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Amazon Launches Cloud-Based Storage Service and Music Player

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Amazon today unveiled a pair of cloud-based offerings designed to allow users to store music and other digital content in the cloud and to play cloud-hosted music tracks via players for the Web and on Android.

Amazon Cloud Drive is the new storage service, with the company offering users 5 GB of space free of charge. Additional capacity is available through paid plans at six different tiers priced at a uniform $1 per GB per year, starting at 20 GB ($20) and ranging up to 1000 GB ($1000).

As a bonus offer, customers who purchase an album from the Amazon MP3 Store before December 31st will receive a free one-year upgrade to the 20 GB level. In addition, any music content purchased through the Amazon MP3 Store and stored in Amazon Cloud Drive does not count toward a user's storage limit.

Amazon Cloud Player is the mechanism by which music stored in Amazon Cloud Drive can be played. The company offers a Web player compatible with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari, targeting both PCs and Macs. In addition, Amazon offers a downloadable app for Android devices to allow content to played on the mobile platform. Other mobile platforms such as iOS, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone are not supported, and the Web player does not function under iOS, rendering Apple's mobile devices incompatible with the service.

Apple has been rumored to be developing its own cloud-based "digital locker" solution focused on music and perhaps video, reportedly coming as a revamp to the company's MobileMe services. According to one recent report, Apple has finally reached a deal with Warner Brothers to permit the cloud-based storage and is pushing to get other labels to fall in line for an April launch of the new service, said to be priced at $20 per year for an undisclosed amount of storage space.

Article Link: Amazon Launches Cloud-Based Storage Service and Music Player
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/03/29/amazon-launches-cloud-based-storage-service-and-music-player/
kas23

kas23

macrumors 603
Oct 28, 2007
5,629
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Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C134 Safari/6533.18.5)

The web player cannot be played on iOS devices? Really? Is it Flash-based?

Geez, this seems like the Mac vs PC wars all over again. But, I can't blame Amazon for not making a native iOS app. I wouldn't want to blindly give Apple 30% of my profits either.
 
EvanLugh

EvanLugh

macrumors 68000
Aug 29, 2007
1,929
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Developer land
kas23 said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C134 Safari/6533.18.5)

The web player cannot be played on iOS devices? Really? Is it Flash-based?
Click to expand...

nope, they've just restricted it.
 
A

alent1234

macrumors 603
Jun 19, 2009
5,688
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just updated my Amazon android app on my HTC Inspire and it works

5GB is enough space for weeks of listening. all you need is to choose some favorite songs you listen to over and over again for this. not like you have to upload every song you own and listen to only once in a few years

cool idea. apple buys up all the flash, so amazon comes out with a service where you don't need any flash in a phone
 
D

DanBUK

macrumors regular
Oct 9, 2007
132
0
And if you stop subscribing?...What happens to your music files stored in the cloud?
 
A

aughsum

Guest
May 6, 2010
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0
kas23 said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C134 Safari/6533.18.5)

The web player cannot be played on iOS devices? Really? Is it Flash-based?
Click to expand...

It sounds like a bad move at first glance, but iOS users will likely use Apple's cloud-based service.
 
martygras9

martygras9

macrumors 6502
Aug 13, 2007
264
73
Pricing is fairly high when compared to external drives one can purchase. But the convenience of having your data WHEREVER you are is extremely tempting. Has anyone tried pogoplug before? It seems like an affordable solution to the cloud with its one time fee, but I'm not sure what the download speeds are like.
 
firestarter

firestarter

macrumors 603
Dec 31, 2002
5,506
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Green and pleasant land
Seems strange that they're not rolling this out to iDevices. I can't see them having to hand over 30% of the revenue to Apple - this looks like more of a Dropbox competitor.

Possibly Apple's launch of a competitor is imminent, and Amazon just doesn't think that they can compete on Apple's home turf?

I hope this is true. Could be quite useful.
 
