Don’t Trust the Music Cloud

The skies in Cannes this year have been a painfully perfect blue for almost all of MIDEM. The only clouds have been the latest crap that passes for strategy from the music industry. I am with Larry on the cloud.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UYa6gQC14o]
Given that just about every digital music exec who wants to keep his job has been wibbling on stupidly about clouds for the last six months I thought this study worth sharing. I still find it surprising that people can be wilfully ignorant and yet get paid many times the national average salary, and be allowed to make decisions that affect the viability of their company and their entire industry. As someone much cleverer than I am is bound to have said at some point, that’s life.
But I guess there is something amusing about a bunch of overpaid suits on conference panels sounding more like freak brothers than MBAs.
Hey man, the music is in the cloud!

Contracts for Clouds: Comparison and Analysis of the Terms and Conditions of Cloud Computing Services

Abstract:

Cloud computing offers an attractive solution to customers keen to acquire computing infrastructure without large up-front investment, particularly in cases where their demand may be variable and unpredictable. But the greater flexibility of a Cloud computing service as compared with a traditional outsourcing contract is balanced by less certainty for the customer in terms of the location of data placed into the Cloud and the legal foundations of any contract with the provider. This paper reports on a detailed survey and analysis of the Terms and Conditions offered by Cloud computing providers.

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A New Era for the Music Industry

The UK music industry is going to have to get used to being regulated. It has no-one but itself to blame for this, having lobbied hard to get ISPs forced by Government into some kind of anti-infringement process.

Music is a small industry. The people are known to each other, and while many would say it is over-lawyered the contracts it works on are more like a social security system than a mechanistic reflection of the handshake deals that drive the business.

I happen to think this a good thing. At its best the music industry creates sheer magic out of common and everyday stuff through the agency of what can best be described as a troupe of levitating priests. It does not bear rational enquiry and scrutiny.

But part of the deal in asking for intervention from Government is that music will have to undergo a regular strip search and intimate examination. Ofcom is gearing up to perform its obligations under the Digital Economy Act and you can almost hear the latex gloves being snapped on.

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