Amazon Releases Cloud-Based Music Service

c0lo writes "Right after rumors that Google was preparing to take on iTunes service with a digital music store of its own, Amazon has announced that it's entering the fight with a cloud-based music service of its own. From the article: 'Amazon Cloud Drive is a "personal disk drive in the cloud," while Amazon Cloud Player is, well, a Web-based music player. That's right--Amazon Cloud Drive will be something like Google's rumored digital music locker, a cloud-based storage system for all of your tunes.'"

Comments

It's cloud-based alright

[elrous0]

Because if Amazon doesn't think the music studios are going to push back *HARD* on this, their heads are in the cloud. Here's a relevant quote:

"We are disappointed that the locker service that Amazon is proposing is unlicensed by Sony Music," a spokeswoman for Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment told the Journal.

Considering that Sony will sue people who even *talk* about putting their IP on the web, you think they're just going to sit back and watch while you allow everyone and his brother to put all their ripped Sony CD's on a web accessible service?

All I can say is that Amazon (and Google and Apple if they intend to follow up with their rumored similar services) had better lawyer up.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[mikaelg]

I agree, record labels will never allow it. On the other hand, there are services that already have deals with them, and they're better too. Zune Pass offers unlimited music streaming for just $14.99 a month. A nice deal, huh?

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[elrous0]

I think comparing this to Zune Pass is apples and oranges. From what I understand Zune Pass is something more akin to Netflix's streaming service, with a limited number of titles available, and locked down with DRM. This "locker" is a storage service that essentially lets you put any song you want onto it (pirated, ripped, or legally purchased). This would allow you to access your entire music collection, through the web, from anywhere--with no royalties or agreements with any studio. There is no way the studios are just going to look the other way on this.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[Anonymous Coward]

So the 7-11 down the street from me was giving away 3 free Zunes with the purchase of a Slurpee. I was unaware of this promotion, so you can imagine my surprise when the clerk tried to hand me a pile of what I assumed to be fecal matter with my drink. My initial excitement of course turned to disappointment when I realized it was in fact a Zune.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[adamchou]

That link has nothing to do with copyright law and I don't even see how that case is at all relevant to Amazon's or Google's service. On top of that, Amazon isn't providing a music sharing service. Its a web based storage service that only you access.

As for the lawyers, I HIGHLY doubt that any of the RIAA members have the financial balls to take on either Amazon or Google. Besides, if they go after either of the two companies, both companies have the financial means to pursue the case, most likely win the case, and set precedent that would bar the RIAA from ever pulling crap like that again. So I HOPE that the RIAA decides to try to sue.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[nateross]

Just because Sony may be overly litigious doesn't mean they will be successful. If Amazon secures the cloud based service sufficiently to ensure the identity of the individual, perhaps limiting the number of devices that can connect (eg Netflix streaming) they would simply be providing cloud storage to individuals. How is that any different than generic cloud storage? They could easily link it with AmazonMP3 service to ensure that you own all the music you have on the system. Essentially, music that you buy would be able to be streamed after the initial download... like Pandora from your own music.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[elrous0]

My 7-11 had the same deal, only they offered the option to choose between three Zunes or three Grammys. I took the Zunes, because hey, a little something is better than nothing at all, right?

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[cpu6502]

>>>Zune Pass...14.99 a month. A nice deal, huh?

That's 14.99 too expensive. I store my music on my hard drives (times two) for free. And I can access it anywhere, even at work, which blocks streaming music from Zune.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[gehrehmee]

Precedent says that's not necessarily good enough. MP3.com had a huge library of music, that was only available if you proved you owned the CD already. They were shut down quite dramatically.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[elrous0]

Its a web based storage service that only you access.

Yeah, assuming no one every thinks of creating a generic account and then handing out the userid and password to all their friends. And I imagine they will--about 5 seconds after this thing launches.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[xhrit]

this is not what it does though. from the looks of it this will allow you to play songs you buy from amazon in a special player that is totally locked down. in this respect it is pretty much exactly like itunes except you can only listen to music you buy from the amazon cloud in the amazon cloud player. player comes in android, mac, and windows flavors. chances are the studios are on board, just liek that are with amazon selling mp3s and what not.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[_|()|\|]

All I can say is that Amazon ... had better lawyer up.

Unless it violates their contracts, I'm not sure what the labels can do. I imagine it will be a sticking point when the time comes to renew those contracts.

There are already plenty of online backup services (including some based on EC2) filled with personal music libraries (including MP3s downloaded from Amazon). I wonder whether the back end employs any kind of de-duplication. Does Amazon use watermarking that would interfere with that?

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[nateross]

If they limit the number of devices that access it, and only provide music that you purchase on that account... I think generic accounts would be pretty limited.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[elrous0]

Just because Sony may be overly litigious doesn't mean they will be successful.

I always hope that they will fail in all their jackboot lawsuits. Yet they always seem to be on the winning end of every motion, subpeona, and trial. Even when they pull shit like the infamous rootkit, all THEY get is a slap on the wrist, while everyone who illegally downloads their stuff gets their door kicked in by cops and their lives destroyed.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[elrous0]

All the reports I've seen indicate that they will also let you upload your own MP3 and AAC files to the server. And obviously Sony isn't on board, at least.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[elrous0]

How can they limit it if they're letting you access it through any web browser? Maybe if they were requiring you to actually install their software, but it sounds like it's just a basic web interface.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[Jason Levine]

There's a small, yet significant, difference between Amazon Cloud Drive and MP3.com. MP3.com was ripping tons of CDs. They then had you insert your CD in the drive so you could get access to their ripped version online. Amazon is letting users upload their own files. Yes, these could be pirated files or files that the user owns, but this is the user's responsibility. Plus, unless the user shares their Amazon login information with others, they will be the only ones able to access those music files. It should be easy to weed out TOS violators (people who store pirated MP3s and then let others log in to retrieve them) without shutting down the entire service.

Besides, if this becomes MP3.com vs RIAA: Round 2, I hope that Amazon points out that their Cloud Music service could be replicated by anyone with a web hosting account and FTP software. My hosting account has unlimited storage. (I know, it's really not "unlimited", but I can store more than the 5GB that Amazon is offering.) If I made a folder called "My Music", which I didn't tell anyone about, and uploaded my MP3s there, they would be backed up the same as with Amazon Cloud Drive. For additional security, I could password protect the folder so if someone stumbled upon mysite.com/My Music/, they wouldn't be able to get in. For even more security, if the host so offered it, I could put the files outside of the website's root so they would only be available over FTP.

Basically, if Sony is allowed to say that Amazon's Cloud Storage is illegal, than so is any web hosting service. After all, just because I'm not uploading MP3s of Sony music to my web space doesn't mean I *can't*. And since I theoretically could do this, why would a web hosting service be legal while Amazon Cloud Drive would be illegal. (Especially since web hosting services are specifically designed to share files out and you need to take action to prevent this.)

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[Eraesr]

I don't understand the problem. I assume that the stuff I put in my locker can only be streamed by me? Sure, login credentials can be shared among friends, but is that really Amazon's problem? At most Amazon could put in some anti-sharing measures like only accepting one connection per locker simultaneously.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[MistrBlank]

It doesn't have to be.

