Amazon's Cloud music storage is here..

Point taken.

 

I spent so much money on music over the decades that I will never ever let anyone control how I listen to it, where I listen or where I store it. The only price I might pay is if it is free.

Once I get my WD drive loaded up, and that drive cloned to another, I am buying some smaller drives for travel. I want to have several of those drives that are the size of a deck of cards. Those drives will be my travel drives.

I wonder if you can trade data from one cloud to another?

 

What he said.

 

Wow...you guys have no imagination as to what Amazon is doing. This is a brilliant move. Some of my random thoughts...

1. First to allow cloud streaming....put music (+movies) in one location and play it everywhere. Very user friendly and gives you another option. You can even put your own music there that you did not buy from Amazon.

2. They did it without the Music Industry's "permission". Nothing would every get done waiting for that. The status quo helps Apple. The status quo sucks.

3. Amazon set the terms of cloud streaming by being first. Apple supposedly is going to release something soon, but I would bet they will only allow you to use music you purchased from Apple. If Apple's service reeks of profiteering and is less "consumer friendly" than Amazon's, Apple will look bad. How does it compare with Amazon's is now the first question that everyone will ask.

4. Amazon continues to embrace Android which will become the new "Windows" for phones and Tablets. Tablets will replace PCs soon enough for most people. Amazon just released their own "App Store" for android devices. They are setting themselves up to be the "Apple" of Android (getting a taste of the majority of digital items purchased for the OS).

5. Android is open and continues to get better. How come the new Ipad can not sync with its "master" PC/Mac wirelessly? No support for FLAC on Apple? - try Android. 2.5X more Android phones now in US than Iphone. Android is less restrictive for people who love freedom of choice.

Conlcusion: Put all of your digital media in one place and play it back anywhere in the world. That one place might as well be the cloud. Amazon is jumping on this concept with the first baby step. They have the servers, the expertise, the hot new OPEN OS, and a great name and loyal user base. Android is now coming to TV sets as well.

Cloud music for Amazon is the first step to beating Apple and Netflix in streaming everything. I like what they are doing.


Advice for Apple:

1. Support Blu-ray
2. Support Flac
3. Partner up with DirectTV, and Comcast for Apple cable boxes/satellite receivers/DVRs.
4. Partner up with Netlfix before Amazon takes over.

 

I don't need to play back my digital media anywhere in the world. 95% of the time I am in a twenty-mile radius of my home. When I was in Europe three months ago, I played back my digital media on my iPhone. I don't see Android vs. Apple as religious war - I prefer Apple products because they work better for me, that's it. If Apple launches a cloud service of its own, I'm not interested in that, either.

If Amazon or Apple can pull off the bandwidth to stream millions of peoples' music and movies to them with no hiccups or interruptions of service, more power to them. I don't want to be watching my digital episode of The Office from the cloud and have it freeze for thirty seconds. I'm willing to put up with snafus like that from Hulu because I don't "own" the file I'm watching. But even if there are zero technical problems, and it's just like watching a movie or listening to a song stored on your hard drive, someone's eventually going to have to pay for all that bandwidth. And it ain't gonna be Amazon, it's gonna be you.

 

You can still store locally on the device. Download is part of what Cloud Drive offers. You don't *have* to stream but the option is there for when you do have good connectivity. It is adding a choice, not taking anything away.

It depends whether you ever want to play something that you have purchased but happens not to be on your device - since most devices are too small in capacity to store an entire collection.

That said, I prefer the Spotify concept where you can play anything from a vast range rather than just what you have purchased.

http://gadgets.itwriting.com/?p=300

Tim

 

Yeah, we're uh, gonna have to build a better internet for that. And, since it's better, we're gonna have to have the customers pay for it. And um, those that can't afford to pay don't get on. And eh, that "net nutrality" thing? We can't afford that - we're makin' progress, here...

Lining up the dominoes in place for the big show...

 

These horseless carriages will never take off. They are too expensive, unreliable and there are not enough roads to drive them on.

Now, where's my buggywhip?

 

I disagree with this. I had MOG on my Android phone and was streaming music over it at 320kbps quality. It sounded great through my car stereo.

I'm not really sure what you're saying the difference is between "downloaded" and "streamed"...as long as the bit rate's the same, there should be no difference.

I think what you meant to say is that the constant flow of music/data will suffer as a result of poor reception if streamed in an area with low signal.

