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.
Amazon has got in first with an online music storage service, or "Cloud Drive" as the bookseller puts it. Amazon's service gives you 5GB of free music storage which can then be played back on any Android phone, Mac, PC or even a tablet. If 5GB is not enough then buy any MP3 album through Amazon and you get upgraded to 20GB. …
Wonderful seeing most UK providers are cutting the data allowance. I have 500Mb a month. If we say an average of 4Mb per song that means I will use my monthly allowance after 125 songs. Great I can listen to 4 songs a day max or spend a fortune on buying extra data and all without using data on anything else. I dont think so :(
Three sold me an 'unlimited' plan a year ago then changed the name and wording of the contract mid term to be a 500mb limit. They said this was just to match their "fair use" policy. A few months later they launched the one plan which is essentially what I had signed up for originally.
The whole industry is making money hand over fist from these games - dont imagine changing providers will make much difference.
as their network coverage now rubbish...
Poor 2g signal at home and No signal at work.
The "promised" upgrade to the mast near me at the end of january, never materialised... as i suspected it never would.. still no signal at work on 3.
An unlimited usage on a phone is only good if you can actually get on teh network..
Do people really "find it hard to move music around to different devices" ? Nobody on the train this morning seemed to have any difficulty solving that one. To be honest I would much rather have my 5GB of music on my local SD card than out there on the internet somewhere. But free storage is free storage I'm sure I can think of a use for this.
I think the real benefit is the ability to sync or access anywhere in the case that you forget to move your music around to different devices. For me, cloud backup = yes, cloud sync = yes, cloud primary store = No!
Personally, like you, I want another local copy and I think other do too - already there are a few services to backup your cloud data.
"Our customers have told us they don't want to download music to their work computers or phones because they find it hard to move music around to different devices."
They must be using iTunes....
I, personally, find no problem moving my mp3s on and off my devices. Burned disks for the car. Drag & Drop to my shows-up-as-mass-storage mp3 player. Put a copy on the wife's computer. Simples. Of course, it requires that you rip the music from your CD collection yourself....but that's another matter entirely.
Die DRM. Die a horrible death.
"Our customers have told us they don't want to download music to their work computers or phones because they find it hard to move music around to different devices."
Then Amazon customers must be total idiots (or Amazon must think they are...). How are people playing their music (files) without Amazon's service? Are microSD cards THAT hard to use?
But their AudioBook service 'Audible' gives you a file which is practically worthless without their player or iTunes.
But I guess this cloud usability doesn't apply to their DRM'ed files as they have to be tied to a specific player before it will play. Unless of course they are going to relax the rules which I doubt as they have just tightened the rules again to exclude burning with Nero
Anyway all this cloud storage is only useful for users of ipads and slate pc's with tiny hard drives. Plently or room on my 2TB's.
I'd rather have a nice MP3 copy on my hard drive thank you very much.
My work considers cloud storage websites to be unsuitable and the web filtering blocks them, Amazons S3 service is included (which incidentally means I can't use any legititmate website that uses amazon s3 as its data centre grrr) so this would be blocked by them...
Incidentally though I can plug in my phone, ipod or standard USB stick into a usb port and transfer files to my hearts content...
'The service will be a challenge to Apple's grip on the music business. The company is already rumoured to be working on something similar and has the advantage of an awful lot of customers to sell it to.'
Er, last time I checked Android had a bigger market share than iOS meaning that isn't really an advantage. Apple's vertical integration could be argued to be an advantage.
Also seeing as it's an Andriod app why isn't the post tagged for Andriod.
"The service will be a challenge to Apple's grip on the music business. The company is already rumoured to be working on something similar and has the advantage of an awful lot of customers to sell it to"
I don't quite see the advantage - considering Amazon's offering is accessible on any device while Apple's will only work on their devices, I believe Amazon has a much larger number of customers to sell their service to, as well as a significantly larger addressable market.
Simple math.
The only advantage Apple has is the iTunes market share in online music, but I don't believe most music customers care what store they buy their music from as long as its non-DRM'd and the price is right.
And as great as iTunes is, Amazon has greater online experience still. This one is theirs to win or lose.
There are two services being launched.
Cloud Drive, which comes with 5GB of free storage for anything, not just music. This is available in the UK.
Cloud Player, which streams music from your Cloud Drive. US only (probably to do with rights as I expect having the music hosted in the cloud and playable anywhere means loads of legal hassles with rights, even though it's playable only by you. We will have to wait for a UK version. I expect we will not be able to play music bought from Amazon.com due to rights issues also).
Exactly what I was thinking. All this talk of 'cyberlockers' being a haven for 'teh evilz piratez' and general demonisation in the media when all they really are are 'cloud storage' services.
So what gives? If you're a major player in the tech/web markets such as Apple, Amazon, Google, MS etc your service is labelled 'cloud' (therefore good/lawful) and if you're a startup your service is labelled 'cyberlocker' (therefore evil/unlawful).