Sony, I already paid for the license, just go EFF yourself.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[elrous0]

There are already plenty of online backup services (including some based on EC2) filled with personal music libraries

Yeah, but this goes a lot further than just an online backup storage drive. It also includes a music player. And they're advertising it specifically as a music service. The studios are going to go apeshit on anything that threatens their stranglehold/monopoly. And this definitely qualifies.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[Jason Levine]

And those people can be rooted out and banned. It should be easy to find accounts that are being logged into from many different IP addresses. If the number of IP addresses passes a certain point, the account could be flagged for review and (if it turns out to be a "generic sharing account") banning.

Besides, this is only 5GB of storage. You could get a cheap web hosting account and store a lot more music on it for under $10 a month. (Share the cost with your friends and your monthly payment drops.) I'm not saying people *should* do this mind you (I don't condone copyright infringement), just that they could and music pirates probably won't flock to such a limited (for their purposes) service.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[Colonel Korn]

Just because Sony may be overly litigious doesn't mean they will be successful.

I always hope that they will fail in all their jackboot lawsuits. Yet they always seem to be on the winning end of every motion, subpeona, and trial. Even when they pull shit like the infamous rootkit, all THEY get is a slap on the wrist, while everyone who illegally downloads their stuff gets their door kicked in by cops and their lives destroyed.

The legal actions to which you're referring are between Sony and individual non-wealthy people. Amazon is actually much bigger than Sony. Amazon is bigger than the entire music industry, in fact. If Google and Apple also get in on the fight, you're looking at those three companies fighting a group of entertainment companies that's an order of magnitude smaller than they are. That doesn't mean they'll win, but it at least shows that legal resources won't be so lopsided in favor of the RIAA.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[elrous0]

My.MP3.com tried a similar defense in their legal case. To access music on the service, users had to prove they legally owned the music already on CD. But that defense didn't work. It cost them $53.4 million in damages (which basically bankrupted and destroyed the company).

In many ways, this is an even tougher case. Because Amazon won't even be requiring users to prove they legally own the music. From the way it's being described, there is nothing to stop you from uploading your pirated MP3's right next to your ripped ones, and putting them both right next to the ones bought through the Amazon Store.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[somersault]

Then they'd better sue Microsoft for its Live storage thingy too then, and Dropbox, and Ubuntu One, and every other online storage/backup site out there. People are getting fed up of the bullshit. Even guys like me who actually still buy music are going to stop paying if they keep this up.

Having looked at Amazon's pricing model (and considering they haven't released the service in the UK yet) I think I'd be better off just subscribing to Spotify though.. it costs about the same as it would cost to store my current collection online, but I wouldn't actually have to buy any new albums.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[herojig]

Just read the Amazon announcement (referenced) and u will see. You can upload whatever u like, to include docs and videos. I agree with all the others that say "How will the Sonyies of the world let this be?!?"

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[RingDev]

How do the "Sonyies" of the world let Cryptonite storage work? How to do they let Azure work? How do the allow any of the hundreds of online document storage systems already in existance work?

The only difference here is that in addition to a cloud based storage system, Amazon appears to be added MP3s you buy directly to the storage. And that seems like a pretty insignificant note seeing as how iTunes effectively does the same thing.

-Rick

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[Helpadingoatemybaby]

Yes, this music industry will push back, just like Napster.

Just think, they could have controlled the online music industry by now since they owned Napster, instead they gave an entire new industry to Apple. That's just smart management. And remember, those same geniuses are in charge still.

That's why they get the big money.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[c0lo]

Considering that Sony will sue people who even *talk* about putting their IP on the web, you think they're just going to sit back and watch while you allow everyone and his brother to put all their ripped Sony CD's on a web accessible service?

At least, the IP they have in their rootkit is safe:by now, all decent AV solutions detect and remove it (maybe there is an idea around?)

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[geekoid]

Amazon isn't people. It's a huge corporation with billions behind it AND it moves a lot of Sony Product.

Add Google and Apple to that and Sony may just have to suck it.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[c0lo]

For additional security, I could password protect the folder so if someone stumbled upon mysite.com/My Music/, they wouldn't be able to get in.

http://mysite.com/My%20Music/ - returns the 404 page. Mate, fix your 401.[html|php] page, will ya?

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[bemymonkey]

While I do think that this kind of service is the future, and that we should be supporting it through any legal trouble in order to pave the way for more similar services to follow, this one sort of sucks - at least for music streaming.

My main basis for comparison is AudioGalaxy, which has turned into a pretty great application. You install a little helper app on your desktop/server at home and that scans your whole collection, streaming it to your phone or a web client on demand, including transcoding for the former (still to be implemented for the web client). Handles 24-bit 96kHz FLAC without any problems whatsoever :)

Positive points for Amazon Cloud Player Thingy:
-No need to run your own server at home
-No need for high speed upload at home

Negative points:
-Only MP3 and AAC - no FLAC, no OGG, no WMA, no WAV
-100MB filesize limit
-No way to rate songs, AFAICT (the Android app hasn't been updated to support the cloud drive yet, so maybe this'll be added there)
-No ReplayGain (to be fair, AudioGalaxy and even most other mobile players don't offer this)
-No Audioscrobbler AFAICT :(

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[idontgno]

Well, maybe. I know that on Android mobiles, the newest version of the Amazon MP3 app (previously used to shop for MP3 songs and albums) is now their "cloud service" client as well.

I wish I'd known that was what they app updated was for; I would have stuck to the old "shop only" version, since I have no intention of using their music player and the added "features" bloated the app, making it take up more precious phone-only application storage.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[denobug]

How can they limit it if they're letting you access it through any web browser? Maybe if they were requiring you to actually install their software, but it sounds like it's just a basic web interface.

Amazon requires you to log in with your amazon account. Which it does store your credit card information (for a lot of people who actively use their account for legitimate purpose). So for those that actively using their account, I don't foresee too many people sharing their account with friends, especially those wants a free-ride.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[somersault]

Backing up your music in an online drive sounds like "personal use" to me.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[bemymonkey]

That's... so... beautiful... *wipes away tears*.

I hope to God that you're right...

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[clang_jangle]

%s/Grammys/Nobel\ Peace\ Prizes/g

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[afidel]

Yes, amazon put a unique ID3v2 tag with your purchase number into your downloaded tracks, though I imagine they could write an intelligent dedupe for that use case.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[WhirlwindMonk]

You inserted the CD in the drive to prove you owned the CD, and your mp3.com account was updated saying that you own the CD. Showing that you owned the CD gave you access to the copies of the files on their servers. From that point on, you could stream that music from their servers to any device with web access, regardless of whether you had the CD with you or not. Kind of like entering a serial number to activate software.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[WhirlwindMonk]

"BUTT SUM1 ELS CULD GET AXES 2 IT!!!!1111 MAY-B!!!!" Common sense doesn't work when you have tech-illiterate judges being told what to think by record company lawyers.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[idontgno]

I'm not sure what heuristic you'd propose for "many different IP addresses". My Android phone, running the Amazon MP3 app, would almost certainly my sole use of the music storage capability, and I can guarantee it will show usage from at least two different IP addresses from time to time: one while I'm using 3g data, and one from wireless at home. And if I roam much, the 3g data IP address will change, as will my home IP address (thanks to DHCP from my cable internet provider). And that would just be me, from exactly one device.

