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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.

^ this

it is very good news that Amazon jumped into the water first. now it places the pressure on Apple. Apple will juice up their service (if it already wasn't) to top what Amazon is offering.
 
I still don't get how this is better than Dropbox, hopefully it can compete with Dropbox though to make the service better.

I am up to 7GB I believe of free storage on Dropbox too.

And what's the point of having 5GB of data in the cloud if mobile data plans only allow you to download 2GB?

They look at companies that have created amazing magazine apps or streaming media apps, and now they say that they demand the opportunity to market subscriptions to those services and take a 30% cut.

I am so tired of hearing about this.... Do you think that when somebody makes a game for the Wii, 360 or PS3, that Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony don't make any money from it?
 
I seem to remember the "backing up your library" to the "cloud" was tried by someone before. They had software that scanned the CD in your drive and then either ripped it to their servers, or just unlocked access to that album in your account. RIAA brought them down. This seems a little different, and highly wasteful of space. If 500 people upload a copy of "whatever," Amazon has to store 500x the space of "whatever," rather then just unlocking one copy for 500x people. Keep in mind 1 meg of cloud space is easily over 10 megs of physical storage. (RAID, redundancy, geographical peers, backups, etc...)

Amazon... not sure what to make them. They seem to be doing things which obviously will get them sued. I guess they figure if any ONE takes off they will make bank. Either way, I'm excited about this because Apple is great at being the best. The better the competition, the better the Apple product.
 
I still don't get how this is better than Dropbox, hopefully it can compete with Dropbox though to make the service better.

I am up to 7GB I believe of free storage on Dropbox too.

And what's the point of having 5GB of data in the cloud if mobile data plans only allow you to download 2GB?



I am so tired of hearing about this.... Do you think that when somebody makes a game for the Wii, 360 or PS3, that Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony don't make any money from it?

Its a false analogy. Game systems are developed and marketed at a loss (at least for a while) and royalties on game sales help make up for it. This is how it has been historically.

iOS is a computing platform. It is not the status quo for the OS developer to seek royalties from the software that runs on it. And further, iOS hardware is outrageously profitable in itself.
 
i don't like cloud based storage, am i the ony one thinking it is extremely energy wasting?
why would i, in Italy, need to stream data from a server based in sweden, just to play an mp3 song i already own (since then)?
wouldn't it lead to a massive data overload?
or maybe i'm just missing the point..
 
Okay, nice, guys. This is MacRumors, not AmazonRumors. Who gives a crap about Amazon? Move along now.

Of course it's not AmazonRumors.com but just because this article isn't specifically related to Apple does not mean it has no place on an Apple rumor site. There is a lot you can take away from this article in regard to what Apple has in store for the future based on their competition.

It drives me crazy when people dimiss articles on here just because they don't have Apple written all over them. That doesn't mean they are irrelevant in regard to apple rumors.
 
I was excited about this at first but... this just seems like an incredibly stupid fad. Instead of spending time to put the music on my PMP, I sync to the digital cloud, then stream the music to said player. Yeah, in an era where unlimited data is becoming more not less scarce, that's just what I need, data surcharges. This just appears to be yet another fad intending to push consumer technology in the wrong direction.
 
And Amazon thinks crippling ioS compatibility will be good business? FAIL.

Why would Amazon spend time and money catering to the iOS platform when Apple is flaky on what it approves in the app store. We still have no idea how Apple's greedy "we want 30% of subscriber revenues" rule will effect some of the most popular iOS apps when Apple decides to start enforcing it this summer. When Apple rolls out their new ME service they could very well simply deny Amazon access to the app store. Imagine all the pissed off people at Amazon who paid only to find out they can't access their cloud services anymore thanks to Apple's decision.
 
Wherever I have good internet connection, I have my Local storage ... I can buy music over the air and listen to it on my iPhone... and get it on my iPod Touch.... Don't see why it needs to get more spacy.

Alot of people will enjoy this but personally, I wanna OWN my storage, not subscribe to it... plus listening to music off a drive saves more battery then having your 3G/4G or WiFi pulling to get your music.

Oh and when you having ****** coverage, (back of a grocery store) what happens then to your cloud playlist??
 
playback on iphone works?

so i just purchased an album through amazon and stored it in the cloud just to see what it was like... I got the this browser is not supported on my iphone when going to the cloud player, i clicked on continue anyway or whatever it was... and i was able to play my album on my iphone. the upload music files link is grayed out but i can still listen to the album. can't confirm playback of files that have been uploaded to the cloud but purchased from amazon and stored in cloud seems to work on iphone :)

Edit: I am using safari... I am also jailbroken so I don't know if there is any hidden difference?
 
