Cloud music: the concept is beautiful, the reality is cruel

Recently, a domestic portal launched a music phone client. Xiaobian think if as a mobile phone music player, the introduction of this product really some "late" feeling. At present, the market status of domestic mobile phone music player is basically a replica of PC-side player. In this case, the new player would have to kill a whole set of bloodstreams if it wanted to survive. Copying the success of other old-school music players would only result in a dead end. At present, "cloud music" has become a new battlefield for many new and old players competing for market share.

So, what is cloud music? Speaking of cloud music, we must first talk about "cloud services": data or services distributed in a large number of distributed computers, local computers connected through high-speed Internet, the enjoyment of data services. From the definition of cloud service, we can understand the meaning of "cloud music" according to the definition of "cloud music": the music listening service that can be enjoyed directly through the Internet without connecting to the cloud server.

Traditionally, when listening to music through a mobile terminal, we first need to connect to the Internet to download music and then transfer it to a mobile terminal for listening. This means that mobile terminals with limited storage space can easily be stored, and music downloading and transferring operations are very cumbersome. The birth of cloud music solved all the problems.

In fact, cloud music is not an emerging product, as early as 2009 in foreign countries, the major IT giants have opened the "music cloud computing" prelude. Apple acquired lala in December 2009, laying the groundwork for a cloud-based version of iTunes service; followed by Google's acquisition of Simplify Media, a mobile streaming music service, in May 2010; and HP, in June of the same year, announced the acquisition of music service offerings Business Melodeo. The common feature of these acquired companies is that they provide technical support for a variety of music delivery devices. For a time, "music cloud computing" is regarded as the most promising application direction in the field of cloud computing.

In retrospect, cloud music has long been unwittingly popularized. The more common is the radio mode. Because music stations have the function of selecting different types of music to play according to the user's preference, the second advantage is the convenient advantage of listening without being downloaded. The rise of music stations in the country, followed by the birth of shrimp music, Douban FM and other radio-based emerging music service platform. At the same time, many senior digital music platforms have also launched cross-platform playback capabilities. They manage multiple platforms such as PC terminals, WEB terminals and mobile clients through a unified account to achieve seamless and direct synchronization between the platforms.

From the author described above function can be drawn, in fact, the so-called cloud music service has long been born. And serve multiple users in a variety of product models. However, even though cloud music has many advantages, there are not many products that are truly successful at present. The reasons are as follows:

1 cloud song library accumulation

The number of music libraries is an important criterion for measuring the quality of a music player. As digital music publishers place more emphasis on copyright, the digital music player, as a communication platform, It is a huge project that takes a lot of manpower, material and financial resources. Therefore, many music radio stations were forced to rely on pirated music libraries when they were initially developed. However, once they have grown stronger, they will inevitably need to legitimize their music library. This is a life-or-death obstacle for many young start-ups. The well-funded senior digital music platform is no pressure. After years of accumulation of cool dog music, with record companies and digital music distribution agencies in good relations of cooperation, has now sitting on the largest domestic music cloud music library. Song information everything.

Data transfer

Cloud music data transmission needs through the Internet. When users play high-definition music, they need to achieve a large number of data transfer fast and stable download, which is a major test of the traditional digital music platform. Because of their lack of technical reserves, some platforms can only work with large cloud platforms to improve the stability of data transmission. Or building as much data center as possible and relying on CDN across the country to improve the quality of data transmission. Therefore, some digital music player software, high-definition music player service charges users, but just upgrade the cloud server does not meet the fundamental needs of users to listen to high-definition music, the data transfer methods must be a revolutionary adjustment. Such as cool dog music unique P2P communication mode, with its cloud service centers all over the country, fundamentally ensure the fast and stable transmission of high-definition lossless music, and even high-definition video MV MV can also be achieved that is.

3. User accumulation

At present, the two most commonly used actions when a user plays music are as follows: 1. Select the music of an album or singer, and then play according to the popularity; 2. Directly enter the radio mode to play. If the digital music player radio program is very rich in resources, it is bound to have a huge attraction with more households.

Conventional digital music platform radio stations, often edited in advance by the editor to arrange the tracks, and then the user passive listening, which also resulted in radio products generally slow to update the predicament. Nowadays the mobile Internet has entered the mode of multiple data transmission and can be entirely composed of content creation and operation by the users. The editing of the digital music platform is only partially managed and audited. This mode is also a hot UGC mode currently on the mobile Internet platform.

The author believes that the digital music platform can be completely open radio programming, to maximize the user's initiative, and digital music platform only to audit the content optimization, so in theory can be quickly born tens of thousands of various types of personalized radio, platform The content can also be greatly enriched to achieve a virtuous circle.

Therefore, in this mode, the platform must have a huge user base, but also need to have some high-quality users to participate in content construction, which is unique to the senior digital music platform, a powerful resource advantage. For example, cool dog music, after years of development, the platform already has 450 million registered users, while cool dog music also opened the function of user-made radio content, users can even upload their own songs, a huge user base brought to the platform Huge vitality.

To sum up, although the concept of cloud music is very beautiful, users like it very much, but there are not many digital music platforms that can play cloud music. It must have an absolute advantage in terms of cloud hardware construction, cloud music library accumulation, digital music copyright cooperation, and user accumulation, which will make it possible to win a piece of market that looks beautiful in Cloud Music.