That said, the *AA types would disregard that, but again they'd disregard anything in order to continue to attempt to litigate out of existence any form of media delivery in which they don't get absolute control and a majority of the money.

Your proposal is nonsensical, but the media pigocrats would go for it.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[TooMuchToDo]

Fark yeah they will:

http://www.amazon.com/cloudplayer

But then, I logged in and you only get 5GB of storage for free. Seriously? You can de-dupe on the Amazon S3 backend and just charge a flat fee for unlimited music? How many unique MP3s can possible be out there?

Waiting for Google Music.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[EdZ]

and considering they haven't released the service in the UK yet

Not officially, but you can sign up using your UK account (I just did). Your UK/US/FR/DE/CA amazon account will work across stores, all except the JP store, which requires it's own account. Never used the IT or CN sites, so I'm not sure about those.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[EdZ]

Whoops, spoke too soon: Cloud drive is available, Cloud Player is not.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[DragonTHC]

All I can say is that Amazon (and Google and Apple if they intend to follow up with their rumored similar services) had better lawyer up.

They are in a constant state of being "lawyered up". They are at legcon 4 right now.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[mrbcs]

Didn't this idea kill mp3.com? Even if this is YOUR music uploaded this time, I doubt the RIAA will take this sitting down.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[somersault]

At least Amazon have decent funds and presumably well experienced lawyers. Doubt Jeff would have done this if he weren't ready for such a fight!

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[ghjm]

How could Amazon lawyer up? They're already as lawyered as it is possible to be. If you added one more lawyer to Amazon, they would achieve some sort of singularity and collapse into an infinite void of invention disclosure memos.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[KhabaLox]

And that seems like a pretty insignificant note seeing as how iTunes effectively does the same thing.

-Rick

iTunes automatically adds the songs you buy to a cloud-based storage system? My version stores it locally. Which one are you using?

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[KhabaLox]

Well, I agree $15 is too much; somewhere between $5 and $10 is probably the right price, depending on how big the library is. Pandora One is only $3/month.

But your solution doesn't work for the mass market. Not many people have the technical know how to do what you're describing.

Also, how much have you spent on your music collection over the years? At $10 per CD, a 1000 disc collection is $10k. That equates to 55 years of Zune Pass or 277 years of Pandora One. For someone with a small collection, or a tween just starting out, these types of streaming services are economically viable choices. My boss's husband put a similar system in their second home, so now he can listen to (almost) anything he wants and didn't have to worry about copying his music library over to a 2nd computer.

Still, there is something to be said for actually owning your music, as opposed to a license to it, which they can revoke whenever they want (or increase the cost). And it really comes down to teh quality of the library. Can you get your favorite artist? Can you get new, independent artists? If so, then I might go for it? If not, then probably not.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[RingDev]

iTunes records that you have purchased a song, and that if you lose your copy, you can download it again at no cost. The end result is exactly the same. You have on demand access to a copy of content you purchased that is stored in a cloud.

-Rick

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[amRadioHed]

I guess I'm screwed then too. I have all my music stored on a NAS box. Every time I listen to music at home I am streaming music from online.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[amRadioHed]

So I guess you think CD-R's should be illegal for the same reason?

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[davester666]

There is a significant difference.

1. iTunes doesn't let you redownload songs at will, however many times you want. You get one (1) download initially when you make your purchase, and you can request a second download some time later, where Apple MAY permit you to download it a second time. I have never seen any reports of a third time. And people with large collections of purchased music that were lost, they have reported that some songs could not be downloaded later, either because Apple no longer had the rights to offer the song or the song itself had been altered in some way by Apple and/or the source of the music.

2. I believe the issue is something called mechanical royalties. As in, because the labels were so egregiously screwing their artists, congress had to pass laws forcing them to pay the artists SOME money for every copy made of each song. Now, the labels [and perhaps even "the law"] consider the transfer of a song from Apple to the customer over the internet as a mechanical copy, resulting in a payment to the artist. When Apple permits you to download the song a second time, a second payment to the artist is required, even if it is someone who already 'purchased' the song. And the same reasoning goes for so-called music lockers where even transferring the song both to the customer and to the music locker counts as two copies, nevermind future 'copies' from the locker to your devices.

But then again, IANAL.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[Jason Levine]

I said "many different IP addressed" but the "general account being used for piracy" warning signs could be (and should be) more complex than just "this account was accessed by 4 different IP addresses." The main point would be that, once a flag was raised on the account, the flag itself would have no effect on the account. Instead, it would only mean that a human should look at the usage to decide whether this was a sign of piracy or of normal usage triggering the alert. If the human decided that the account was being used for piracy, there should be an appeals system to account for human error as well. I don't pretend to have the experience to personally design this system, but I think that people with the appropriate experience should be able to design such a system should be able to do so.

Actually, I don't think the RIAA types would like this system at all since it would allow for normal users to use the system fairly while providing checks and balances to keep from unfairly kicking people off. Instead, they'd probably want a "You Can Only Get To It From 3 Devices, Exceed This And You're Out" system with no chance for appeal.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[shutdown -p now]

Any music you buy from Amazon (since the announcement) does not count towards the size limit. I.e. that's 5Gb for your existing music (and other files - it actually allows to upload anything).

Also, if you buy any album on Amazon MP3, they upgrade it from 5Gb to 20Gb for one year. And the cheapest album you can find costs $0.69.

As for Google music, so far as I can see, it's purely a cloud solution. At least all they were talking about is streaming the music you purchased from them, not actually downloading it. With Amazon, when you buy from them, you can both stream and re-download the purchased tracks.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[TooMuchToDo]

I'm not saying it's unreasonable. For Amazon, it is. I'm saying that someone with bigger resources is going to come along (Apple/Google) and totally stomp on it. You only have to store the MP3 once (yes, multiple copies for redundancy, pedantic, etc). Once that MP3 is stored, you just link other "owners" to it. How many TB could that really be? 100TB? Even at a Petabyte, that's easy for $BIG_DATA shops.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[Snaller]

Of course Sony are disappointed because they are greedy assholes.

Its a pity a dubious industry apparently have managed to buy laws which allows them to make money from things they shouldn't be allowed to. Earning a decent coin is one thing, but this behavior is just amoral.
If someone pays for a song they should be allowed to stream it from the cloud - if the laws prevent that those laws are wrong and must be changed.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[Em Adespoton]

He left out a phrase... "at the same time."

Since you could possibly be listening to the music at home while also listening to it on your cellphone, they would probably limit concurrent IP logins to something sane like 4 -- but if you have simultaneous access from 5+ IPs, then there's pretty much guaranteed to be sharing going on.

