“Hey! Hey! Get onto my cloud…”
In an update to my story of yesterday, Amazon has announced its cloud-based music locker service. No mention of e-books or movies yet, but perhaps they’re just starting small. The service can be used over the web, or via a player app on Android. No word on an iOS app; perhaps they’ve decided it’s a foregone conclusion in light of Apple’s in-app purchase policies. (Oddly, the service doesn’t even work in iOS’s Mobile Safari browser, apparently because Amazon has expressly told it not to.)
The plan provides 5 GB for free, plus an upgrade to a 20 GB account for buying any Amazon MP3 album. 20 GB plans are also available for $20/yr—the same cost as a 20 GB plan from its predecessor music locker MP3Tunes (though MP3Tunes only provides 2 GB of free storage right now). New Amazon MP3 purchases saved directly to the cloud don’t count against that quota, which is another interesting advantage over MP3Tunes.
I’ve already tried it. It would be nice if all of my Amazon mp3 purchases were automatically transferred to the cloud. What’s the difference between a new purchase and a past purchase? I already purchase most of my music through them. I’ll stick with my 32GB MP3 player.
The uploader is kind of a pain. You can let it detect iTunes or Media Player music or choose your folders manually. It takes quite a while to upload 5GB of music. You can’t save your list and restart it later either. If you close the uploader, you have to start over.
To top it off, I have the stupid Motorola Cliq XT smart phone that they finally decided they couldn’t upgrade to Android 2.1 so I only have 1.5 and the Amazon app won’t work. Their app store app won’t work either.
I’m also caught in the T-Mobile buyout. My contract is up about the same time as the buyout will go through so I don’t want to get a new phone until I see what happens there. To make it more complicated, Qwest is also being bought out, that’s final on Friday. If we leave T-Mobile, where we have 4 smart phones and their @Home service, Qwest is one of our options.
So as irritating as it is, I have to sit tight until next year. Ugh.
I’m, as you say, “sticking with” my 60GB iPod but I never carry it out of the house anymore. So it’s nice to be able to access it from anywhere if you have a smartphone or netbook or Android tablet.
My empathy on that T-Mobile buyout and everything else you have to think about with it. I’m on my 4th year with the Samsung A990 and behind the times but still waiting for the perfect smartphone of course 🙂 but that phone still works and it even captures info from business cards and does good video for its time ( http://pbase.com/andrys/cellphone ).