joeblow69

Looks like this just launched today:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/29/a...r-computer-an/

Now when you buy MP3s on amazon, you can save them to the cloud, which you can access anywhere, via the web, or from smartphone apps. Plus you can download them anywhere as well.

Not only that, but you can UPLOAD your music to the cloud as well. 5 gigs to start, but if you buy a MP3 album, you get upgraded to 20 gigs.

Kind of neat ... interesting that they beat Apple to the punch here ... isn't that what they were hinting at trying to figure out?

Supermallet

Holy shit! I know what I'm doing for the rest of the night.

Um...is there a way to put music I've purchased from Amazon prior to today on the Cloud? I've bought way more than 5 GB from them and don't want to upload it manually.

Edit: No, I just found it. If I previously purchased something from Amazon, before the release of the Cloud Drive, I have to manually upload it, which counts against my 5 GB of storage. MP3's purchased through Amazon and saved to the Cloud Drive don't count. That is bullshit.

Okay, this whole thing is kind of weird. It looks like you can either save a song to the Cloud Drive OR download it. I think that might mean once it's downloaded it won't stay on the Cloud Drive unless you re-upload it, and thus use a portion of your 5 GB. Or not? I can't tell. The info they have isn't quite clear about it.

chino77

i read in the comments you can upload any file from any source. as long as it is drm free.

Supermallet

I noticed they had Spreading The Disease by Anthrax for $5, so I ordered that to test it out. It gave me the option to save to the Cloud Drive or to my computer. Under the Cloud Drive option it said "Store your music on the cloud. Listen to it and download it anywhere, anytime!" When I get home I'll try downloading it and see if that removes it from the cloud or not.

Playing the album now. Sounds okay, a little tinny, but given that it's streamed it's not so bad. I'm going to try uploading a song or two and see how that sounds.

Okay, I uploaded Abbey Road and compared the Cloud Player versions against the originals. The Cloud Player version definitely sounded thinner, with less detail, but it's not bad for a free player that let me upload whatever I wanted. What I'll probably do is fill it with 5 GB of music I never tire of listening to, and if I'm ever in a spot where I want to listen to something but don't have access to my MP3's, use that.

Drexl

Maybe how it works is, if you buy a file from them and choose to save it to the Cloud drive, they stream it from their centralized location instead of your personal storage. That way, they're not storing extra copies of the same file bought by many different people. You just see a pointer to the file in your account. They don't mind how big this "collection" gets because they're not dedicating extra storage to it, and of course it gives you an incentive to buy from them instead of another service.

But for files you upload, they are unique (or could be unique, which is all that matters), so they need dedicated storage. Naturally they want to limit that, to keep it from turning into a free online backup service.

Supermallet

Right, I'm just not sure if downloading it after it's saved to the cloud means it disappears from your cloud.

Also, if they're streaming your purchases from their central server, they should be able to retroactively add your previous MP3 purchases with them, since they have a record of all of them.

And I've already found a flaw with the player. I uploaded Station To Station by David Bowie. It came up as being by "Various Artists" and the cover art is for "Groove Station 18." I'm not seeing any way to fix that.

GatorDeb

Not a fix but a workaround. Make an "Artist - Album" playlist.

I'm psyched This is awesome!!

Supermallet

The more I think about it, the less useful this really seems, especially when you consider their insane $1 per GB pricing for anything over 5 GB. You don't even get a discount for buying more space, it's $1 per GB all the way up to 1,000 GB for $1,000 per year! I can buy a 3 TB external drive for under $200, download Subsonic or another streaming app, and have access to all my music files, not just MP3s, and have a lot more control over what I can do with those files.

The only really useful thing about this is that you can stream any Amazon MP3 purchase without it going towards your storage total.

glassdragon

If you go here http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...83404&sr=1-204 and buy the song it should give you a free year of 20 gigs free (well, 69 cents). This is courtesy of SD and it worked for me

The promo says for an "album purchase" bu it is or at least was working for the .69 cent song.

GatorDeb

Just bought it.... but still says 5 gigs.

glassdragon

SD is hammering the server, it might take awhile. It was almost instant for me though. Went to upload and it showed 20 gigs

By the way the amazon mp3 app has already been updated to have the cloud player built in om android so no other app is necessary

GatorDeb

Still 5 You didn't have to do any steps but just buy? Maybe they fixed it

glassdragon

Nope, just buy

big whoppa

It works but I guess I don't see a big need for this since I don't own a smart phone. Uploading is slow even with DSL.

joeblow69

Well, one of the big benefits is that now when you buy MP3s, you can redownload them any time you need.

Before, if you lost them for whatever reason, you were screwed. You'd have to contact customer service, and beg them to let you redownload them. And they would usually say SORRY, can't do it!

al_bundy

external drive needs electricity and a computer to make it work. with this you can listen to playlists on any smartphone or computer

this is awesome. i can use itunes to manage my music without the headache of going to another program. and just upload my favorite songs to listen on the go with my cheapo HTC Inspire

parker63

I'm just wondering if there will be buffering issues during playback from the cloud server over 3G on smart phones? Seems to be the problem for me using apps like SiriusXM or Slacker.

The Cow

That is what I do as well (subsonic is a great tool). I think as time goes on more and more people will have their own "personal clouds" (media streaming, storage, etc), as it is pretty easy to setup and manage. I think things like this in particular are cashing in before that happens.

Offsite storage is still a good thing, but personally, I prefer to my own "personal cloud" for media streaming.,

Decker

For grins, I picked up the Norah Jones and Sheryl Crow albums for $3 and $4 respectively to try this out. It gave me the free 20 GB automatically. Will try to stream it now on my Android and see how it plays.

covenant

Since my home computer is on all the time I use audiogalaxy.

Deftones

this is what i'm thinking about. i mean i can load a ton of mp3s on my thunderbolt. why stream? unless you needs the space, obviously. but that probably eats up battery quicker than running them off the sd card (i'd assume). i'm going to use this for photos more than anything.

Dan

This may be useful to me, specifically for albums that I own but are not available from other streaming music subscription services (ZunePass, Spotify, etc.). There's no way I'm going to bother uploading my entire library of music to any service, even Google Music, if that ever shows up.

edit: apparently it IS available for Canadians. I just can't find the Android player in the Android Marketplace. If it's only available in the Amazon Appstore, then, well....

edit 2: the Cloud Player app is included in the Amazon MP3 app... which isn't showing up in the Android Market... probably because the Amazon MP3 purchasing service isn't available to Canadians. SIGH!

CRM114

If I hear "cloud" one more time, I'm jumping out my window.

Sean O'Hara

Meanwhile, Apple still hasn't introduced this feature to iTunes, even though that was the whole point of their buying Lala and shutting it down. Bitches.

CRM114

Is that the purpose of the über-datacenter in North Carolina they are building?