What I'm interested in is whether all the music actually gets stored in the same bitbin -- they could generate some very interesting data from that (music recommendations, etc), as well as a much better gracenote-style service.

I wonder how long it'll take the RIAA members to figure out they've been outmaneuvered by New Media (Amazon, Google and Apple) and give up?

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[Homburg]

And this claim continues to be fictional. You don't in general, need or get any kind of license from the copyright owners when you buy a CD. You own a physical object, which you can do anything you like with, except where limited by copyright law. You do not need a license from the copyright owner simply to listen to the music, or to make copies which are "fair use." Format shifting (e.g., ripping a CD to your computer) is fair use; whether copying a song to someone else's servers is fair use is less clear.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[shutdown -p now]

Um, Amazon is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) providers of cloud storage today. Why do you think that Apple/Google are "someone with bigger resources"?

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[surfdaddy]

Mod this guy up! Totally agree!

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[herojig]

I am note seeing where you can't upload MP3s (or Movies for that matter) to the Amazon Cloud. The announcement reads like you can.

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[TooMuchToDo]

Amazon is the biggest provider of retail cloud storage that they're providing to pay for the storage/computing power they're not using during their idle parts of the year. That doesn't mean they're anywhere as large as someone like Google (estimated at over 100,000 servers).

Re:It's cloud-based alright

[Thing 1]

Yeah, and my take on it is, why a "music-only" service? I remember FTP sites from 20 years ago. The most useful form would be a device that could connect to your FTP site, so you could host whatever content you choose. But then there wouldn't be a revenue stream in that (other than the $5/month or so to host your FTP site, and FTP sites aren't shiny like Britney Bieber ad nauseum, so you can't charge a premium for them), so Amazon would never spend the resources to develop it.

Re:Better services out already

[MetalliQaZ]

... because that list doesn't include Android or iOS?

Clouds and overages

[dicobalt]

I prefer my clouds to be in the sky. I also prefer not to go over my 250GB monthly cap.

Re:Clouds and overages

[WrongSizeGlass]

I prefer my clouds to be in the sky. I also prefer not to go over my 250GB monthly cap.

Not to mention the 250MB or 2GB limits on cell data plans.

Re:Clouds and overages

[zoloto]

It's pretty sad and pathetic that there are bandwidth limitations.

Re:Clouds and overages

[aberrati0n]

Only songs you manually upload to the Amazon Cloud Drive count toward the 5GB limit. Any MP3s you purchase on Amazon from this point on can be downloaded straight to your Cloud Drive (at the time of purchase) without counting toward your limit.

Re:Clouds and overages

[WrongSizeGlass]

It's pretty sad and pathetic that there are bandwidth limitations.

Very true, but the carriers here don't consider them 'limits', they prefer to treat them as 'billing milestones' ;)

Re:Clouds and overages

[xtracto]

There are no limitations, you can keep consuming bandwidth and pay the corresponding price.

You see, transfering data from Amazon's cloud to your home has a cost (no, really, promise). When you make a contract with your bandwidth provider you agree to pay a certain monthly cash amount in order to get a service with some characteristics. One of those characteristics may be the amount of data you are allowed to get each month (the price vs allowed bandwidth was surely calculated based on the costs of your provider).

If you think that yoru current plan limits you, I am sure your bandwidth provider will be very happy to change you to a plan with increased data transfer capabilities. Of course, in order to get such type of improved service, you will most likely be asked to pay additional cash.

Re:Clouds and overages

[shutdown -p now]

You don't have to stream. What is not mentioned in TFS, but what is a big deal, is that now, whenever you buy something from Amazon MP3 store, the track is automatically stored on your "cloud drive", and you can re-download it as many times as you want - unlike, say, iTunes.

Re:Clouds and overages

[zuperduperman]

It's not that easy to "invest" in your network ... at some point you just run out of places to put cell towers. Why do you think AT&T has shocking coverage in San Francisco ? because they can't be bothered putting up a few more cell towers? No, because it takes literally years to get approval to put a new tower up and that is supposing you can find somewhere to put it at all. Negotiating access rights for space to put this things is hellish - and from the other point of view, what would you say if AT&T showed up at your house and announced they had just received permission to put a tower in your back yard, ruining your view? You'd fight it and stall it for years. Which is exactly what people do.

Too bad I don't download music anymore.

[Jugalator]

I only really listen to streaming music these days, with Spotify and Grooveshark.

OK, with one exception: Downloading stuff to put on a USB drive for the car radio. But this doesn't really have a place there either.

Re:Too bad I don't download music anymore.

[drb226]

Nitpick: streaming is still "downloading", just with supposed restrictions on your access to the file.

Re:Too bad I don't download music anymore.

[Jason Levine]

I still download music (and rip CDs to MP3) and don't think I'll use it either. My backup method is 2 1TB external hard drives. I back up all of our files to Drive 1 and then back up Drive 1 to Drive 2. Drive 2 then gets stored "off site" (not in my house) so my data will be safe in the event of fire/theft/etc. The cost of this is much less than Amazon's service. Even 50GB space is $50 a month. 1TB of space (like I have with my USB drives) is $1,000 a month. (I can think of a lot of things I'd do with $1,000 and none of them involve Amazon.com.) Besides, upload/download times are faster to a local USB drive than to the web. I'd hate to think of how long my upload would take to move 400GB of files to Amazon's servers.

Re:Too bad I don't download music anymore.

[InsertCleverUsername]

I prefer to stream my own music collection at work and in the car. Here's an excellent solution (OSS of course): http://sockso.pu-gh.com/

Re:Too bad I don't download music anymore.

[TooMuchToDo]

Until you get a Google Music or Amazon Cloudplayer app for your android head unit in your car.

Re:Too bad I don't download music anymore.

[xtracto]

Grooveshark you say?

Sharkthief might be useful for you...

Re:Too bad I don't download music anymore.

[anamin]

I'd like to point out it's not a monthly subscription, but rather yearly. So that's $1,000 a year, not per month. It works out to around $83 and some change on a monthly basis. Still quite expensive.

Re:Too bad I don't download music anymore.

[Jason Levine]

Thanks for the correction. I thought that $1,000 per month seemed pricey. Still, you can get a 1TB hard drive for about the price of 1 month of 1TB storage from Amazon.

Re:Better services out already

[Jugalator]

The list of supported systems does include Android and iOS, but the author for some reason didn't include them. :p

Re:Better services out already

[somersault]

Why not also link to Spotify instead of just shilling? Spotify works on Windows/OSX/iPhone/Android/WP7.

Re:Better services out already

[clang_jangle]

Zune requires windows. Tying one's music collection to a particular OS, especially a proprietary OS, seems like extremely poor planning to me. The equivalent of signing in blood, one might say.

Re:Better services out already

[Even on Slashdot FOE]

Asking a bot questions will not get you answers. They aren't programmed for that most of the time.

The answer is "Not if they can help it".

Re:Better services out already

[Jugalator]

Ooops - I thought that guy was talking about Spotify, but now I'm not so sure about that.

Subsonic for Normal Users

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically it's Subsonic for normal people.