It's about time this complete lack of fairness in the disparate distinctions of these identical kinds of services was challenged in the growing numbers of cases against the so-called cyberlockers, as it seems more and more like unfair advantages in the sector being handed to certain key players.
Just tested this out.
Uploaded an mp3 file* to my Amazon cloud.
Then copied the link and pasted it into browser.
Yes you can play it directly with Winamp, and therefore anything else probably.
The big drawback is that you have to sign in to your Amazon account to listen to it or download it.
So It's slightly less use than a 4Gb memory stick, and less instantly available too, and definitely less portable across devices, which is, erm, where Amazon came in.
* I own the copyright
Very unimpressive review, the critically important fact that this is cloud storage system for any data was casually tossed off at the end of the article, after the whole rest of the article kept going on about how it was for music. Poor show Reg.
Regarding the service itself, looks like a fairly basic, no-frills online cloud storage. Pros: Price is good - comparing to dropbox, which I use currently, storage costs less than half as much, 2 1/2 times the free storage,plus you can get as much as a 1TB, where dropbox maxes out at 100GB; Looks like a competent, simple access and management structure, with an undelete option. Cons: No frills - no automated folder syncronisation, no sophisticated backup or differential changes. No sign yet of whether they'll be publishing an API for third party programs to work from the cloud drive directly.
Overall, will probably be very successful. I won't be using it myself much, since the lack of 3rd party API means it won't be accessible from the iPhone, and I prefer to avoid giving Amazon money when I can, due to their evil, but these won't affect most people.
CloudPlayer looks a bit pointless to me. On a home machine, I'd rather download the mp3s and use a player of my choice, though YMMV, and as other's have commented, streaming is not workable over most mobile contracts these days (thanks for that helpful suggestion to change contracts whilst only 6 months into a 2 year contract, to a contract that isn't available for my handset).
Okay, have played with it a little:
(1) the player works fine for me. No problems at all, and I'm definitely in Blighty.
(2) I'm also far more comfortable holding my MP3s etc locally, but this kind of thing is often handy to have anyway, so no worries
(3) I can't see any obvious way to share folders or files, so this may prove marginally less useful than Dropbox after all.
So handy, probably-not-safe-for-critical-shit storage online for free, with optional cheap upgrade from 5GB to 20GB? I'm not going to complain...
For me this seems a good idea...
However I generally listen to music during the commute to work, and for about 70% of that commute I don't get a signal from my phone (tunnels/trees etc) so I wouldn't be able to listen to the music. I'd also use up a lot of data (I could find a better tariff but if everyone does this surely the networks are going to start having problems again).
For me the idea is great, but I personally (and understand that I'm not the voice of all so this might not work for some) need a hybrid of this/spotify whereby I can download albums and store them locally on my phone, whilst still having the benefit of all my music wherever I am*
* I can actually do this very well already using back to mac and mobileme but it does require me to leave my laptop on at home.... and use Apple stuff only... which I do so not a problem for me.
...on one of my networks. If I catch you using this I'll chop your sodding fingers off. I don't care if you're the senior VP of staff bogs. You may even recover to see that I've done it. Same goes for any other cloud service. Now get some sodding work done and stop buggering around on Amazon. The Araldite in the USB ports should be a clue to how much I don't want your Justin Beiber album on one of my machines.
The main reason, Mr. Bezos, that it's difficult for people to transfer music/pictures of their whelps/funny powerpoint files/little purple bastards to their work machines is that WE MAKE IT DIFFICULT. We do that for a reason. Get a clue, FFS, and stop encouraging lusers to misuse corporate resources.
apart from outside the US
and apart from on an iPhone (no iOS player app yet, web player doesn't work on iOS Safari)
and apart from your work pc which is likely behind sufficient firewalls and site blocking to prevent you getting connected to the Cloud Drive
So I can use it at home then. Where I currently have all my mp3s on my home computer and can play them instantly wihtout having to wait for stream-lag or for non-peak-periods when my ISP isn't throttling my bandwidth.
so yeah, fantastic idea Amazon
The concept is great.. Anyone who things this idea conceptually is bad need to be shot. The issue as many have pointed out is that ISP's and technology companies are quite literally coming to a crossroads. ISP's are throttling bandwidth and reducing network UP/Down usage meanwhile options like this one need more of both. What I'd like to see happen is services like this come together in solidarity and protest against the ISP's. If they want customers then these large organizations need to work together to show value to their collective customers.
In the case of Canada, I expect each of these major corporations like Amazon, Google, Apple, etc etc. along with the major record and movie labels need to pressure the government to either de-regulate the internet/ telecom space or implement regulations which force legitimate services like this to not be subject to the over-the-top throttling which is occurring currently. If that does not happen then illegitimate piracy using alternative means will continue to reign supreme. People need direct benefits to show that these types of services are a viable and in many cases better alternative to piracy. The next big challenge is of course older or rare content (but hey, one hurtle at a time).