Of the two approaches, the download-and-own model has been the clear victor so far, and its prime exemplar, Apple’s iTunes, has risen to become the biggest merchant of music. Now, a new hybrid approach is emerging, one where you own your music, but also can access it all from the cloud and stream it to many different devices via a Web browser or mobile app. This approach is typically called the “music locker.” It is being developed because each of the two existing models has drawbacks.

The iTunes buy-to-own method, which is also offered by Amazon and others, makes sharing or accessing your whole music collection among multiple devices difficult, because songs are stored on each individual device, rather than in the cloud.

Meanwhile, the access-oriented services, like Rhapsody, Pandora, Slacker and many others, have been held back by a confusing array of pricing schemes and rules, often imposed by the record labels. They can cost $10 or $15 a month, and require Internet access for use of all their capabilities. In some cases, they let you store songs locally for offline use, but the songs become unplayable if you stop paying the monthly fees. Some place limits on things like how many hours of music you can hear a month, how many songs by a given artist can be played in a given time period, or how often a user can skip songs in a playlist or an online radio “station.”

Recently, two online giants, Amazon and Google, have launched rudimentary music lockers, which allow you to store songs you own online and listen to them on a variety of devices, at no cost or for relatively low fees, and with few if any limits. Apple, meanwhile, is reported to be working on an even more sophisticated version.

Amazon’s music locker is called the Cloud Player, and Google’s is called the Music Beta, both of which I’ve been testing. Amazon’s is available now, but Google is currently only allowing users to sign up for invitations, which it then will parcel out.

I call these two new services rudimentary because they have a major pain point: Before you can use them, you must upload all your songs to the cloud service. Depending on your Internet connection (which is often much slower for uploading than downloading) and the size of your collection, this can take days.

By contrast, the Holy Grail of music lockers is one where no uploading is required. It’s sometimes called “scan and match.” Under this approach, the music service would first buy from the labels the rights to stream a huge catalog of music, and, with your permission, scan your computer to see which of those songs are present. Then, it would simply assign you the rights to stream those songs you already have via multiple devices of your choice, and even preserve your playlists of those songs.

This is believed to be the system Google was trying to launch until it couldn’t negotiate the rights with the labels on terms the parties would accept. Apple is thought to be trying to launch just such a scan-and-match system, though the company hasn’t said so. Such an approach offers benefits beyond just the avoidance of painful uploading. With the proper rights, users could share music with others, or sample new music. There could be a variety of pricing and advertising models. But the music labels have been unwilling to allow this system in the past, partly because they know that much of the music people possess might have been stolen, or at the very least copied from legally purchased CDs, and thus hard to verify as having been bought.

I’ve been testing the Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music Beta, and found that both work as advertised. While the two services do have some differences, they are basically similar. Each works either through a Web browser or an app for Android devices. Amazon says it is working on compatibility with Apple’s mobile devices, but Google says it has nothing to announce on that front. (You can use both through the Web browser on an iPad or iPhone, but they worked poorly on those devices in my tests.)

Amazon’s service is priced by the amount of storage you use. You get 5 gigabytes free, enough for over 1,000 songs, depending on the quality, length, and thus the size of your song files. If you buy an album from Amazon’s digital music store, you get bumped up to 20 GB free of charge for a year. Other plans are available, ranging from $20 a year for 20 GB to $100 a year for 100 GB. Google lets you store up to 20,000 songs for the beta version, and says it will be free for “a limited time.”

I uploaded the same 1,400 or so songs to each service, and was able to play them back just fine on the major Web browsers on multiple Windows and Mac computers, and on an Android phone and tablet. Each imports music using a small computer program you download. In my case, with a limited test collection and an unusually fast Internet connection, the upload process took several hours.

Google has a few nice features—it has a clever instant playlist creator, and, when uploading, it tries to prioritize your most played songs. But, overall, I preferred the Amazon player, mainly because it gives you much more control over exactly what you want to upload or download, down to the individual song. Google will upload only large collections, such as your iTunes library or main music folder. If you want to upload only certain songs, you have to create a folder containing only those songs. If you want to download only certain songs on your Android device, you must first make a playlist of those songs.

Also, the Amazon service found all my iTunes playlists, but the Google service omitted some. In addition, Amazon sells digital music and can deliver it right to your Cloud Player. Google doesn’t sell music. Neither service will upload or play back copy-protected music.