Re:Subsonic for Normal Users

[bemymonkey]

Not really, that would be AudioGalaxy.

But a little OT, as I don't feel like installing Subsonic AGAIN just to test this: Does Last.FM scrobbling from Android work yet? And ReplayGain? And rating songs from the Android app?

Re:Better services out already

[clang_jangle]

When I can "sudo emerge -va zune", we'll talk.

nothing new.... or is it?

[xhrit]

If this "personal disk drive in the cloud" is just marketoid bullshit keyword stuffing to describe a system that allows you to download stuff you have licensed from the internet then it is just another online music store. If they are actually streaming the music you licensed to you then it will have the same flaws as all other streaming music services like shoutcast and pandora - your music will be interrupted by lag and/or be riddled with obtrusive advertisements, and probably will only be accessable on approved players. However there is a 3rd prospect, that being Amazon Cloud Drive is a bit of both.

In any case, it is not very interesting if you ask me.

Re:nothing new.... or is it?

[LambdaWolf]

If this "personal disk drive in the cloud" is just marketoid bullshit keyword stuffing to describe a system that allows you to download stuff you have licensed from the internet then it is just another online music store. If they are actually streaming the music you licensed to you then it will have the same flaws as all other streaming music services like shoutcast and pandora - your music will be interrupted by lag and/or be riddled with obtrusive advertisements, and probably will only be accessable on approved players.

Not to mention that mysterious gaps in your collection will probably appear the minute Amazon gets squeamish about sexual morality or discovers they screwed up the licensing.

Re:nothing new.... or is it?

[Fnord666]

If this "personal disk drive in the cloud" is just marketoid bullshit keyword stuffing to describe a system that allows you to download stuff you have licensed from the internet then it is just another online music store. If they are actually streaming the music you licensed to you then it will have the same flaws as all other streaming music services like shoutcast and pandora - your music will be interrupted by lag and/or be riddled with obtrusive advertisements, and probably will only be accessable on approved players. However there is a 3rd prospect, that being Amazon Cloud Drive is a bit of both. In any case, it is not very interesting if you ask me.

Or, since it is free (up to 5 GB) and you can upload your current music, you could just try it. I'm listening to the SuckerPunch soundtrack right now and so far it my experience has been a 4th prospect: that it will have neither of the issues you describe.

Re:nothing new.... or is it?

[marcello_dl]

That's possible,

among the TOS there's something like: You give us the right to access, retain, use and disclose your account information and Your Files to (give assistance, comply with the TOS and the law...)

Same TOS say you are in charge for the security of your files. That means I'd use the service to store encrypted backups, not mp3 or photos.

Re:nothing new.... or is it?

[xhrit]

I can see from the screenshots this thing is plastered with advertisments urging me to "buy additional storage" and "shop for this artist". I don't need a garish music player urging me to make more purchases.

I have never listened to a radio stream nor played an online game for any extended period of time that has not been effected negatively at some point by lag.

Even if this thing was not rehashed ideas (another music player+store) plastered with advertisments (it is) and impervious to lag (it is'nt) it still is not very interesting to me.

Re:nothing new.... or is it?

[shutdown -p now]

It is a system where you can both download and stream your purchases. And you can also upload any (non-DRMed, MP3 & AAC) files that you already have - say, from iTMS - and stream those as well, or simply use it as backup.

Re:Better services out already

[LoganDzwon]

When the mass market can use emerge we'll talk

Encryption and Privacy

[arglebargle99]

I'm still looking, but I don't see any mention of how/if your music is encrpyted on thier servers, and how much they will cooperate/sell your information to the music companies.

This could be a goldmine for the record companies if the music is stored unencrypted and Amazon provides/sells them access. Both in finding pirated music, and also in market research.

"You give us the right to access, retain, use and disclose your account information and Your Files: to provide you with technical support and address technical issues; to investigate compliance with the terms of this Agreement, enforce the terms of this Agreement and protect the Service and its users from fraud or security threats; or as we determine is necessary to provide the Service or comply with applicable law. "

That language doesn't seem limiting enough to me. Investigate compliance could give 100% access to the record companies.

Re:Encryption and Privacy

[geekoid]

You know what? if the only price I had to pay was that Amazon 'reported' that I was listening to X song at X time I would be fine with that.

At least it's another data point of what music people like listening to for the music company. It's also a data point that can't really be corrupted or 'played' like the current data points are.

Also, don't pull out half a sentence and then use that to build your argument

" to investigate compliance with the terms of this Agreement" Clearly it has nothing to do with record companies.

If the record companies comply with the law to get that information then they can:

"or as we determine is necessary to provide the Service or comply with applicable law."

Alternatives to Corporate Clouds

[jchawk]

I'm always distrustful of a large companies managing my music collection. What happens when they can't make a profit and shut the service down? At best I have to deal with retrieving my media, at worst I could potentially lose access to everything.

Most folks who read slashdot probably have all of the pieces they need to just build this service themselves. Broadband connected computer, iPhone or Android device, 3G or WiFi connection to the remote device or computer.

If you have a media server at home or just a computer running Windows, OSX or Linux why not consider running Subsonic (http://www.subsonic.org)? Using subsonic I can stream my media to any computer using the in browser player and I with a client for my iPhone (isubms) I can stream to my iPhone over 3G or Wifi.

I've been using this as my own personal Pandora radio in the car and it works great. The nice part about the client app for my iPhone is it can cache content for when I don't have 3G coverage.

The total cost for this project was about $20 bucks since I was already paying for broadband and 3G cellphone service. I bought the $10 euro streaming license for subsonic and the $4.99 iPhone app. If you have an Android phone your costs are even cheaper as I believe there is a free client app for Android devices.

This is the solution I've been looking for... For years!

I know I sound like an infomercial but no longer having to remember to sync my device and having my entire music collection at my finger tips where ever I am is awesome.

Re:Alternatives to Corporate Clouds

[geekoid]

The same thing you do with ALL YOUR DATA. keep a back up.
Data loss is data loss; whether is's because you HD went bad, your computer was stolen, or a service shuts down.

Supporting subsonic means you are supporting Java, and no good can come from that~

I'll check it out, thanks.

Re:Alternatives to Corporate Clouds

[mdielmann]

Redundancy is for data availability. The data safety is just a handy side-effect. Data safety can be achieved by backups. You do those, right?

Re:Alternatives to Corporate Clouds

[milbournosphere]

Thank you for turning me on to the Subsonic project. That is exactly what I have been looking for!

Re:Alternatives to Corporate Clouds

[OverTheGeicoE]

Subsonic uses Java for serving files and Flash for playback. HTML5 browsers like Chrome and Firefox can play music files without either of these. Take a look at the Playlist project (http://sourceforge.net/projects/playlistplayer/) to see how it can be done.

Re:Better services out already

[clang_jangle]

Whatever. I doubt I'd prefer zune over my current mpd/icecast setup anyway. But if it were available I'd try it just to learn about it. :)

mp3.com all over again

[Anonymous Coward]

mp3.com tried the same thing years ago. Upload your personal MP3 collection for access anywhere. They got sued though because the didn't license for content that the end-user already paid for.

