Josh Ong
The online retailer revealed three enhancements to its Cloud Drive and Cloud Player services in a statement Wednesday: storage plans that include unlimited space for music, free storage for all Amazon MP3 purchases and an iPad version of Cloud Player for Web.
“Customers are already enjoying Cloud Drive and Cloud Player and now for just $20 a year, customers can get unlimited space for music,†said Craig Pape, Director of Amazon Music. “Additionally, we are adding free storage for all MP3s purchased from Amazon MP3, and support for the iPad. Our customers love Cloud Drive and Cloud Player and we’re excited to innovate these services on their behalf.â€
The unlimited music storage applies to all premium Cloud Drive accounts, which start at $20 a year for 20GB. Users who qualified for 20GB of free storage from an earlier promotion will automatically receive the unlimited space for music. Amazon offers 5GB of free space to all Cloud Drive users.
The addition of an iPad-friendly Amazon Cloud Player is a step back in Apple's direction, though no mention is made of iPhone or iPod touch compatibility. Cloud Player originally launched for the Web and Google's Android mobile OS, without direct support for iOS and Mobile Safari. In May, iOS users reported being able to access the Cloud Player, despite the fact that full compatibility had yet to be officially announced.
Whereas only new Amazon MP3 store purchases were automatically added to Cloud Drive when the service first launched in March, now all digital music purchased from Amazon will be added to the drive. The retroactive support for previously purchased music appears to indicate that Amazon has resolved any conflicts with the music industry of its service.
Apple is planning a similar move with its iCloud service, and offered the first taste of its cloud strategy last month with the release of iTunes 10.3, which allows re-downloading of music, apps and books purchased on iTunes and the App Store. When iCloud arrives in the fall, the service will provide complimentary storage of music, apps and books purchased from Apple. However, unlike Amazon's Cloud Drive, iCloud does not stream music.
Amazon reportedly opted for an 'ask forgiveness, not permission' strategy with Cloud Drive, surprising music labels with the announcement of the service. Music industry sources said Amazon only addressed the issue of negotiating licenses after launching the service, leaving some industry members to view the service as illegal.
Google launched a beta of its own music service in May. However, the search giant was unsuccessful in negotiating new licenses with major music labels and has yet to open a full music store as originally planned.
Amazon and Apple will likely compete for subscribers with their respective Cloud Drive and iTunes Match services. Amazon's cloud offerings require manual uploading of non-Amazon music files, but also offer streaming, and start at a lower price of $20 a year. On the other hand, iTunes Match costs $25 a year and will scan and match users' iTunes libraries with songs available in the iTunes Music Store. Matched songs will then automatically be available for download in iCloud, and the small portion of unmatched musical will be uploaded. Like Amazon, Apple will offer 5GB of free storage for iCloud users.
-m.jpg)
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
Thomas Sibilly
Marko Zivkovic
Andrew O'Hara
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
28 Comments
Unlimited could work if they actually start using delta encoding as a systemwide service.
iCloud and Amazon Cloud Player are quite different. Amazon streams music whereas with Apple you sync the music to your device.
iCloud and Amazon Cloud Player are quite different. Amazon streams music whereas with Apple you sync the music to your device.
iCloud also has a lot of other features. Features that competitors can't easily compete with. Heck, they already couldn't make a proper MobileMe competitor and now that they've added so many additional features including API for App Store devs I can't see how others will be able to compete with it except for some singular features.
iCloud also has a lot of other features. Features that competitors can't easily compete with. Heck, they already couldn't make a proper MobileMe competitor and now that they've added so many additional features including API for App Store devs I can't see how others will be able to compete with it except for some singular features.
"Owning the whole widget"
iCloud is deep into iOS 5 and Lion. There's little that surface technology like Amazon's cloud services can do to compete with iCloud.
"Owning the whole widget"
iCloud is deep into iOS 5 and Lion. There's little that surface technology like Amazon's cloud services can do to compete with iCloud.
Speaking of that (kinda), I wish Apple would update Dashboard in Lion. They've given it the default option for making it its own Space, but that's about it. Now they already back up to MobileMe and .Mac before it, keeping not only the data, but which Dashboard Widgets you have on your display and how they are spaced.
What I'd have liked to see is 1) The Weather Widget having an option to use the new Location Data in Lion so you don't have to manually update the widget, and 2) having the option for both the Stocks and Weather widget settings to carry over between devices (if you so wish.
The third things I want may be possible with the iCloud API. Meaning, an iOS App Store app that could be synced via iCloud's API to a free Dashboard Widget. They have iAds so they could make a Widget SDK that they could monetize.