Doctorow: “Streaming will never stop downloading”
Posted on | December 8, 2009 | 3 Comments
“…there’s no reason to believe that people will lose the urge to collect music.”
“Streaming is an implausible and inefficient use of wireless bandwidth.”
“Why would we voluntarily increase our reliance on expensive, scarce wireless bandwidth delivered by abusive thugs when we are awash in cheap, commodity storage that grows cheaper every day and which we can buy from hundreds of manufacturers and thousands of retailers?”
“The more we pretend that there is a technical possibility of designing a downloader that can’t save its files, the more incentive we create for legal and technological systems that attempt to make this come true.”
I get all his arguments, and I agree with them in theory. The thing is, for me, none of them have ever really mattered. The reason I don’t use streaming music services is because they don’t seem to make any sense to me. I’m never quite sure what to listen to, because without a library of music that I’ve spent time acquiring staring me in the face, I don’t have any cues to prompt me as to what to listen to.
It’s not so much that I like to “collect” music as much as I need to in order to remember to go back and listen to it.
Streaming will never stop downloading
Cory Doctorow
guardian.co.uk