What I want is a computer that is always connected, wherever I go. Cellular networks have potential, but you can get good reception only in cities. When you get too far, you lose everything. I want to call someone using VoIP, and only care about a data plan (instead of voice+data plans).
If I want to listen to music, I connect to a website similar to iTunes, choose a song and play it. This is a service, payable by month. Artists will get their royalties based on how many songs are played, and how long the users listen to them. The price should be around 5$ for unrestricted access to all songs ever created.
If I want to watch a movie, I connect to the same website, choose a movie and play it. This would also be a service payable by month, with the same royalties paid to movie studios based on watch counts and lengths. The price should be a maximum of 10$ for unrestricted access to all movies or tv series ever made.
If I want to watch a tv channel, same thing. I'd like to pay a maximum of 10$ per month for that.
If I want to listen to the radio, same thing. I'd like to pay a maximum of 5$ per month for that.
That means I'm prepared to pay 30$ per month (360$ per year) for all these services, for unlimited viewing/listening of music, movies, tv and radio. If the company that implements that is smarter than greedy, it will allow me to pay by fair usage. For example, for movies, it could release the following chart:
| Movies | |
|---|---|
| Length (hours) | Price ($) |
| < 2 | Free |
| < 4 | 2.50 |
| < 6 | 5.00 |
| < 10 | 7.50 |
| >= 10 | 10.00 |
That means you get to watch a movie (or a couple episodes) for free. After 5 movies, you pay the maximum price (10$), which in itself is very good. A smart and modest company will get a more powerful following.
Right now, a lot of possible alternatives are on the web. iTunes have movies, music, tv shows... but is very expensive, and you have to download them. It is filled with DRM. Grooveshark is a free music service, though I never looked very deep at it. How such a web site can legally be free, I can't understand. You can search by genre, title, artist... For radios, grooveshark also seems to have them, as do live365, jango, and many others, all for free. For movies, you have netflix and hulu, both at around 8$ per month, but the movie selection is restricted. There is also many websites that offer tv channels, some free, some not.
The thing is, there is a way to globalize all of this. I shouldn't be restricted if I want to watch a Russian movie, or a Japanese anime episode. Such a website could bring the whole world together.
Another aspect of the cloud is the ability to store, share, and see personal pictures and videos. There a many sites that do that, notably imgur, tinypic, youtube, and vimeo. I'm sure there are other sites to upload personal music or sounds.
That would bring multimedia to the whole world.
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