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Best Buy Releases Their Own Music Cloud
thewebblogger writes "In a move that more resembles 'me too' behavior rather than a well planned release, Best Buy has announced their own music cloud service, called simply Best Buy Music Cloud. The functionality is not complete yet; iOS / Android applications are not available at this point, and the only part that works is the Web Player. The premium version will cost $3.99/month and you'll have to upload your own music. iTunes is mandatory."
Wow. That's like a shit sandwich. The worst retailer with the worst music software. Where do I sign up?
I don't respond to AC's.
This sounds a lot like a way to add on a $3.99 recurring charge to new PC sales for Best Buy. I'd expect to see them pushing this heavily in store with new computer sales, and a lot of folk buying it then never using it. Allow cancelling only by telephone and only after waiting 20 minutes in a phone queue and that should keep their retention rate nice and high.
Bingo. A few years back, we had some decent choices for a MP3 player with a decent capacity, from the Zune, to many others. Drivers? Plug it in, it mounts as a USB flash drive, copy files, unmount, and call it done.
Now, there are no real MP3 players with any capacity beyond like 6 gig, and the only MP3 player with 100+ gigs of capacity is the iPod Classic.
Of course, like described above, there are the "portable media players", but if I want to watch video on my MP3 player, I would buy a Galaxy Tab, iPad, or an iPod Touch. There is a market niche for this type of device -- just audio and a high capacity HDD. I just hope Apple doesn't can their iPod Classic anytime soon.
Zombie on arrival. It will be included in the crapware installed on every computer the "innocent" people buy from them and the opt-out will be painful.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Right, and in a day where flash memory is dirt cheap, accessing the web on a device is getting harder and harder to do (no more cell phone unlimited data, fewer unsecured wi-fi hotspots) and you can get streaming music for free (Pandora, Last.Fm, YouTube, Shoutcast, etc.), why does it make sense for you to pay $4 to access your own music?
Perhaps 5 years ago "the cloud" might have made sense back when 2 GB SD cards were still $50-60, unsecured Wi-Fi was incredibly common and data plans were unlimited, but today with dirt cheap flash media prices with enough storage to hold lots of songs it really makes no sense.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.