Jun 22, 2011 16:21 GMT  ·  By

It seems that music lockers are the latest trend and everyone and their dog is jumping on the bandwagon, reminiscent of the URL shortener craze, just with a much bigger up-front investment from the companies having a try at it.

The latest is Best Buy which is launching a music locker and streaming service which will enable users to upload their music to the cloud and then listen to it on any device with an internet connection.

Dubbed Music Cloud, the new service is not live yet, but users can already sign up. Users will have to download a music upload software. Annoyingly enough, the Music Cloud software requires that you have iTunes installed so it can sync the library, regardless if you're a Mac or iPhone user or not.

Once your music is in the clouds, which may take a while since there's nothing about label licensing meaning that Best Buy is most likely going the same route Amazon and Google went, you'll be able to access it on your desktop or mobile device through the dedicated app for Android, iOS and BlackBerry. The music will be cached so it will be available offline.

So far, if you've been keeping an eye on the emerging music locker market, Best Buy's service looks the be the most similar to Amazon's Cloud Drive and Cloud Player.

There's one big difference though, Amazon's Cloud Drive is free, with 5 GB of storage, while Best Buy will be $3.99 per month, though there is a free version.

The limitations of the free version are not clear, most likely it will restrict access to only desktop devices, or will only serve 30 second previews of the tracks. This limitation may only be for mobile devices, but it still sounds like a very, very bad idea, forbidding access to music the user already owns does not sound like a sound strategy.

Other crucial details are missing, like how many tracks can you store, but so far it doesn't look like Best Buy's Music Cloud has anything to stand out. Then again, the competition is not doing so great either, Apple has the most complete service but even that could be better.