Tag: Amazon Cloud Drive

Amazon Cloud Player Updates – Matches Competitors

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Amazon MP3 LogoWe’ve had a long road in cloud music. Back in December of last year, we compared the limitations of Google Music to that of Amazon MP3. At the time, Google won. The Amazon web player was not feature filled, the Google Music interface won, for ability to enter metadata, among other things.

But that has changed. Amazon announced a new revamped cloud offering. The most significant innovation is one that iTunes already offers, and that Amazon will now as well. Amazon will scan music libraries and match the songs on their computers to their catalog. All matched songs – even music purchased elsewhere or ripped from CDs will be made instantly available in Cloud Player as 256 Kbps audio.

Cloud Player now allows editing of metadata inside the player, a feature Google has had for some time.

Amazon Cloud Player is expanding to the Roku Box.

And, unlike previously, music purchased prior to the announcement of Amazon Cloud Player will now be available in your box. This was always a pet peeve, as Amazon knew the music was purchased…you bought it from them.

The new Cloud Player offers two options.

  • Cloud Player Free – Store all music purchased from Amazon, plus 250 songs.
  • Cloud Player Premium – Store up to 250,000 songs for $25 a year.

Amazon Cloud Player is now separate from Amazon Cloud Drive. Drive will now be used exclusively for file storage. 5GB is offered free, and 20GB is available for $10 per year.

In both cases, this is a compelling offer. However, there are some things missing. No Linux client for the desktop apps for either Drive or Player. No API for third-party development, which we’ve mentioned before.

How does this compare to Google Music? Google Music, since we last visited it, sells music itself…offers limited download functionality, and still has several limitations. Amazon is looking a lot more compelling.

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Amazon Reveals Cloud Music – Google Next?

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Amazon MP3 app on Droid
Image by scattered sunshine via Flickr

Amazon announced Amazon Cloud Drive and Amazon Cloud Player, a digital storage and music locker service. The first 5GB are free, 20GB is $20 a year(first year is free with the purchase of an album), 50GB is $50, etc.

The service will allow storage of any sort of file, but Amazon Cloud Player, which is available in the Amazon MP3 Android App and as a web-based player, only recognizes MP3 and AAC files. So no FLAC, OGG, etc. Shame, we like OGG.

Going forward, if you buy an album from Amazon MP3, it will be transferred directly to your cloud drive and does not count toward your storage allowance. Unfortunately, it will not import your previous purchases, so you will have to upload them. The MP3 uploader doesn’t support Linux, and there is no uploader on the Android app. Hopefully, Amazon or a third-party will rectify this, but we don’t see an API for third-party developers to build on yet either.

We’re curious to see what Google’s offering is for music. But this is perfect for Amazon MP3 purchases going forward. They are already storing the files anyway, so linking them into your account doesn’t cost them any space, which is why we’re surprised they won’t do it for already purchased files, considering they’ll have to store duplicates now.

It won’t beat Amazon S3 on functionality, but it does beat them on price. If they open it up to third-party app development and support additional formats, we’d put our media there, how about you?

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