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isn't dropbox the same thing?

More than you know - DropBox actually uses Amazon's S3 storage web service. They are a value-added provider on top much like JungleDisk. DropBox does not own the cloud themselves.

I saw this referenced in a DropBox security FAQ/whitepaper some time back
 
Oh well
---
For U.S. Customers Only

It appears that you are attempting to use Amazon Cloud Player from outside the U.S. This service is intended for U.S. customers only.
---

I'm sure Amazon is doing a toe-in-the-water approach. World wide roll out has to be in the master plan but they want to see what s-storm develops from this first.

I think this is the first major salvo in what is going to be a very long and protracted new distribution war.

You've got Apple, Netflix and Amazon fighting for the new model market share while the old guard of Viacom, Comcast, TW, etc are still trying to protect their 1990s era dinosaurs.

Google seemed to give up rather quickly but probably shouldn't be counted out. Apple's media people seem to know they have a tiger by the tail but Apple corporate doesn't always heavily advertise the fact to the non-Apple consumer as much as they market the hardware. Amazon definitely sees an opening and they usually are spot-on.

The dinosaurs have the government lobbied to the extreme and are going to do what they do best. Block any innovation and progress that doesn't result in an immediate increase the next quarter
 
I seem to remember the "backing up your library" to the "cloud" was tried by someone before. They had software that scanned the CD in your drive and then either ripped it to their servers, or just unlocked access to that album in your account. RIAA brought them down. This seems a little different, and highly wasteful of space. If 500 people upload a copy of "whatever," Amazon has to store 500x the space of "whatever," rather then just unlocking one copy for 500x people. Keep in mind 1 meg of cloud space is easily over 10 megs of physical storage. (RAID, redundancy, geographical peers, backups, etc...)

Amazon... not sure what to make them. They seem to be doing things which obviously will get them sued. I guess they figure if any ONE takes off they will make bank. Either way, I'm excited about this because Apple is great at being the best. The better the competition, the better the Apple product.

not really true. it depends on what kind of storage options they are currently running, there are many devices and programs out there that eliminate this kind of redundancy and odds are amazon is using them right now.
 
And Amazon thinks crippling ioS compatibility will be good business? FAIL.

I agree. I am absolutely convinced that Amazon's decision has nothing to do with the fact that their new cloud service gives free storage for MP3 files purchased from Amazon. Those idiots at Amazon probably still think that iOS is a close ecosystem where Apple restricts competitors in order to be able to rip off their loyal customer base.
 
This sounds like dropbox basically, although it has more space, but no ios intigration.

I can't reccommend dropbox enough - I can't believe I only signed up a few months ago. iphone app is great.

http://db.tt/W6sK2Xj

If you haven't checked it out then do so!
 
not really true. it depends on what kind of storage options they are currently running, there are many devices and programs out there that eliminate this kind of redundancy and odds are amazon is using them right now.

The fact that they offer free space for MP3 files purchased from Amazon clearly indicates that those files be stored in a single copy.
 
For any of these cloud-based services, what is the streaming bit-rate/SQ? What if you don't have a signal?

I have concerns about the agreement with Amazon, as other posters have wisely pointed out....I'm sure Apple's will be similar, if not better....time will tell...
 
I was excited about this at first but... this just seems like an incredibly stupid fad. Instead of spending time to put the music on my PMP, I sync to the digital cloud, then stream the music to said player. Yeah, in an era where unlimited data is becoming more not less scarce, that's just what I need, data surcharges. This just appears to be yet another fad intending to push consumer technology in the wrong direction.

You're making too much sense and will be branded a heretic. ;)
 
not really true. it depends on what kind of storage options they are currently running, there are many devices and programs out there that eliminate this kind of redundancy and odds are amazon is using them right now.

Technically, yes.
Legally, no.

There have been assorted lawsuits which ruled if you're going to "buffer" data for a consumer, you have to keep a copy for each customer - no "well, these people are storing the same thing so let's just store one copy". Stupid, but true. Amazon's way around this was obviously to make arrangements with publishers (or to have some creative lawyers leveraging a particular position) allowing the seller to keep one copy and give customers access to that one.

Upshot: buy it from Amazon, they use one copy and tout "free storage"; upload it to Amazon's storage, they have to store that copy independent of any other duplicates.
 
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