Amazon remotely wiped 1984 from peoples' kindles

[Scrameustache]

Why should you trust them to keep your things?

Expired session

[Aerynvala]

I gave it a spin, since I was buying a new MP3 album anyway. It's easy enough to use and navigate around in. You can sort by artist, genre, album and create play lists, control the volume. A fairly standard music player.

But my session kept expiring. I wasn't even able to get through three full songs before the session would expire and I'd have to log back in. Which meant starting the song over again.

The do have an option for uploading music, you have to agree that you have the right to listen to that music when you sign up for it. But I didn't try that out. I just listened to my purchase until I got fed up with the session expiring. Then I downloaded the files like I would normally.

PS: Sum 41's new album is awesome.

CAPTCHA crazy

[fermion]

So I sign in with my Amazon ID, then have to go through a CAPTCHA to accept the terms of license.

I hope this is a one time thing, and not a device to prevent people from automatically uploading content or others writing an app to interface with the player.

I have never seen such a thing required after already having a relationship with a firm.

Re:CAPTCHA crazy

[AndrewNeo]

You know, your whole comment could have been voided if you had even tried logging in again. No, it doesn't ask for a captcha again. It's probably to stop bots from signing up a bunch of free accounts.

== Ubuntu One?

[drb226]

http://one.ubuntu.com/music has been around awhile. Sounds samey.

Re:== Ubuntu One?

[Slashdot Parent]

http://one.ubuntu.com/music has been around awhile. Sounds samey.

Yup, it is very similar. Biggest difference is that in the mainstream world, the ratio of people who know what the fuck Amazon is vs. people who know what the fuck Ubuntu One is is about 10,000:1.

Yay!

[Tolkien]

My first thought: Google gets some competition now. Competition is good. :)

Looks like a big fail for anyone outside the USA

[herojig]

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 know there are ways around this, only I never had a need before. iTunes works great in the tiny Asian nation that I download from...

Sounds nice for music, but not for general storage

[Netnerd865]

If I were just using this for music, it may be worth trying, but if I would decided to store other files, I don't see what makes it better than any other cloud solution. There is no desktop app for exploring the directories and you can only upload files, not whole folders. I would have to set up a folder hierarchy instead of just uploading whole folders that are already arranged how I like them. Besides that, I would personally rather point a music player at some folder that's linked to cloud storage (like Dropbox) than use a web-based player.

Meh. Stupid.

[Tolkien]

When I signed on to the Amazon Cloud Player site I was greeted with:

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.

mp3s? No thanks...

[darjen]

I listen to a lot of newly released music, and buying individual albums simply isn't very efficient. I would much rather use a subscription service and pay $10 a month to listen to however much new music I want. For anyone who listens to a lot of music, it's worth it because I used to spend $100 to $120 a year on CDs anyway. Plus it takes way too much time to organize and sync it all. Just not worth the hassle of dealing with files imho.

Re:mp3s? No thanks...

[darjen]

This is what I use. Their mobile service costs $10, which I need since they are blocked at work. Otherwise I would have just stuck with the $5 plan.

Always stream my personal library?

[wile_e8]

I take it this just steams songs on demand when I want to play them on my phone? I gave up on using Pandora in my car because inconsistent cell coverage led to choppy playback, and now it appears this service would require me to rely on the same coverage to listen to my personal library. I'd be very interested if this gave me the ability to sync to multiple locations, but I don't see that mentioned anywhere. I don't know about always being dependent on available network bandwidth to listen to my music.

Re:Always stream my personal library?

[shutdown -p now]

It doesn't seem to have any sync functionality, but it does let you download (rather than stream) purchases done through their service.

Re:Better services out already

[Svenne]

They even have a native Linux x86/x86_64 client under development. http://www.spotify.com/se/download/previews/

No thanks, I'm stuffed.

[JudgeFurious]

I have been gorging on free music for more than a decade now. From day one I've been paritcularly picky about what I bothered to download and keep so I never wasted my time on 128kbps mp3's. Space wasn't an issue for me so I went straight to the 320's and then on to FLAC. In short I now own very good copies of every bit of music I could ever want to hear. The key word is "Discography". Sure new music is released all the time but I buy very little of it these days. I find most new music to be either shit or simply not appealing. Music services and/or labels have very little to sell me. I already have what I've wanted from the beginning. Files to do with as I please and backups of those files just in case. I have something like 36 straight days of music on my hard drive now. I don't want anymore music. Really, I couldn't eat another bite but thanks for asking.

Re:No thanks, I'm stuffed.

[geekoid]

So you created your own little music echo chamber; how nice.
and by nice I mean, sad.

"I find most new music to be either shit or simply not appealing. "
I really don't believe that. Sorry, but wither you aren't looking or you are in the 'it wasn't cool in my day therefore it sucks' mentality.

There is new music for every style coming out every day, and NONE of it is good to you?

Stop having a knee jerk reaction to new music and other genres.

Sad, really.

Re:No thanks, I'm stuffed.

[dhermann]

First off, I am quite surprised that this post has been scored well since it is decidedly off-topic. This goes beyond not bothering to read the original post; you are simply spewing a manifesto about how you like music so much that you don't need any more, when Amazon's new cloud is not offering new music, only a new, convenient place to store it. If you would rather carry an Android device with a high data plan capacity or rely on a computer with an internet connection instead of whatever portable music player you now carry, the actual subject of this thread decidedly does have something to offer you. This seems to have escaped you.

I also find it amazing that you have such lust for the extremely high quality recordings of this music that you profess to enjoy so much and of which you obviously hold a very high opinion, but have concluded that you have already heard everything worth hearing. Similar logic could allow a seventeen-year-old underachiever from backwater western Pennsylvania to forsake higher education and never leave his podunk town in the middle of nowhere because he's "seen it all, what else is there to see?"

To put it bluntly, if you consume any aesthetic, be it music, movies, art, food, or basically anything requiring abstract thought to understand, and one day reach an opinion that there will never be anything better than this, that you have attained some sort of curmudgeon nirvana in which the future of your artform is worthless even though you no longer explore it and therefore lack any authority to judge it so, you missed the entire point of beauty to begin with. To say you are a connoisseur of late 20th century hard rock is pointless if you cannot compare and contrast it to earlier and later works or expound on the influences on the genre or the effects on current artists. I award you zero points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Re:No thanks, I'm stuffed.

[JudgeFurious]

No, not really. Sometimes it's just enough already and you've got other things to do. I listen to less music today than I did years ago. On the other hand I read more. Music is wionderful but it's not the only thing to do with my time. It's not even in my top ten things to do with my time. Its value to me is not apparently what it is to you. I'm good with that.

Re:No thanks, I'm stuffed.

[gmhowell]

Boy, lots of snobby hipsters reply to you. I'm in a similar boat. I haven't gotten everything out of what I already own. Why beat my head against the wall looking for more.

Re:No thanks, I'm stuffed.

[dhermann]

Boy, lots of snobby hipsters reply to you. I'm in a similar boat. I haven't gotten everything out of what I already own. Why beat my head against the wall looking for more.

