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Amazon Launches Cloud-Based Storage Service and Music Player
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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?
ok so my session expires after every 2 songs. thats kinda annoying. is there an amazon setting i'm missing somewhere?
That will be their pitch. Value added cloud service. There really is no difference now for Android users between buying a mp3 or movie from iTunes or Amazon.
'By from us and automatically get a copy in your cloud account.'
Well, there is a difference. Two actually:
* it's cheaper on Amazon
* Amazon provides cloud service (Apple does not)
Some people like me change computers often and prefer having things in the cloud
Huh? This very much so is a MacRumors issue. Apple will be competing with this
Like Kindle On iDevices?
Streaming aside, I like how my kindle books sync to ALL of my devices from Amazon's cloud. Obviously DRM is annoying, but this seems to be a cool direction to go in for other media as well. Add streaming for music (maybe video) and it is perfect. You can download or stream anything you own. Have Apple implement the end user GUI app and we're set. You are all right to point out the impending data transfer price hell coming from our wireless carriers.
Streaming aside, I like how my kindle books sync to ALL of my devices from Amazon's cloud. Obviously DRM is annoying, but this seems to be a cool direction to go in for other media as well. Add streaming for music (maybe video) and it is perfect. You can download or stream anything you own. Have Apple implement the end user GUI app and we're set. You are all right to point out the impending data transfer price hell coming from our wireless carriers.
Do some research on Amazon before you make your lazy, ignorant statements. Ever heard of Amazon Web Services? They've been providing cloud-based services since 2002, for Pete's sake! You should change your nick. It's not the first time I see you spewing unfounded statements.
This looks good to me. My pain point is syncing my 120GB or so of music with a hard drive that I have at my office. I don't need to stream music from the cloud, but that's nice.
We'll soon have USB-sized drives that hold that much data. I'll probably hold out for some kind of one-time cost like that. Even now the drives that hold this stuff are about wallet sized, so it's just a matter of bringing it home once in a while and syncing it up. The price point is great, but not something I want to pay yet.
I use AWS for some Web servers and it has been a fantastic service. I agree with the poster above that this paves the way for Amazon to be the defacto content supplier on Android devices. Not a bad place to be.
We'll soon have USB-sized drives that hold that much data. I'll probably hold out for some kind of one-time cost like that. Even now the drives that hold this stuff are about wallet sized, so it's just a matter of bringing it home once in a while and syncing it up. The price point is great, but not something I want to pay yet.
I use AWS for some Web servers and it has been a fantastic service. I agree with the poster above that this paves the way for Amazon to be the defacto content supplier on Android devices. Not a bad place to be.
i dont like this new idea of storing purchased media in the cloud. The thing that immediately comes to mind is more restrictions for our purchases. More limitations to make the end user cough up more money.
Dropbox is the same, only difference and it is a big difference if you purchase music from Amazon and store it, you can re-download all your music, that is huge. I can't tell you how many times I have lost music purchased through iTunes.
Nobody forces you to store your music there. You can always store it on your computer if you want. Funny how you can see extra feature as a "limitation". I bet that when Apple offers similar service (just more expensive) you'll call it a "revolutionary" feature.
This pay-per-use cloud accessible storage seems to be a good idea only as a supplement to on-board device storage.
Ownership of data is a concern. If I buy music through the cloud service does that affect my ownership of the music/data? Can I download the music to my hard drive and have unrestricted access to it after I cancel my cloud subscription? At that point, why would I want to continue paying for service for something I already have in my possession. And why not have the option of streaming this data from my own computer on which it's already contained and for which I already pay to have internet bandwidth (I realize that some people may have very limited bandwidth allowance)? If I'm only going to be keeping a small percentage of my audio online then it's one more thing to keep track of and manage. If I keep everything on the cloud then I'm paying a substantial monthly fee that annually could pay for a lot more memory on my device in the first place. Problem solved.
I just returned from an international trip. When I travel is typically when I use my iDevice most often. Music in the rental car, watching videos during down time or travel time. Expensive, bandwidth hungry cloud data is not an option [for me] when traveling internationally. I also take long road trips with a significant amount of time spent outside of service areas.
Too many downsides. Too many apparent restrictions.
Ownership of data is a concern. If I buy music through the cloud service does that affect my ownership of the music/data? Can I download the music to my hard drive and have unrestricted access to it after I cancel my cloud subscription? At that point, why would I want to continue paying for service for something I already have in my possession. And why not have the option of streaming this data from my own computer on which it's already contained and for which I already pay to have internet bandwidth (I realize that some people may have very limited bandwidth allowance)? If I'm only going to be keeping a small percentage of my audio online then it's one more thing to keep track of and manage. If I keep everything on the cloud then I'm paying a substantial monthly fee that annually could pay for a lot more memory on my device in the first place. Problem solved.
