“Amazon.com joined the ranks of music-streaming services today by unveiling Cloud Player, allowing users to buy tracks, store them on the company’s servers and play them on computers and Android smartphones,” Kristen Schweizer reports for Bloomberg.
“Music libraries can be uploaded to Amazon’s so-called Cloud Drive, with memory starting for free at 5 gigabytes, the company said in a statement today,” Schweizer reports. “Users who purchase an album from Amazon.com will be upgraded to 20 gigabytes of Cloud Drive space, which can be used to store music, photos, videos and other files.”
Schweizer reports, “Cloud Player, which is bundled into the latest version of Amazon’s MP3 application, lets users listen to tracks on Android smartphones, as well as on personal computers utilizing Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari for Mac or Chrome Internet browsers.”
Read more in the full article here.
Amazon’s press release follows, verbatim:
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced the launch of Amazon Cloud Drive (www.amazon.com/clouddrive), Amazon Cloud Player for Web (www.amazon.com/cloudplayer) and Amazon Cloud Player for Android (www.amazon.com/cloudplayerandroid). Together, these services enable customers to securely store music in the cloudand play it on any Android phone, Android tablet, Mac or PC, wherever they are. Customers can easily upload their music library to Amazon Cloud Drive and can save any new Amazon MP3 purchases directly to their Amazon Cloud Drive for free.
“We’re excited to take this leap forward in the digital experience,” said Bill Carr, vice president of Movies and Music at Amazon. “The launch of Cloud Drive, Cloud Player for Web and Cloud Player for Android eliminates the need for constant software updates as well as the use of thumb drives and cables to move and manage music.”
“Our customers have told us they don’t want to download music to their work computers or phones because they find it hard to move music around to different devices,” Carr said. “Now, whether at work, home, or on the go, customers can buy music from Amazon MP3, store it in the cloud and play it anywhere.”
Store Music for Free
Customers automatically start with 5 GB of Cloud Drive storage to upload their digital music library, and those who purchase an Amazon MP3 album will be upgraded to 20 GB of Cloud Drive space. New Amazon MP3 purchases saved directly to Cloud Drive are stored for free and do not count against a customer’s storage quota.
Adding Music to Cloud Drive
Amazon’s easy uploading process makes it simple for customers to save their music library to their Cloud Drive. Files can be stored in AAC or MP3 formats and will be uploaded to Cloud Drive in the original bit rate. Customers can hand-pick particular songs, artists, albums or playlists to upload or simply upload their entire music library.
Cloud Player for Web
Customers who have a computer with a Web browser can listen to their music. Cloud Player for Web currently supports Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari for Mac, and Chrome. Cloud Player for Web lets customers easily manage their music with download and streaming options. Customers don’t need to worry about regularly updating software on their computer to enjoy music, and Amazon MP3 customers can continue to use iTunes and Windows Media Player to add their music to their iPods and MP3 players.
Cloud Player for Android
Cloud Player for Android is now bundled into the new version of the Amazon MP3 App; it includes the full Amazon MP3 Store and the mobile version of Cloud Player. Customers can use the app to play music stored on their Cloud Drive and music stored locally on their device. Features include the ability to search and browse by artist, album or song, create playlists and download music from Cloud Drive.
Secure Storage
Customers never need to worry about losing their music collection to a hard drive crash again. Files are securely stored on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and each file is uploaded to Cloud Drive in its original bit rate. Customers can buy music anywhere and know that their MP3s are safely stored in Cloud Drive and accessible from any device.
Store More than Music
Cloud Drive allows customers to upload and store all kinds of digital files; music, photos, videos and documents can be stored securely and are available via web browser on any computer. In addition to the 5 GB of free storage, customers can purchase storage plans starting at $20 a year for 20 GB.
MacDailyNews Take: So, if we’re reading this correctly, Amazon’s new Cloud Player service doesn’t work for iPods, including iPod touch via Mobile Safari, iPhones or iPads? If so, no go. We’ll wait for Apple’s compatible and, with history as our guide, superior solution(s).
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz,” “Lynn W.,” and “Ellis D.” for the heads up.]
“Customers never need to worry about losing their music collection to a hard drive crash again”
So amazon are storing the data on a new magical device called a Cloud.
Also known as a hard drive.
These Cloud services are useful for backup, maybe, but you still have to organise your own backup system, unless you trust some large corporation to keep you safe.
You know, the way the large corporations are always working for the public good…
In this case, keeping customer data safe leads to better customer service and, most likely, more revenue, so it’s in their best interest to keep the data safe.
Let’s loosen up on the “evil” corporation thing.
I trust Amazon cloud based solutions. Amazon AWS is pretty good proof that they know what they are doing. However, I do not trust my cell phone company to always have a strong data connection whenever I want to listen to my music. There are plenty of times (on a metro/airplane) when I have no or weak service, and want to listen to a particular song. What then?
I am willing to bet Apple is carefully considering this, and am interested to learn what their solution will be.
There’s not much they can do besides advise you to keep a core set of songs on the device itself, and use the Cloud to access everything else when the connection is there.
Sounds like Dropbox without the syncing. I’m not sure I get the point. Except as backup, the only place this makes sense is on mobile devices which have limited storage, but the bandwidth fees could get high if you’re using cellular data plans. Who wants to listen to music through a _web browser_??? Sounds like buzz-word compliant BS product to me.
…is this something people are really clamoring for?
Sounds like it will do well……..that is until Apple releases the right way to do this.
Clouds drift in.
Clouds drift away.
Repat.
More competition in this space only means great things are bound to come to iOS.
20 gigs of cloud storage for buying an album. That’s a pretty sweet deal. Amazon has a strong reputation in providing robust cloud storage service.
It seems to me that the whole problem with streaming on mobile devices is that I know have to pay the phone companies to listen to my own music. The places I would be most likely to use the streaming service would be the places most likely to not have WiFi. As a backup service ok. As the primary way to access my music. No thanks. Iʻll keep it local.
Didn’t microsoft have a social/cloud network that lost some people’s stuff?
http://www.fool.com/investing/high-growth/2009/10/13/did-microsoft-just-kill-the-cloud.aspx
Very smart actually… Any album or song bought from Amazon does not take up any additional “cloud” storage space, because it would just need to be stored “collectively” by Amazon. Amazon just needs track which users have access to which tracks. The songs that customers upload themselves to the service get stored “per customer” (not collectively), and use up cloud storage space inefficiently. Over time, Amazon’s hope is that a higher percentage of songs are songs bought from Amazon’s MP3 service.
The dumb part is not supporting iOS devices on Day One. All they need is something like Pandora’s music player app, except that it would stream your own music instead of collections based on genre. For streaming music, I really like Pandora because I can listen to music (of the type that I like) that I don’t already own, and I often listen to my iPod in “shuffle” mode.
Uhh, I don’t think Amazon is targeting Apple customers on this one… There’s a lot of other smartphones out there that could use it. Like Android? Just a thought.
Repost: What I find utterly hilarious about all this is that I have been able to stream my music from ‘the cloud’ from anywhere on the planet with an Internet connection FOR YEARS! It’s called MobileMe, formerly .Mac.
Just toss your tunes in your Public folder! Surf there and play away! Couldn’t be easier! Get bent Amazon! Bite me RIAA!
!!!!
Oh, the tech ignorance of the world…
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