I'll stick my snobby hipster nose out for this one: because there's something out there you haven't heard that you will like better? Damn my snobby hipster logic!

Re:Better services out already

[somersault]

Ah that's great, thanks! I tried it on WINE last year and wasn't too happy with the results. If the Linux beta works okay then I will probably subscribe at last :)

Re:Better services out already

[UnknowingFool]

I'm pretty sure this guy is one of numerous MS shills we've seen here lately.

Only 20 GB free

[alex_guy_CA]

My digital music (and podcast and audio book) collection is currently at 328 GB. Heck, I have more than 20 GB of just free SXSW downloads. No thanks.

SICK of the Cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to listen to music while driving across the desert, I want to listen to music while camping in the mountains, I like to listen to music on a train in a foreign country....

I want to listen to music in a hotel, but they charge $14/day for internet, I want to listen to music while waiting for a flight, but the airport charges $10/day for web, I don't need ANOTHER freaking expensive as hell data plan...

You can have your stinkin' cloud, until these sorts of issues are fixed, I AM NOT INTERESTED IN THE FREAKIN' CLOUD..for music or anything else

Re:Amazon remotely wiped 1984 from peoples' kindle

[geekoid]

They remotely wiped an illegally distributed copy of 1984 and refunded your money. Yo can still get copies of 1984

I have many reason on why think that was wrong, but keep the facts straight.

And like no matter where your data is, back it up.

This sounds familiar...

[brennanw]

... isn't this similar to the service the old MP3.com offered that ultimately got them sued into oblivion?

Re:This sounds familiar...

[transporter_ii]

Yes. You have a legal right to format shift. A company does not have the legal right to format shift for you. I don't totally agree with that but will admit it is in a gray area.

That doesn't mean they are going about it the same way. They may pay for some type of license. MP3.com did not. Mp3.com paid a lot to lawyers that told them it was legal since format shifting was legal. This did not hold up in court. Eventually, MP3.com sued the law firm for the bad advice they were given. Never heard the results.

Again, it sounds the same, but that doesn't mean it is the same.

Not "will be" - "is now"

[willutah]

"...will be will be something like Google's rumored digital music locker..." Try "is now."

Re:Not "will be" - "is now"

[Slashdot Parent]

Link, please?

Why only AAC and MP3 formats?

[forrie]

Why would they restrict the storage to two formats? What about OGG, etc? Why would they care?

Re:Why only AAC and MP3 formats?

[shutdown -p now]

I'm pretty sure you can actually upload an .ogg file there (since they let you upload any random crap). What it probably means is that their streaming client software only handles MP3 and AAC.

So it's web based yet...

[bufke]

"The Amazon MP3 Uploader only supports Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista, 7) or Mac OS X running on Intel-based hardware."

Re:So it's web based yet...

[Slashdot Parent]

There's a music searcher app that you install that finds all of your music for you. That's why it's tied to Windows/OS X.

Re:So it's web based yet...

[Homburg]

So use the web based interface to the Cloud Drive service, which they link to right under the message about the MP3 uploader only working on Windows/OS X. No need to install their software.

No Linux support?

[jascha.cohen]

"The Amazon MP3 Uploader only supports Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista, 7) or Mac OS X running on Intel-based hardware." Blah. That was a lot of EULA reading non-sense for nothing. :( Oh well. Next candidate please.

Re:No Linux support?

[Homburg]

It's only their uploader app that is restricted to Windows/OS X. You can use the web-based uploader from Linux, and the web-based player works fine from Linux too (I assume it uses Flash for the actual MP3 playing, at least on Firefox).

Re:Amazon remotely wiped 1984 from peoples' kindle

[Scrameustache]

They remotely wiped an illegally distributed copy of 1984 and refunded your money.

Two months after a high school student sued Amazon for removing George Orwell's "1984" from his Kindle e-reader, along with all his notes, Amazon has settled the lawsuit.

keep the facts straight.

you're like the catholic church with Galileo

[jaypaulw]

1. There's lots of great music you haven't heard.
2. You are a thief

Re:you're like the catholic church with Galileo

[JudgeFurious]

I'm sure there is a lot of good music being made today but I'm approaching 50 and like the vast majority of folks before me I find that I'm listening to less music than I did in my youth. This isn't uncommon really. At the same time (Thanks to your item #2) I've got access to all the music I did listen to when I was listening to a lot of music and an incredible amount of stuff I didn't pay attention to the first time around. At my least interested I have more than I could ever want. I used to try and split hairs about whether or not copying something made me a thief. Now I don't bother. I used to buy new music and rationalized that if I'd owned something previously on LP, cassette, or 8-track then I had at one time paid for it. I originally set out to "get back" all the music I'd bought but no longer could access thanks to obsolete formats. Today I just don't care anymore. I took what I wanted and thought "Fuck the artist and all the people who work in the recording industry. It was there so I took it". Granted the artist gets the shittiest end of the stick in this complex relationship between the three of us (artist, listener, label) but tell me honestly, what does it matter? They've had the labels collective dicks in their asses for most of the last century and never seemed to mind. At the same time I can't get remorseful about hurting the labels. Let me die. I'm curious to see what comes next even if it turns out to be nothing much at all.

Re:you're like the catholic church with Galileo

[JudgeFurious]

That second to last line should read "Let them die." but go ahead and read what you like in that.

Cue the "there's no good music" ignoramuses

[jaypaulw]

I stand on three pillars here:

1. There's lots of good new music (and undiscovered old music)
2. You shouldn't steal music unless that band, label and publisher all are OK with it (in which case it's not really stealing)
3. I still buy physical CDs because the selection is better, I like the packaging, i'm slightly anal about the whole lossless thing, and it usually doesn't cost any more than buying a download.

Re:Better services out already

[ColdWetDog]

They even have a native Linux x86/x86_64 client under development. http://www.spotify.com/se/download/previews/

Too bad it doesn't work in the US. Sigh. Maybe Russia will want Alaska back as long as we leave Sarah Palin in Arizona.

Re:Better services out already

[darkwing_bmf]

MS screwed me on "plays for sure" wma files sold by its msn store. The files are all locked out from me listening to them because MS decided to shut down their servers and I've upgraded computers since 2004.

F*** you Microsoft Music!

What is this for?

[itsdapead]

A lot of the cloud, I can see the point of...

Google mail - email comes in all the time, and you want to check and reply to it from anywhere. Heck, even if you don't like Google Mail IMAP isn't a million miles away from "cloud computing" and that's been useful for years.

Google docs - useful for sharing documents, collaborative writing, or other documents you update frequently for multiple devices, and far, far simpler than having to "merge" conflicting versions of documents.

DropBox - ditto (and a good way round the lousy document syncing on iDevices).

Calendar/contacts - again ditto: these are continually changing, you may want to share them with others or update them on the move (and the only way to get calendar/contact info on an Android device).

