14 DAY TRIAL // Amazon just shot past both Google and Apple and launched the cloud storage, music locker and streaming service that cloud adepts have been waiting on for years. The concept is simple, though putting it in practice is nothing of the sort, you get 5 GB of free storage and you get to listen to your songs, the ones you bought from Amazon or uploaded from your computer, on any PC or Android device, anywhere you have an internet connection.
Cloud Drive
Amazon Cloud Drive is a file type-agnostic web storage service. You can upload any file, unfortunately only using the web-based uploader built with Flash, which will then be available via the Cloud Drive website on any device that can connect to the web.
It's hardly revolutionary in this aspect, there are plenty of competitors on this front. The most similar service is Google Docs which also enables users to upload any file. But, whereas Docs comes with 1 GB of free storage, Cloud Drive boasts 5 GB.
Dropbox only offers 2 GB for free, but you get the wonderful sync app for your computer, phone or tablet. If it's simple file storage and sharing you're looking for, Dropbox is still your best bet.
You can buy additional storage from Amazon for $1 per GB, 50 GB will set you back $50 per year, 1 TB - $1,000. That's cheaper than what Dropbox offers, 50 GB for $99.99 per year, but more expensive than Google which offers 20 GB for $5 and 200 GB for $50, four times cheaper than Amazon.
Of course, we'll have to see if the storage prices remain the same once Google debuts its own music locker service, the rumor is Google will charge extra.
Cloud Player
But Amazon has also launched Cloud Player which is, well, a cloud player, it enables you to play any MP3 and DRM-less AAC files you have stored in Cloud Drive.
It's available through any modern browser, Amazon doesn't say anything about Opera, and on any Android device via the companion app. There's no iOS app, neither does the website work in iOS devices so iPhone and iPad users are out of luck, at least for now.
You can manage your music library and create playlists like you'd expect in any web music player. It shares a lot with the Grooveshark player, but it doesn't require Flash for playback. It's rather basic in terms of features, but there's nothing that stands out as missing.
It plays any music you've uploaded to Cloud Drive as well as any song you'll purchase from Amazon MP3. Purchased songs also don't add up towards the storage quota, you get to store them for free. You can also upload the songs you already bought from Amazon.
What's more, if you buy an album via Amazon you get 20 GB of storage for free for one year.
Cloud services are a few years behind the technology
The technology involved all of this is not that cutting edge. Amazon actually uses its own S3 storage service for Cloud Drive. Sure, it's a prime example of the cloud at work, and who better than Amazon to launch the perfect showcase app, but it's built on stuff that's been available for at least a couple of years now, if not more.
Google has offered the equivalent of Cloud Drive for more than a year now, Microsoft's Skydrive has been around even longer.
There's no competitor to the Cloud Player, though Grooveshark does enable you to upload music. However, Google and Apple are both working on very similar services.
Google, Apple, Amazon - it's becoming a three horse race
Google showcased a music locker service a year ago at the Google I/O 2010 conference. It showed a user buying music from the Android Market, something that's still not available, which was then instantly available for streaming on an Android device.
Though there has been progress, Google is still negotiating with the music labels for the store and especially for the locker service. Still, the fact that Amazon already has a product on the market means that Google can't be far behind and the best bet is that Google Music will be launched at this year's I/O conference at the latest.
Apple has also been rumored to be working on a music locker service, similar to Amazon's and Google's, to fit in nicely with iTunes and its incredibly popular mobile devices. In the next few months, three major companies will be offering very similar services and competing for the very same market.
Amazon is set to become a major player in the mobile and consumer cloud services spaces
What's more, though it may not look it, along with the recently launched Amazon App Store for Android, Amazon is set to become a major player in the mobile space, competing with Apple and Google even without a mobile device or platform, a truly genius move from the company. But you can expect an Amazon table to land any time now, maybe even a phone.
And there's one more thing you should be expecting soon, a cloud player for movies, Amazon is said to be already negotiating such a move with Hollywood studios. Apple has the capability to offer something similar, it already has movies for rental via iTunes, and Google could do something with YouTube, but both companies are behind Amazon at this point.
