Amazon Announces Cloud-Based Streaming Music Service
Today, Amazon announced the immediate availability of Cloud Player for web and Android OS. Coupled with Amazon Cloud Drive, the new technology offers a free cloud-based music storage and streaming solution that beats both Apple and Google to the stream-your-music-library punch.
Users' music files can be easily uploaded to the Amazon Cloud Drive using the proprietary Amazon MP3 Uploader, and are then available for streaming to PCs, Macs, and Android phones that use the Amazon Cloud Player.
The uploader does limit the types of files it will upload from users' drives: no DRM-protected files, MP3 and AAC music formats only, no files over 100 MB, no miscellaneous audio files (audio books, ring tones, etc), and non play lists that contain any of the above. Also, the uploader requires Adobe Air, so if that framework bugs you, you're going to want to skip the uploader.
Thankfully, despite appearances that the uploader must be used to take advantage of Cloud Drive, that isn't the case. Users can navigate to their Cloud Drive page and upload files directly, making the new Amazon offering a potential storage spot for documents, graphics, and other files.
Amazon's new service is available immediately, and is free for the first 5 gig of music, with paid subscriptions that start at $20 per year for 20 GB and scale all the way to $1000/year for a 1000 GB. Music purchased from Amazon.com does not count towards your quota, a very slick move that should help build MP3 sales from the retailer.
So Amazon draws first blood with a cheap and powerful solution. However, with no iPhone support (yet) it appears that the market is still clear for Apple to jump in with their enormous lifestyle technology feet, and you have to know Google isn't going to just sit by and let Amazon rule any cloud-based anything. This should be an interesting few months, at least for those that are interested in streaming their music to wherever they happen to be.
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