I just returned from an international trip. When I travel is typically when I use my iDevice most often. Music in the rental car, watching videos during down time or travel time. Expensive, bandwidth hungry cloud data is not an option [for me] when traveling internationally. I also take long road trips with a significant amount of time spent outside of service areas.
Too many downsides. Too many apparent restrictions.
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Storing some music locally on my phone and having a 20gb cloud of music and having it all accessable via a single app is brilliant.
A good move and potentially good product from Amazon. Looking forward to a UK release!
Storing some music locally on my phone and having a 20gb cloud of music and having it all accessable via a single app is brilliant.
A good move and potentially good product from Amazon. Looking forward to a UK release!
No one forces you now. I was talking in terms of future limitations. I was also speaking in the abstract, meaning any company to offer a service of this nature will "probably" impose some sort of restrictions to gouge money from the consumer. Again, speaking in future terms. Otherwise, what is the point of building some grand service if it has no advantage economically? Companies are out to make money.
it's a freemium service meant to make some people pay for extra storage and to buy music from amazon rather than itunes
they expect most people to use it from an android phone with very little local storage. and they already built out AWS over the last few years and this is just monetizing some of the extra capacity they have. they are probably using single instance storage for the music so it's not like there are going to be thousands of copies of every song on their servers
Um...the RIAA didn't bring them down. Apple bought them. it was called Lala.com and nothing has been as good since.
It was nearly perfect. Amazon's offering here is a good step back towards they way things were a year ago with Lala.com.
I had nearly 100 GB of itunes library synced to lala.com and available anywhere there was a browser. I could listen to any song or album in their massive library one time all the way through for free. "web albums" were 99 cents. Tracks were 10 cents. My biggest gripe was the lack of a non-browser player option. Of course they were working on an iOS player app (in public beta) when Apple bought them and shut them down without ceremony.
Whatever we get will be less than what Lala was 2 years or more ago. They had the support of all the major labels and most of the larger indie distributors, as well.
You can log in to your cloud account at any time and download any music you've purchased from amazon.com.
If you have a paid account, and you use more than the 5GB of "free" data space, then you stop paying for it and your account reverts back to "free" mode, you can still download your data, but you can't add any new data to the account until you remove enough to get you back under the 5GB cap.
If you have stuff on the cloud that you don't already have stored on your own device somewhere, you're playing with fire to begin with.
I don't trust corporate clouds, especially with a service that Sony is clearly gunning for legally.
I suggest Subsonic. It streams music from your Mac or PC to your iPhone, Android phone, or Win7 phone. It also allows you to stream from another computer via a web browser. And it's free! Own your data, create your own cloud.
http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp
I suggest Subsonic. It streams music from your Mac or PC to your iPhone, Android phone, or Win7 phone. It also allows you to stream from another computer via a web browser. And it's free! Own your data, create your own cloud.
http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp
I agree w/ this. Everyone has internet at home and everyone who is so into media, already has a media server. Stuff like air video and streamtome works just fine for streaming media from anywhere internet is available.
People who care so much about accessing media enough to take their time to upload their stuff to cloud can certainly do same at their own house. Is this really for people who don't have internet at home or can't afford nas at home?
Seriously, what is the point of all this? Only time cloud storage works is for group collaboration where people need to share things from everywhere. For personal stuff, personal computer works the best w/ decent internet.
and do you think Apple will likely be competitive and innovative with such an offering?
i do hope so, but the record with mobme isn't exactly stellar.
I completely agree. I see a scary thing starting here. It used to be overage for "minutes" on phones (which almost never happens how). But now they want you to have "caps". They "claim" that the "typical user" doesn't regularly reach the cap. But with more and more of services with offerings like the cloud come into play. EVERYONE will be hitting those caps. Hell, just UPLOADING your music to the "cloud" may do this for some. Not to mention, if you get close you know that certain companies *cough-comcast* SLOW your internet speed down, right?
Not to mention, you've got these companies who want to charge you for data...and then because you want to use your data a certain way, want to charge you more. (WiFi sharing of iPhone internet, thanks AT&T)
Comcast doesn't charge me extra because we share our internet between 2 computers, 2 iPhones, an iPad, PS3, Tivo, Kindle 3, PSP....etc...
We're heading down a dangerous path... stunted and/or limited internet and stringent data caps.