I'm not sure who he's talking to in the music business but this idea has been floating around since at least 1998. It isn't as simple as inserting some tables into a database - building this service will require collaboration between tech companies and music labels, something that happens slowly and dysfunctionally.
If you've ever worked in this space, you'll realize that everyone involved on both sides is either a coked out psychopath who is just at the meeting because his boss made him or a "cool guy" hacker who doesn't really believe in the service, since he already has a multi terabyte server in his closet filled with all the music he's ever liked leeched from oink or waffles. Neither really have any "skin in the game." Thus, the likelihood of the technology getting finished or the legal getting cleared is zero.
From a consumer standpoint, the internet and all your friends already serve as a giant distributed, fault tolerant, quasi-illegal version of this service. If you downloaded a song and then you lose your ipod, you can either just get it again from a file sharing network, or from a mp3 blog, or your cousin's ipod.
If you've ever worked in this space, you'll realize that everyone involved on both sides is either a coked out psychopath who is just at the meeting because his boss made him or a "cool guy" hacker who doesn't really believe in the service, since he already has a multi terabyte server in his closet filled with all the music he's ever liked leeched from oink or waffles. Neither really have any "skin in the game." Thus, the likelihood of the technology getting finished or the legal getting cleared is zero.
From a consumer standpoint, the internet and all your friends already serve as a giant distributed, fault tolerant, quasi-illegal version of this service. If you downloaded a song and then you lose your ipod, you can either just get it again from a file sharing network, or from a mp3 blog, or your cousin's ipod.