Amazon Beats Apple, Google to Punch with Cloud Player for Web & Android
Mar 29, 2011 08:27 AM EDT by 
Hate syncing tunes to multiple devices? Amazon feels your pain. Although Google is reportedly rolling out its own music service and Apple is said to be adding media to MobileMe, Amazon has come out swinging first with its Cloud Player for web and Android. Users start with 5GB of Cloud Drive storage for uploading and streaming tracks. If you purchase an MP3 album from Amazon, your storage allotment automatically expands to 20GB. In an obvious swipe at Apple, the press release states that “customers don’t need to worry about having to upgrade software on their computer to enjoy music.”
The Cloud Player for web works with all the major browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari). Cloud Player for Android is actually bundled with the new Amazon MP3 app, so you can play music stored locally or on the web. The Cloud Drive service isn’t just for music; users can also store pictures, videos, and documents. You can upgrade from 5GB to 20GB for $20 per year. 50GB is $50 per year, and you can go all the way up to 1000GBÂ for a grand.
We’re assuming music is just the start and that movies and TV shows are on the way, but who knows when Amazon will roll that out. In the meantime, stay tuned for hands-on impressions of Amazon Cloud Drive and the two players.
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March 29th, 2011 at 3:00 pm
I think I’m going to love this. I use a lot of Amazon’s services and just out of convenience I can see myself using this a lot.