Jun 7, 2011 15:32 GMT  ·  By

Amazon has launched its iCloud platform, a service which offers Apple users cloud sync, backup and services of all manners. In the offering is iTunes on the iCloud, the not really secret cloud music service we've heard so much about in the recent months.

It was no big secret that Apple, just like Google, was working on getting deals with the music labels. But, while Google gave up, Apple stuck it through and signed all four majors as well as indie labels.

This, in theory, should have made Apple's cloud music service significantly better than its rivals from Amazon and Google which don't have licensing. In practice, that's not really the case.

Amazon and Google both decided to ditch the record labels and launch the cloud services on their own. From a legal perspective, it should be fairly safe, the labels didn't like it but none have done anything about it.

But because they lack a deal with the labels, Google and Amazon can only store copies of the files the users already have. What's more, they will have to make copies for each user, accessible to that user alone, even if more users have the same songs.

This also means that users have to upload all of the songs to the cloud, something that takes hours and even days for large collections. Because Apple has licensing, it has a huge advantage, it only has to scan your computer for music and then match it with its online data base.

This means, that the whole sync process can take minutes or even seconds. The songs that it doesn't yet have in its online catalogue, get uploaded, but with millions of tracks licensed, those are going to be a small percentage of the total collection.

What's more, users can also download any of the songs they purchased from iTunes, which are added automatically to their cloud collection, to as many devices as they like.

These features alone should make Apple's service significantly better than either Amazon Cloud Drive or Music by Google, except for a rather big caveat, Apple doesn't allow users to stream the songs in the cloud, just to download them to a device.

This may not seem like much of an issue, but it's a clearly inferior solution. On desktops, you have the storage space to sync all of your collection, so this isn't a problem, but downloading hundreds or thousands of songs is a hassle. On mobile devices, it means that you'll run out of storage space soon and that you'll have to constantly delete music to make room for the new one you're listening to.