Kaizen28;646749 Wrote:
>
> So, what are the next pretenders to the throne? What's the hardware?
> What's the software?
>
If we are talking big companies, I believe the companies which might
release something are:
*Apple*:
They soon have the iCloud and since before they have the iTunes Music
Store which both will get you easy access to music. They also have
stationary players in form of Airport Express and AppleTV and mobile
players in form of iPod/iPhone/iPad and computer based players through
the Mac of your choice.
However, Apple is going to be focused on what's possible to sell to the
masses, features are going to be limited to what the masses need, it's
going to be simple to use and you are going to be forced to comply to
their rules to use it. Advanced features and high highend audio quality
will probably not be among the provided features. I'm not sure multi
room streaming is on the top of their agenda and neither great support
for premium services as they want everyone to get the music from their
iTunes Music Store.
*Google*:
Google soon have its Google Music service where you get easy access to
the music. They will probably only provide software and advertising and
let other companies provide the hardware. Their goal is likely to get
GoogleTV in the center of our living rooms and possibly also to have
some Android based tablets and phones to be able to consume the music
from mobile devices. Google is focused at selling advertising and due
to this they are going to focus on devices which have an interactive
screen (where they can show the advertising), due to this I'm not sure
multi room streaming is something they will prioritize. However, they
want many customers so supporting many streaming services is probably
something they likely will do. Google is likely going to market
themselves as the open alternative for those who don't like the closed
Apple solution.
*Amazon*:
Amazon offers the their MP3 Music Store where we get easy access to the
music, their issue is that they need to either provide their own
hardware or partner up with a hardware vendor that can do it for them.
Since they are probably more focused at selling the music than
developing and selling hardware, I suspect they are only going to
provide apps for iOS and Android and possibly GoogleTV if it becames a
success. Amazon's business is probably focused at selling the music or
cloud storage, the software at the user end is just a way to access it.
The problem for Amazon is that if they try to sell a lot through an iOS
app they are probably going to be stopped by Apple (who like to get
their share of the income) so due to this they will probably invest
more in Android/GoogleTV than iOS.
I've probably missed a lot in the above but I just wanted to give you
my current thoughts.
Now, the issue with all these three companies is that currently I don't
believe any of them are focused at what people in this community wants.
They are all focused at the masses and not the enthusiasts.
So I believe that what we are going to see in the near future is
products from existing actors (Logitech, Sonos) and from HiFi
manufacturers like Linn, Naim and others and possibly also from other
small hardware vendors trying to get into the market with media
streaming products focused at customers somewhere in-between Hifi and
massmarket (where most of the community members of this forum
belongs).
HiFi manufacturers will likely focus more on supporting locally stored
music than supporting premium streaming services, mostly because they
know that they need high quality music to make their customers get some
benefits from their investments in HiFi hardware.
Sonos is going to continue to be Sonos, easy to use but rather closed
if you like to integrate with it.
It's hard to know what Logitech is going to do, your guess is as good
as mine.
--
erland
Erland Isaksson ('My homepage' (http://erland.isaksson.info))
(Developer of 'many plugins/applets'
(http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/User:Erland). If my answer
helped you and you like to encourage future presence on this forum
and/or third party plugin/applet development, 'donations are always
appreciated' (http://erland.isaksson.info/donate))
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