 

I would not use a music cloud service for a road trip around California, for example....

 

That is my understanding - that any file you store in "the cloud" can also be downloaded to your computer at any time you want. I would keep everything in both places. So the purpose of the cloud would be 1.) when you want to listen to your music from a different computer somewhere (like at a friend's house if you want to play something in your collection for them), and 2.) a backup copy of your music that you don't have to store and look after yourself

 

I´ll stick to my vinyls and let Amazon rule over barbarians

 

Let me give you my real-world scenario as to why this might be very useful.

I currently have a 3100 songs on my Android phone via the SD card. That won't change; I'll still keep them all local. But I could easily identify another 5GB of songs in my home collection that I'd really like to have access to when I'm in my car (or wherever). With this cloud concept, I could keep the "next best" 5GB of music.

Also anything you buy through Amazon's MP3 store is available yet does not count against your storage. So basically you can store up to 5GB from any source plus an unlimited amount of Amazon MP3 purchases.

I really don't understand all the negativity about this new offering. It's just that -- an offering. No one is forced to use it. Some on here keep harping about the fact that to store 2TB it would cost you $2000 per year. Big deal. It's 2011 right now. In another 5 years maybe you'd have some need for remote access to 2TB worth of content but right now? Red herring argument.

 

You can do whatever you like with your vinyl (no such word as "vinyls" by the way) and that is fine by me, but there is no need to flame. I am not a "barbarian" thank you because I might listen to music via a cloud server as one option for hearing music.

 

I don't think you should take that comment personally.

 

This is exciting as hell! Amazon did something totally unexpected yesterday and it can ONLY be seen as a good thing. Don't think their offer of 20gb of space the price of a single mp3 album (even a heavily discounted sale-price one) isn't a spiky barb thrown at Apple's MobileMe, which offers 20gb of space for the retail price of $99 (along with other stuff, but how many really care that much about the rest?)

I got a cheap box of MobileMe off Ebay last fall for $45 and really can't say I have much use for it. I'll sign up with Vimeo for video hosting in the future so I can have high quality HD video and continue using Flickr to host pictures. $20 for 20gb on Amazon, if they really do charge for it in a year, really is pretty good considering the accessibility. Apple really has to step it up with MobileMe to make it worthwhile now - they already had an uphill battle, now it seems incredibly steep.

Also, don't ignore Kindle. Andy Inahtko just today mentioned something very important - Amazon hasn't updated Kindle in a while. Wouldn't it be a great time for Amazon to release a color Kindle that also doubles as a table that - tada! - accesses all this storage space Amazon offers? With that 3G capability built-in, and presumably still included in the price, they could have a SERIOUS contender for the iPad. Amazon has to have something up there sleeve here. Cloud services are just the beginning.

 

Maybe this is a dumb question, but how would I play the music thru my home stereo? An Aux jack to my phone?

 

Yep, or from your computer.

It seems more geared towards portable music retrieval. Playing at home would be easier with local media or data stored on a PC.

 

BWA HA HAH! HA HAH HA! HA HA HA HA BWA HA HAH!


(I'm sorry, what were we discussing again?)

 

This is a deal breaker for me.

 

Someone will come up with a new "Dark Cloud" system with better privacy, better everything and based in the Netherlands or some offshore island. It might even be called "Cloud Nine."

Can Amazon and Apple claim to own all cloud storage systems? I see many options coming, just a guess.

 

Having 3100 songs on my phone is enough for me for any road trip I will ever take.

Do I really need 5 more gigs of songs for the car? Maybe if I decide to drive to Mars.

Like somebody said above, I'll keep my vynils at home and let other people have instant access to terabytes of music wherever they go. For me, it's enough to have the 50 new albums I'm currently listening to on my phone at any one time. I don't need to have instant access to every Charlie Parker false start and incomplete take in home library while I'm on my next trip to Singapore.

 

I own a holiday house at Mt Tambourine in Australia called "Cloud Nine". You can store your stuff there.

http://www.lanerealty.com.au/lr80058.html

 

Amazon is winning in my book.

I like their free app a day for their Android App Store too!

Keep up the good work!

 

Fair enough. I guess where I am coming from is that there seems to be so much fear and loathing (and some ignorance) about digital downloading and cloud based music in general though. It's just an option among many. Choice is a wonderful thing. From vinyl (not "vinyls") to CD's to all other formats, we are so lucky to have that choice. Each to their own. Just MHO.