Monday, May 23, 2011

Amazon Cloud Music Player

The main reason I don't buy songs or many videos form iTunes is because I have to store them and back them up locally. Amazon is now offering to store such things in the "cloud" for me. Today, they have a special $0.99 offer for Lady Gaga's latest album. I can download the MP3's directly to my computer, play on any device (including the iPod) -- but if my hard drive crashes, they are still in Amazon's cloud.

In this way, it's a music version of the Kindle, where all the books are stored in the cloud. Even if my Kindle is destroyed, I can still get a replacement device, and re-download all my purchased books. In much the same way, I could buy a new iPod, and download everything on my Amazon cloud account any time I want.

So here is a screenshot. I'm listening to my purchase, via the web-based player, as I write this.


I'll download these later to my iPod and see how that works.


How much does the the Cloud Drive cost?



My music is placed on my Cloud Drive. I didn't know I had something called a "Cloud Drive". What the heck is that?

Apparently, it's a new service by Amazon. It gives you 5-gigabytes of free storage for things you upload to it. In addition, things you buy from Amazon do not count toward that limit. I suppose everyone who has an account with Amazon now has a "Cloud Drive".

I'm a bit worried that Amazon was doing the typical slimy business practice of giving you a new service without you realizing it, then charging you for it. But, apparently not. The service is free. In addition, with my Lady Gaga purchase, I got a free "one year trial" of the 20-gig version. After a year, it will automatically revert back to the 5-gig -- it will not automatically start charging me.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

But MORE BRILLIANT! The media you buy from Amazon goes in your cloud drive, but doesn't use up your space. Because Amazon obviously already has the digital copies, and they're just moving pointers.