These new music lockers provide a new option for digital music lovers, and if the tech and music industries can ever agree, even better options could be ahead.

Find Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110518/for-a-song-online-giants-offer-music-in-a-cloud/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20071206/slacker-digital-player-handles-the-drudgery-for-busy-music-fans/ http://allthingsd.com/20071206/slacker-digital-player-handles-the-drudgery-for-busy-music-fans/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:01:00 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20071206/slacker-digital-player-handles-the-drudgery-for-busy-music-fans/ More than 100 million music fans know the joys of portable digital music players — the ability to carry a large number of your favorite songs, arranged in playlists of your design, on a pocket-size gadget.

But for some folks, getting the most out of these players takes too much work or too much money. Converting CDs to music files takes time, as does selecting and downloading tracks from online music services, and synchronizing players with PCs. Creating great playlists also takes time and effort. Some people prefer the old radio model, where songs are programmed by somebody else and you just listen.

[ See post to watch video ]

Plus, whether you download songs for 99 cents apiece, use a subscription download service for $15 a month, or sign up for satellite radio at $13 a month, the costs to keep your portable player filled legally can add up quickly.

So a new kind of portable player, one for more passive and budget-minded users, is slated to arrive late next month. It’s called the Slacker Personal Radio, and its name is meant to refer to people of any age who just want to sit back and listen instead of actively managing their music.

The new Slacker players will come in three models, ranging from $200 to $300, depending on capacity. But the music they play will be absolutely free, contained in preprogrammed Internet radio stations instead of individually selected songs and albums. The stations will be automatically refreshed with new tunes via a wireless connection built right into the device. You’ll have to be near a hot spot for these updates. But you won’t need a hot spot just to hear your music, because the songs are cached on the device. And you’ll never have to plug it into a computer.

The player is tied to Slacker’s free Internet radio service, slacker.com, which is already up and running, and allows you to listen to music via any standard Windows or Mac Web browser. Using the service, you can personalize your player by selecting from over 100 canned stations or by creating stations based around any of 10,000 artists. These stations will be beamed to your player wirelessly. You can even choose which stations are loaded onto your player before the company ships it to you.

The company, a San Diego-based start-up of the same name, hopes to make money eventually via advertising on the player, and by selling an optional paid premium plan that offers some additional features.

I’ve been testing a prototype of the chunky, black plastic Slacker player, which is dominated by a four-inch color screen. It has two redundant navigation systems: a touch-sensitive strip at the side of the screen and a wheel on one edge. It provides a rich listening experience, including album art and other photos, artist bios and album reviews. The sound is good, and the Wi-Fi wireless connection worked in both my home and office.

The two prototype Slacker units I tried, however, were hobbled by bugs and glitches that the company must expunge by the release date, which was originally slated to be this month. For instance, the players sometimes failed to wake up after going to sleep, requiring a reboot. The touch strip was unreliable. One player failed several times to connect to my account. Battery life is well below Slacker’s goal of 12 hours between charges. The company says it is aware of these problems, and pledges all will be fixed.

Slacker isn’t the only portable player to offer programmed Internet stations. The Rhapsody service offers similar, customizable Internet-based stations on a couple of players. And both the Sirius and XM satellite-radio networks offer portable players for listening to their stations, although the stations can’t be customized. But all of these players require monthly subscription payments, while Slacker’s stations are free.

The Slacker Radio

Because Slacker is based on Internet radio, it has some limitations imposed by the rules governing that format. For example, you can’t specify a particular song to play, or skip back to repeat a song. And you can skip ahead only six times per station per hour. Even if you create a station around a particular artist, the station will mainly be filled with artists the service considers similar. Songs by the artist you selected will be played only four times every three hours.

The player has a “heart button” for designating a song for frequent play and a “ban” button to eliminate the songs you hate.

If you’re willing to pay, or put in more effort, you can get additional capabilities. For example, Slacker players can hold and play some of your own songs, in addition to programmed stations, if you download a free Windows software program. And, if you sign up for the premium option at $7.50 a month, you get unlimited song-skipping, no ads, and the ability to save favorite songs on the device and play them as often as you like.

But the basic idea of Slacker is to make portable listening free of effort and of service charges. If the company can wring the bugs out of its new player and if its ads aren’t too annoying, that formula may appeal to some busy music lovers.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online free at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

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