cloud, Mobile means for their customers and how in the case of LINN it will affect how people will want to enjoy their music. We are at the dawn of new IT era, SaaS, Cloud and Moble are just the enabling tecnolgies.

[grahamd Linn Staff]

(2011-05-16 12:47)Abelcito Wrote:  True, guess my point is that the borders between hardware (HW), software (SW) and Services (SVC) are increasingly starting to blur.

The border between hardware and software is blurring? You must be living in the same Philip K Dick novel as me.

Graham

[rowlandhills]

(2011-05-17 10:43)grahamd Wrote:  The border between hardware and software is blurring? You must be living in the same Philip K Dick novel as me.

[vicdiaz]

I prefer to have all my stuff (music, documents, etc.) preferably at home in a very low-power 'green' server. What if you loose the connection to the 'cloud'??? No music, no files, no everything.

Bandwidth is another concern. File size as been increasing exponentially as years has passed and the trend is to continue. Unless carriers get their act together and increase the bandwith with no 'data-transfer' caps I won't see many people adopting 'cloud storage' unless they have deep pockets to 'pay-as-you-go' data transfer fees.

[Briain]

Hi

My key concern about 'cloud' is encryption and thus data security. There are many 'ambiguous' adverts about security and one of the fun ones is when folks quote that they 'use' AES or even 256 bit AES levels of encryption. That can mean many things and it's all very secure if you do the encryption before the data leaves your building (and you hold the key locally) but if they're just talking about their own internal encryption (and they hold the key at their end) then any 'security' statement is likely not as robust as many folks might assume.

Okay, none of that really matters about music files, but it is a serious concern if you are thinking of cloud backup for data and thus something worth mentioning here to make folks aware of it (and thus think about seeking advice before clouding their financial data). It's a lot more complex than I've stated above, but if you are considering clouding financially critical data, then it's worth seeking professional advice on security (and I don't just mean asking some PC geek down the pub).

Bri

[charlie1]

(2011-06-02 12:42)vicdiaz Wrote:  Bandwidth is another concern. File size as been increasing exponentially as years has passed and the trend is to continue. Unless carriers get their act together and increase the bandwith with no 'data-transfer' caps I won't see many people adopting 'cloud storage' unless they have deep pockets to 'pay-as-you-go' data transfer fees.

Bandwidth is increasing nicely here in the UK, now with FTTC VDSL being rolled out and offering up to 40Mbps downstream and I think Virgin cable is about 50Mbps. I know these are maximum figures, but 10Mbps downstream is likely, and I would imagine the caps are increasing accordingly.

Problem, like you say, is upstream. I hate to think how long it would take to upload your CD collection at the moment. I guess you could send one or more USB drives with all your music, they copy it straight onto their core network, and post it back.