L

levitynyc

macrumors 65816
Aug 19, 2006
1,123
3,704
I dont understand the point of this. Is storage really an issue on peoples computers? I understand the mobile app, but why not just store the files locally?
 
M

mjaco002

macrumors member
Feb 13, 2009
77
8
I think Apple will probably have the same deal as Amazon.

Amazon just beat them to the punch with this launch.

The deal from Apple will be that you will get 5GB when you open a account in Mobile Me and you will pay $20 for 20GB of space.

This might be the revamp that everyone is talking about with Mobile Me.

What do you guys think?
 
kavika411

kavika411

macrumors 6502a
Jan 8, 2006
617
3
Alabama
I'm glad Amazon rolled this out before Apple in the sense that I hope it pushes Apple to roll out a cloud subscription that handily beats Amazon's offering.
 
kavika411

kavika411

macrumors 6502a
Jan 8, 2006
617
3
Alabama
levitynyc said:
I dont understand the point of this. Is storage really an issue on peoples computers? I understand the mobile app, but why not just store the files locally?
Click to expand...

I believe that storage will be half the equation for the future MobileMe. I believe the other half will be some sort of wireless synching to the cloud - if you so choose - and not to your computer as we've done for too many years now.
 
dpruitt

dpruitt

Suspended
Mar 28, 2010
50
2
Not AmazonRumors.com

Okay, nice, guys. This is MacRumors, not AmazonRumors. Who gives a crap about Amazon? Move along now.
 
A

alent1234

macrumors 603
Jun 19, 2009
5,688
170
levitynyc said:
I dont understand the point of this. Is storage really an issue on peoples computers? I understand the mobile app, but why not just store the files locally?
Click to expand...


computers are last century, this is aimed at Android users like me with a phone with only 8GB of storage. no need to buy another SD card since i can dump part of my itunes library to amazon now
 
A

alent1234

macrumors 603
Jun 19, 2009
5,688
170
DanBUK said:
And if you stop subscribing?...What happens to your music files stored in the cloud?
Click to expand...

there is no subscription

you buy music from amazon you download an mp3. or you upload your own and listen to it on an android phone. if you stop using the service you still have your music on your computer
 
Consultant

Consultant

macrumors G5
Jun 27, 2007
13,314
34
Hilarious that companies are copying Apple rumors now.

Arn, we need an article that Apple is developing a space ship!
 
wheezy

wheezy

macrumors 65816
Apr 7, 2005
1,280
1
Alpine, UT
It's yet another Dropbox offering that's a long ways behind awesome-integration with other products (Lots of apps sync data between devices via Dropbox). And, if I put a music file into dropbox I can play it, mobile device independent.

Also, why would I only want my music accessible when I have internet? Any road trips from where I live (Utah) generally put me in EDGE territory which won't be consistently fast enough to stream the audio at enough quality, let alone the fact that there are several dead spots along the way. I'll stick to having my music on my iPhone. No buffer, no stutter, no data usage. Oh, yeah. That. Data usage. With carriers bottlenecking you now, you think they'll favor Amazon cloud delivery for people who want to stream their music all day long? They (Amazon) will probably also do some more compression on the files so it'll sound like listening to your music in a tin can.

At first glance, being very pessimistic, I'm not really interested in this product.
 
kavika411

kavika411

macrumors 6502a
Jan 8, 2006
617
3
Alabama
alent1234 said:
there is no subscription

you buy music from amazon you download an mp3. or you upload your own and listen to it on an android phone. if you stop using the service you still have your music on your computer
Click to expand...

I may have missed it, but what I'm trying to understand with Amazon's offering, and with what we think Apple will roll out, is whether you can push non-purchased music (i.e. CDs you ripped) into the cloud. That may not interest other people, but I'd like to be able to do that.
 
thejakill

thejakill

macrumors 6502
Sep 8, 2005
401
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Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5)

This is quite valuable, since there is currently no way to store music on your computer.
 
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