Music - WTF? First - you're not allowed to share it with others. Second - even if you are inclined to buying music on the move the actual files don't change and you can always re-download them on your main computer. Third, most people's music library will fit on a single micro-SD card and most of those files will never change - you'll just add to them. Fourth, people don't just play music on their smartphones - they play them on their car radio, their clock radio, their TV/DVD/BR player, their MP3-enabled HiFi, the cheap'n'cheerful MP3 "dispensible" player they bought for the beach etc. etc.

...and workplaces will so block this service at the firewall.

If there's one thing that is falling-of-a-log easy its keeping static, compact (by today's storage sizes) music files synced over multiple devices.

Streaming makes sense with services like Spotify which give you access to a vast music library (and I believe the Spotify player will also index and play your locally stored music, so you can use a single interface).

Plus, I'm sure this will be illegal in the UK (probably one reason why its currently blocked) - where its still technically illegal to rip your own CDs or otherwise format-shift. That's never enforced for personal use, but uploading those files to a third party seems like sticking your neck out. What if a hacker gets into Amazon and copies "your" files? Will Amazon indemnify users against any consequential infringement (flap, oink)? Even if they did, will that count for anything in countries where you already infringed by giving the material to Amazon?

Re:What is this for?

[Slashdot Parent]

Music - WTF? First - you're not allowed to share it with others. Second - even if you are inclined to buying music on the move the actual files don't change and you can always re-download them on your main computer. Third, most people's music library will fit on a single micro-SD card and most of those files will never change - you'll just add to them. Fourth, people don't just play music on their smartphones - they play them on their car radio, their clock radio, their TV/DVD/BR player, their MP3-enabled HiFi, the cheap'n'cheerful MP3 "dispensible" player they bought for the beach etc. etc.

For me, it's the synchronization. Kind of a pain to sync files between all of those devices.

Much better to stream to the device. Hell, my car stereo is ancient and doesn't even play MP3s, so I use a bluetooth adapter.

With this service, when you buy a song or an album on Amazon, it's instantly available on every music player you own. That's kinda neat.

Re:What is this for?

[darkwing_bmf]

Music - WTF?

Even with all of your points at the very least it acts as free and easy backup and retrieval of 5GB worth of music files. That's nothing to complain about.

Free for tracks you buy from Amazon

[borkus]

A key thing with this service is that it's FREE for mp3s you buy from Amazon. From their help pages -

"All new Amazon MP3 purchases saved to Cloud Drive do not count against your storage quota."

So, if I buy mp3 files from Amazon, I have a free backup AND and I can play them across any Internet connection or from an Android phone. This puts Amazon's online music store on a more competitive footing against Apple. To date, Apple's advantage has been its integration of Store + Music Management + Portable Playback. For the growing number of Android owners, Amazon's store offers a comparable level of integration. I may even draw some iPod/iTunes users to Amazon.

I'd love to see

[ThatsNotPudding]

Amazon nut-up to such brinksmanship with all things Sony no longer found on the biggest online retailing website. Sony versus Amazon: who is the dog and who is the tail?

Doesn't Replace Dropbox

[mgoff]

I was a little disappointed to learn that this won't really complete with or replace Dropbox, at least not yet. For me, OS-integration is critical-- I've got plenty of places to store info via a manual interface (web, FTP, etc). Hopefully this is just a start, and we'll see more features soon. Frankly, Dropbox works perfectly for me, so this just adds competition to the space that will hopefully drive up free storage capacities.

Windows Live SkyDrive

[SpryGuy]

I have to wonder how many Windows users know they already have something like 25GB free available to them via Windows Live SkyDrive.

It's not like Microsoft makes this fact well known. And it's certainly not like Microsoft bends over backwards to make it easy to use.

But maybe this announcement will force Microsoft to get off its ass and actually push/promote/enhance what they already have. For instance, it would sure be nice if Windows Live SkyDrive had built-in Explorer integration (rather than relying on 3rd parties to make it useful), and that it were as easy to share links as it is with, say, DropBox.

Re:Windows Live SkyDrive

[IB4Student]

50 MB file limit, amazon lets you upload 2 GB. And upgrading Amazon to 20 GB is only 69+ cents a year, and includes a free music album: http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2793945 And Amazon's servers are really nice, and the interface and streaming is nice. And free storage for all purchased songs :)

Re:Amazon remotely wiped 1984 from peoples' kindle

[takowl]

You don't have to. Hard drive space is cheap, so keep a copy locally as well as the online copy.

How are costs lower than S3?

[randallman]

According to this article, Cloud Drive is based on S3. The cost per GB for Cloud Drive is $1 per GB per year, where as S3 is $.14 per GB per month, or about $1.68 per GB per year plus transfer costs. Even if they're using reduced redundancy, Cloud Drive is still cheaper and S3 has transfer costs. Cloud Drive does require annual payments, so that may be a factor, but assuming they provide some sort of API to Cloud Drive or it's http and someone writes a library to access it, why would you pay more for S3?

Re:How are costs lower than S3?

[IB4Student]

you get a year free of extra 15 GB (so 20 total) if you buy an mp3 album, and those 69 cent albums work. 0 cents for the first 5 GB, and then less than 0.4 cents per month for each GB up to 20 GB total is pretty slick :D who knows if that promotion will last for the second year, though.

RIAA WET DREAM!

[curado]

Look! Music! Sue someone!

API

[ratajik]

I'd like to allow my app (StationRipper) to hook directly into this.

Does anyone know if they, or are releasing, a API?

-Greg

Re:Sounds nice for music, but not for general stor

[shutdown -p now]

Making it a general-purpose storage service seems like it was secondary to "cloud music". I suspect that they've simply looked at what they've got, and figured that S3 storage doesn't really care what's being stored, and that they'll get their money for whatever data is uploaded there anyway (as they effectively charge per Gb stored), so why not allow people to upload random stuff?

That said, if this thing has an open API, someone will write a desktop app (or better yet, a FUSE driver) in no time at all. In the meantime, I'll keep using Jungle Disk for general-purpose backup and "cloud drive".

need password for $RICH's online music library

[spage]

The benefits to storing your music collection online are so great that many people must already be doing it, including the intersection of rich and record collector. Karl Lagerfeld must get tired of lugging his Louis Vuitton trunk-ful of iPods around, I'm sure Elton John is back to acquiring vinyl, I doubt Music Man Murray is going to delete the MP3s of his 300,000 records.

I don't see what's illegal in storing your legally-purchased music in your own online storage. I don't think the record companies can force you to keep the username and password of your online music folder private, any more than your car company can force you to lock your car up. The reason people don't share a read-only password is they'd have to pay their ISP big bandwidth fees when huge crowds come to freeload. But the rich can afford it. When will some celebrity, Russian oligarch or Chinese billionaire, mad at the record companies and eager for infamy, go anarchist value-destroying Robin Hood for us and let slip that the username:password for http ://RomanAbramovich.ru/AllMyMusic is boris:Chelsea ?

Re:Looks like a big fail for anyone outside the US

[herojig]

I guess they have Nepal locked out... too bad.

Eh

[Asuyuka]

Doesn't this sound kind of like AmieStreet's old system? *no, is still not happy Amazon forced them to close*