Amazon Challenges iTunes with Amazon Cloud Drive

At first blush, this new offering from Amazon sounds great! With Apple's iTunes, I can only play songs from my music library on the 3 or 4 devices that I have currently linked to my iTunes account.

With Amazon's Cloud Drive, I can store:

1. Anything I buy from Amazon for free forever

2. Anything I upload into my Amazon Cloud Drive, including, apparently my Apple iTunes-purchased music.

3. I can play anything from my Amazon Cloud Drive on any device and on as many (PC, Mac, or Android--for now) devices as I like, either by using the Amazon Cloud Player on the device's browser OR by downloading the MP3 file to that device and its native player

I DO have to pay for storage for anything I didn't purchase from Amazon--but it's $1 per Gig per year (after my first 5 gigabytes for free). Oh, and I get 20 additional Gigs free if I buy 1 song from Amazon.

And I can always export/download everything and store it locally if I prefer or don't want to keep paying Amazon.

Biggest surprise to me was the fact that I can apparently export all my iTunes-managed music to the Amazon cloud. Big slap in the face to Apple! I suspect that most people will keep both--itunes and Amazon Cloud, but migrate anything they want to play ANYWHERE to the Amazon cloud.

Oh, and by promoting music storage and "play anywhere" capabilities, Amazon is subtly promoting its cost-effective Amazon Cloud storage for personal storage of ALL my files -- including photos and videos and documents.

What's not to like?? What am I missing??

Comments

[Atlanta Roofing]

But at this point I'm wondering if a good future bet isn't Amazon. I like how they've thought of monetizing this, how they've integrated it, so far and their history with cross platform. Like you, I'm not jumping on today, but I sure am going to be watching it closely. I continue to be impressed with Amazon...

[Patty Seybold]

Both really good points, Scott..

I hadn't noticed the reliance on Flash. That seems like a problem, particularly for Apple users!

Also you're right, a "streaming only" model for accessing my music won't work IMHO.

I'm assuming that I can download music from my Amazon cloud storage and play it using a local player on my mobile device. I obviously need to test this more before I pontificate!

[Scott Jordan]

Patty, I think this will emerge as another facet of the native-app-vs-web-app debate.

Cloud storage is great, but unless it's backed up (literally) with local storage, then enjoying your library requires connectivity, which is already pricey and only going to become more dear.

To my eye, Amazon hasn't addressed this. Unless I'm missing something (entirely possible; the launch details aren't explained well by Amazon), it's a solution for the home or office (the latter at least until IT managers clamp down on it for bandwidth reasons, as many have done with Pandora et fils), but not for mobile devices yet, or so it seems. Maybe that's why they had no issue making its browser kiosk Flash-based? In any case, if the computing world is going mobile, that seems like an oversight. But maybe I'm just missing something. Music is all about portable players and has been for years.

Summary: If I'm confused about this, you can bet Joe Headset will be as well. The service seems fine but missing that mobile aspect, and its launch message kinda puzzles me.

Side issue: I wonder how many music hyperconsumers will bump up against their ISPs' GB limits this month as they rush to upload their libraries. For example, Time Warner was testing a 50GB monthly cap in some US regions last year.

[Scott Jordan]

Hm. Between this and Dropbox and Google's and Microsoft's offerings and whatever Apple has up its sleeve, seems cloud storage is becoming free or close to it. (But what about the bandwidth to horse all those gigabytes up and down?)

I clicked the link, and a new Firefox window opened, already signed-in to Amazon (hm: security). My 5GB were waiting for me... but I couldn't upload, as I've removed Flash from my machine! To great effect, I might add: battery life is 15% better, and browser misbehavior is a thing of the past. Fortunately I keep Chrome installed (in addition to Firefox and Safari); Chrome has Flash built-in. Ergo, I can use this service via the Chrome browser. But how odd that Amazon would make its new service Flash-based, when barely-functional buggy kinda/sorta Flash is just now coming to mobile devices of any stripe, and it's being omitted from recent MacBook Airs (and others?). Of course, users can always download it. Shouldn't have to, is my point.